Piancavallo and Cortina

Last weekend, we took a couple of drives up into the mountains. On Saturday, we drove about 40 minutes to Piancavallo, the local ski resort. No skiing for us in August but it was a nice drive up the mountain and walk through the town. It looks like there were plenty of slopes for the novice skier like me! Our friends, Kevin and Hanna, were with us as well and they were much more interested in the advanced skiing:)



At Piancavallo. No snow this time of year (thankfully)



Kwame's favorite part was the playground

On the way back from Piancavallo, we stopped to watch the paragliders. It was really cool watching them just run off the side of the mountain and fly through the air. We could see the base from our lookout point as well.



On Sunday, we drove to Cortina d'Ampezzo, located in the Dolomites which is part of the Alps. It is beautiful there; I want to go back for a long weekend. Apparently, Cortina is the Vail of Italy so there were lots of fancy people walking in and out of the fancy stores. We took the cable car to the top of one of the peaks. I think it was around 12,000 feet. The view was incredible. Of course, as soon as we were having a good time, some random man came up to me and said that he heard that pregnant women were not supposed to climb above 5000 ft or something like that. Since we were already up there and we didn't actually exert any effort to get there, we continued to look around! The other cool thing about Cortina is that it was the host to the 1956 Winter Olympics so we got to see the ancient ski jump and luge course. If you come to visit, plan a couple of days to visit Cortina.



Near downtown Cortina



Our ride up and down the mountain



At the top!



The ski jump