Cortina d'Ampezzo

Cortina d'Ampezzo is a small town located on the southern end of the Dolomitic Alps in Northern Italy, about 45km from Austria.  The town of Cortina d'Ampezzo sits in a valley that is surrounded by mountains and ski lifts, this town was also home to the 1956 Winter Olympics.   Bus service is not great, so you more or less need to drive here.

 The weekend and day I arrived in Cortina was the most snow that they had in 13 years.  And who would have thought, to much snow actually shuts down most of the ski lifts.

 But because of the crazy snow most people who know what's going on did not come up to Cortina this weekend and the few lifts that were open were mostly empty with untouched powder style snow. I will put up a post about snowboarding soon.

 The little town is wonderful, lots of German influence.  Sometimes its hard to tell if you are in Northern Italy or Southern Germany.

 Saturday night was kind of quiet but most restaurants were open.

 People were shocked at the amount of snow.  I think they were plowing all roads and sidewalks continuously throughout the day.  And the plows were super-indstural size.

 Boun Giorno... Good day!

 In the distance you can see the Cortina clock tower.  Most of the weekend was low clouds, I saw the mountains around the city only a couple of times.  It was difficult to see the mountains even when snowboarding.

 We drove a Fiat Panda 4X4.  To our surprise this is one of the best 4X4 vehicles.  It was able to out-drive a Toyota Land Cruiser up a slippery snow covered mountain.  We were able to park the car almost in the lobby, car on the left.  But maybe it was not so safe to park under that snow that built up on the roof.

 Got to shovel snow off the roof.

 Looking north towards Cortina Centre.