The Sellaronda and NYE

This is Sella, although I want to call her Ronda :)

For my birthday, we decided to ski the Sellaronda.  The Sellaronda is a connected ski circuit around the ski areas of the Dolomites.  You literally ski "ronda the Sella" mountain.  You have to start early because the circuit takes the entire day and it is way cool!  We chose to take the route counter clock-wise which was shorter.

New Years Eve was a beautiful day and we really enjoyed our skiing trek around the mountain.  We stopped for coffee and soaked up the amazing views when we could.

This one illustrates it well.  You sort of yo yo around the mountain, going up the lifts and then down the right hand side of the mountain.  We both liked the adventure of it all and having a goal for the day was great.  We got the hang of it after our very first run where we went clock-wise instead and had to retrace our steps to get it right the second time around.

Check this out.  Not so much for us, but look at the mountains in the back.  You see the dramatic spikes on the left and then a sheer-faced mesa on the right with the snowflake icing on top!  This area is really unique.

This photo is for Scott Reed.  He always envied the campers at A-Basin and here we see that you can actually live year round at the base of an Italian ski resort.  What's not to love about that?

After an amazing day of skiing, we headed back to our hotel for a NYE dinner.  The dinner started at around 8PM and lasted much longer than we did that night.  The Matriarch of the family does all the cooking.  We were first met with a champagne toast and a cheese course.  We were then seated among at least 100 other guests.  It seemed that anyone who was even close, made the trip to our hotel for the festivities.  

In fact, I had to drop the point of it being my birthday in order to get a table.  Lucky for us, they managed to squeeze us in.  They even printed an English menu for us.  We had our own bottle of champagne for the midnight toast plus plenty of water and wine to wash down the 10+ plates of food that they served us.



Per the menu, it appeared that we had 3 or 4 choices for the first, second and third courses, but no.  Each course included all of the options and each were delivered to our table individually.  They had to have had an army washing dishes, because that represented at least 1,000 plates.  All hands were on deck for the serving, including the strong man.

Strong man?  Yes, we had one of those also.  After our meal and midnight toast, the evening's entertainment began.  The strong man impressed us with his muscles, of course, and broke blocks with his bare hands, among other neat tricks.  He was reportedly followed by a karaoke party, which we skipped out on at 2am.  

My 46th birthday was the best ever!  

Here's to Italy!!!