The second time was a charm

Greetings from Paris!

I am getting ready for my last day in town (sob) and I realized I have not yet shared with you what we did last weekend. Many argue that one of the advantages of living in Milan is its proximity to the Alps. Not being a skiing aficionado myself, and having always gone skiing five hours away to Trentino Alto Adige, I have to say that this meant little to me, until this year. My mother-of-three best friend has rented an apartment in Chiesa Valmalenco, two hours away from Milan, for the whole season. We had organized our first skiing outing with her and her family about a month a half ago, and that a been a disaster. We arrived on Friday evening and by Saturday my son had 39 degrees of fever, so that we had to hurriedly make our way back to the city after a couple of hours of skiing.

We made our second attempt last weekend, and boy was that a success! The weather was wonderful and warm. Nobody got sick. We skied (even me, after more than ten years) the whole time. And I rediscovered the foundations of the Italian skiing experience.

You guessed right: fashion and food. In Canada, kids skiing instructors are 15-years olds in bunny costumes made of low-quality blue or pink fleece. In Italy, they are 40+ experienced instructors outfitted in the stylish uniforms provided by the Italian Skiing Federation. Always in Canada, food options are limited to one place, offering overpriced hamburgers and hot dogs, so that it is custom for most families to bring their lunch and eat in the well-organized picnic areas. In Italy, the main decision you gotta make around noon is what restaurant (or "rifugio", as it is called a restaurant in the mountains) to go and have lunch. None of the available options would even contemplate offering hamburgers, at most fries for the kids. No picnic is ALLOWED in any of these places. In our case, we could choose among three closeby restaurants (there were more if we would have been willing to skii a bit further): one self-service style (the worst one, according to my friend), one offering mainly five-stars selections of cold cuts, cheeses and jams, and one "agriturismo" offering local dishes made with natural ingredients from its own farm. We went for the latter and my mouth is still watering thinking about the pizzocheri and polenta taragna we ate. Too bad the season is over....

Gotta go now, au revoir!