Bardonecchia, Day 2

On Day 2 of our Bardonecchia adventures, we actually took private ski lessons! (Lessons were a necessity, since neither of us had ever in our lives been in the physical presence of snow-skis, let alone actually put them on). Our instructor was an English-speaking Italian named Fulvio and he was very patient as we slipped, stumbled, and rolled our way down the baby hill.

Here are our ski-boots. As you can see (Steph and others will already know this), there's absolutely no room for ankle movement. It's like having your feet encased in cement, or a robotic boot. Nevertheless, we felt cool clumping around.

Here's another picture of Campo Smith, with the Baby Hill in the foreground. Can you find me inching my way down the hill?

Here's John using the Baby Hill 2 Ski Lift. For being on the 'baby' hill, it required some coordination to use, because you have to grab a rope with a plastic disk on the end as it goes by, tuck it between your legs, and let it pull you up the slope. Then as you go, you have to make sure you DON'T sit down (or else you'll fall down because it's not meant for sitting, only pulling) and also keep your skis from getting tangled up. The kid behind John is a snowboarder and they had to do everything sideways!

And here's John coming down the hill. He's hard to see at first, but worth the wait.

After we turned in our skis, we decided to go on the big lift just for kicks. Here's a short clip. If we sound overly excited, it was because the lift was very high up and we were finally getting to sit down for the first time after turning in our ski equipment.



The view behind us as we went up the lift. . .

. . .and at the top! All around us there were skiers, but there was one spot that was fairly open with, of course, an amazing view of the mountains.

Finally, here's a shot of the Olympic Village in Bardonecchia. It was impressive because it was the Olympic Village, but otherwise it was a pretty straightforward building. Although we didn't stay there, it's possible to rent a room and pretend like you're an Olympic athlete.


Drum roll for Day 3. . .