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Published: January 2nd 2008
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We had booked a trip months ago through the Heidelberg International Ski Club
here's the link to spend Christmas in Arabba, Italy. Arabba is a small town in the Dolomite Mountains and we were excited to see a new part of Italy. When we booked the trip it said that it had over 450 lifts...which we of course thought was a misprint. Holy Cow! They really DID have over 450 lifts! There are 12 towns/resorts throughout the Dolomites and all of them are connected to each other by ski lifts. You can buy one big ski lift pass, start in one city, and end up in a completely different one by dark. We ended up going with two couples who are our neighbors and another couple that we're friends with and stayed the 22nd through the 27th. One of the most exciting parts is that our friends from Australia, Dan and Ali, flew into Italy on December 18th and met up with us in Arabba on Christmas Eve. It's been a year since we've seen them and it really made Christmas special this year for us!
It was approximately an 8 hour drive from Mannheim to Arabba...we left at 7am and arrived
at the hotel around 3pm. There's not a lot to do in Arabba besides eat, drink, and ski so I was glad that we had all thought to bring along some games to keep us occupied in the evenings. We stayed at Hotel Malita and were thrilled when we arrived and saw the location...we were right across the street from the lifts! There are lockers in the basement for your boards, skis and boots so they don't drip all over your room and the restaurant in the hotel was super. They served a special dinner for Christmas Eve that was 7 courses!
Matt and I boarded the first two days together, although we separated in the afternoon on the second day so he could go do some harder stuff and I could take a snowboarding lesson. Wow...I should have taken a lesson a long time ago! It was really helpful, although I ended up not boarding for the last two days because during my lesson I took a hard fall and sprained my wrist. Matt said I might need to find a new hobby since this one is proving to be so painful for me lol.
Christmas morning
Eating lunch
We're in Italy so, what else is for lunch but pasta?!? we exchanged presents with our friends and tried to get the internet phone to work so we could all call home but we couldn't get online, even though we had multiple computer geeks in our group trying to work on it. Everyone took off to ski and board on Christmas and I stayed behind to nurse my bad wrist and aching joints. Catherine and Adam, one of the other couples, didn't go out in the morning either so I had lunch with them and Dan and Ali (after they finished their ski lesson). Later on that evening after dinner we went to the ice skating rink behind our hotel room and all rented skates. We had such a good time! It's been 5 years since Matt and I got to go ice skating and at that time we were in Korea at Christmas time! So, now we can say that we were ice skating at Christmas in Italy too 😊
On the 26th EVERYONE was sore...even the die-hard skiiers, so we all took a break and explored Arabba. We ended up buying cheap sleds and sledding down one of the bunny slopes. I honestly can't say if I've ever
really been sledding before and it was a lot of fun. I think I had more fun watching everyone else than doing it myself though...the guys were able to get going really fast on those things, especially Matt!
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Mike
non-member comment
been there done that
Great Blog. I skied Arabba 4 years in a row with HISC. Best Christmass vacations ever. Can't wait to go back some day!