Cervinia

A couple of weekends ago my host dad, his brother, and my host brother Ettore took me to Cervinia to go skiing! The Alps are so beautiful and almost magical, there's a reason people always write about them! We stayed at the hotel Mignon in Cervinia-Breuil, a small town on the border of Italy and Switzerland. They speak French there as well as Italian, so I was also able to practise my French. Since we arrived so late on Friday night we couldn't do any skiing than but the next morning we woke up at 7 to go skiing at 8! We put on all our gear, thankfully my host sister Lally's gear fit me, and walked to the first gondola. On our way up I started to feel dizzy and nauseous I was definitely not use to the altitude. The first gondola took us to 2500 meters where the snow just started than we went even higher on a second gondola which went to 3500 meters. I was still pretty dizzy so we stopped for a little bit so I could breathe in the mountain air and take in the amazing view. After a few minutes I started to feel better so we did one run down to the Zermatt, which is in Switzerland! The run was so long at least 3 times the length of one run at blue mountain. On the way down I also got to see the Matterhorn, the very famous, pyramid shaped mountain!

The Matterhorn

We stopped at the chalet in Zermatt and than continued back up on this toe line called the anchor. It's a piece of metal in the shape of an anchor and you stick one side under your but and it pulls you up the mountain. It was hard work because you couldn't really sit on it but you weren't standing either so it was a good work out for your legs. Plus it was really long, it took 15-20 minutes to go down the run but it took 30 minutes to back up it. According to my host dad, at one point all the ski lifts were anchor lines because it was too expensive to build chairlifts. 
After that we did a few more runs that took a really long time to go down because they were so long that everyone stops at different points to catch their breathes! One run took us an hour to go down! When we stopped for lunch I was EXHAUSTED! I have never skied like that in my life. My feet hurt really bad too because I was not use to ski boot and even more so because last year I snowboarded so I was even less use to the ski boots than I would have been if I had skied last year! 

 


















Once we decided to call it a day, it took us over an hour and a half to ski down to the lowest possible point. We also stopped a few times because we were all very tired. I wanted to have my picture taken in front of the Matterhorn too, so we stopped to do that as well.     

Myself in front of the Matterhorn.

That night for diner we went to a very nice french restaurant. Ettore and I shared fondue which was really good. We dipped bread and potatoes into it! For desert I had a cannoli, and it was delicious! When I went back to the hotel I could barely make it up the stairs but thankfully I ran into some Australian guys who gave me a hand! That night I was so tired that I went straight to bed. 

The next morning we did the same thing again only this time Roberto let me ski by myself at a lower altitude while I got use to the different air pressure. Than we met up a couple hours later and went higher where we skied until lunch. After lunch I skied by myself again only this time in Zermatt and it was incredible. It truly is a whole other world up there!We really lucked out on the weekend, it was clear skies and warm weather for the entire weekend! According to Franco, Roberto's brother, It is usually cloudy and windy, but for us there was absolutely nothing, a gorgeous weekend. After skiing in the Alps, Blue Mountain just doesn't have the same appeal.