Merano, Italy for Skiing (kind of)....

After a great New Years celebration we decided to take a trip to Merano (NE corner of Italy) to partake in skiing, hiking, and sight seeing.  The first day we decided to walk around the town while we are adjusting to jet lag.  Merano has a picturesque promenade called "Tappaneir" and we captured some really pretty sites along the way.  Merano sits in a valley and is surrounded by mountain views.

Main shopping and strolling area

On the promenade

Christmas Market

This is a goulash soup, a common dish for the area

Day 2 was meant for hitting the slopes.  What I didn't know was that this was the largest skiing weekend in Italy and they did not have any ski equipment left to rent! what?!!  Oh well, lessons learned during the expat life! We could not bring our ski equipment in our air shipment (too large for the size requirements) so we have to rent it.  But they did offer an alternative and I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but we went sledding down the side of the mountain and it was a little fun (dorky, but fun).... :-)

We finished off the evening with a trip to the Terme di Merano, which are pools with mineral-rich water and then a nice meal.

Arona for New Years Eve

We had a wonderful break in the States for Christmas and some wonderful R&R with our families. We arrived just in time to celebrate New Years Eve in Arona and we did so by attending a 4 hour dinner at the Hostaria Vecchio Portico! We had 8 courses over a 4 hour period and the food was just amazing, have a look.....

Vino!

 

After dinner we walked across the walkway to the lake to view the fireworks then we walked around to lake to burn off that meal!

These are decorations that line the walkway around the lake

 We found that several Italians were lighting these paper balloons after midnight...

Mergozzo and Sentiere Azzuro

Last week was filled with beautiful fall days and Sasha and I headed out for a hike.  As is typical fashion in Italy even if you have a GPS you get lost no matter what.  It has become a running joke that you have to leave 2 hours early before your normal leave time and hope you make it! LOL Anyhow I attempted to go Gran Paradiso park for some hiking and long story short I got terribly lost and ended up on these tiny mountain roads so I turned around, because I drank way too much water that morning and needed to find a bathroom.  Well, I ended up at a town called Mergozzo and what a surprise treat! Sasha and I ended up hiking the Sentiere Azzuro and along the way they had tourist signs that showed pictures of this area, which used to be a granite quarry.  Each sign showed pictures of the early quarry workers and said that the most famous items that were built from the quarry included the 320 columns for the Basilica of St. Paul's outside of Rome!