Our family has an exceedingly poor track record of cooperative weather when it comes to planning ski vacations. Our vacation in the Swiss Alps in late December a few years ago turned into a hiking trip--lovely but not what we had planned, really. On another trip to Tremblant (north of Montreal) in February, it rained. We have had a number of long winter weekends in northern New Hampshire that were short on outdoor activities and long on eating, reading, and game-playing.
This time, we hit the jackpot. We had planned a week-long trip to the Dolomites, splitting our time between Dobbiaco and Cortina, with a couple of days in Venice tacked on at the end. We started checking ski reports a couple of weeks out, and things didn't look great. (I should point out that we mostly do Nordic skiing, which is more weather-dependent than Alpine, which often has extensive snow-making.) Things seemed be improving as our trip approached, with modest snowfall several days and more and more trails opening up.
We arrived to a winter wonderland: some of the best skiing conditions we have had in years, endless trails with different settings and levels of challenge, strikingly beautiful scenery all around, charming small towns nestled in the valleys, and great food.
The photo above is of the Dobbiaco Nordic Center, which one can actually ski over! It is the nicest Nordic Center I have ever seen, spacious and beautiful with every amenity one would need. That was our starting point. On the first day, we first skied out and back along a trail near the Center that skirted a small lake. Here are Anna and Kate on that trail, followed by a photo of Anna, Kate, and Glenn. The final photo is from our second ski of the day. We drove to a nearby town, Sesto, and picked up a trail there. I hope these photos give some sense of how stunning the scenery was.
The next day we had a lovely and not-too-demanding ski over to the next town, San Candido. We grabbed lunch at a cafe there and decided to take the bus back to Dobbiaco, realizing that San Candido's lower elevation could make the ski back much harder than the ski there.
On our final day in Dobbiaco, we drove back to San Candido and bought lift tickets at the downhill ski resort there. In addition to ski trails, they also have a toboggan run down from the top, so we all rented toboggans and rode down. The closest I have ever come to doing something like that was sneaking into the local golf course on a snow day when I was a kid to find a decent sledding hill. We weren't sure what to expect--How well could we control our toboggans? How steep would the run be?--but we all loved it! I could have done it several times more. We took the lift up to the top again, this time without toboggans, and hiked down. It turned out to be very interesting. One the way down, we hiked past an abandoned spa in ruins. It dated back to the 19th Century (or earlier?) and had been used as a military facility during WWI. I think it never recovered and did not reopen after that. It was clear that it had been a beautiful and luxurious place.
We also had some excellent food in Dobbiaco, including cheese and spinach knodeln, spaetzele with local cheese and crispy speck, venison sausage, and saurkraut.
Here are some details, for anyone who wants a head-start on planning a trip to Dobbiaco:
1. We stayed at an Airbnb called Vogelweide. It was a 10+ minute walk from the center of town and did not have a fireplace but was, otherwise, a very nice place to stay.
2. We had dinners at Samyr in a nearby town (10 minute drive) and Schlosskeller near our Airbnb (2 minute walk).
3. We rented a car at the airport in Venice. The drive was about 2 1/2 hours, if I recall, and would have been easier done during the day. It was not particularly hard or treacherous, but daylight would have made it more pleasant and certainly more scenic.
4. We arrived on a Saturday night (in the middle of ski season) and most of the restaurants were fully booked. The grocery and convenience stores were also closed. Luckily, we found one pizza place that was able to take us. Having a dinner reservation would have made the first night a little less stressful. Also, the main grocery store in town was closed the next day, Sunday, as well.
5. Finally, one could do this trip without renting a car with a little careful planning. You can book busses directly from the Venice and Innsbruck airports to many of the towns in the Dolomites, and bus and train connections between the towns are surprising good. You would have to plan out food ahead of time, too, because we relied on the fact that we had a car to go a nearby town for groceries on Sunday. And you would want to stay someplace that was an easy walk to one of the (many) ski rental places.
Ok, on to Cortina!
Spectacular!
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