Sellaronda ‘Green’ at speed…

With only two days of skiing left, we decided that today was the day we’d do the Sellaronda ‘Green’, the anticlockwise direction of the Sellaronda. We were well rested after having a day off, and so most of us (me, Sean) were raring to go. Cameron was a little more sanguine due to her ongoing sore ankle blister and general fatigue. Nevertheless, we breakfasted early and were out on the slopes just after 9am.

It was so clear I could still see the moon at 7:45am

Another fabulous day

It was another fabulous day, sadly no snow so while the piste has a healthy base and is well prepared, off piste is looking decidedly brown. At least it was a bit cooler, so we weren’t cooking for once. Sean also has his GoPro out for the first time. The Sellaronda Green is a lot easier than the Orange direction - we had arrived in Corvara by 9:30am and on we went through Colfosco and Passo Gardena, arriving at the halfway mark, the familiar slopes of Selva, just on 11am. The skiing was lovely in the sun and the piste was yet to cut up so we revelled in carving down the wide smooth runs. It was fairly busy but not so bad that we felt we were weaving through a crowd, however there were a few lift queue crushes we had to make our way through (is it so hard to be organised?!). We didn’t stop for morning tea, but we picked up some necessary helmet stickers from the little shop at the bottom of the Ciampioni lift - staffed by a very sour-looking lady and gentleman, the only two grumpy people we have seen all trip. Booooo!

More fancy lifts

The “GoPro bow”

We kept on powering through to Plan de Gralba, on to Passo Sella and Plan Frataces, towards Canazei. It was getting on to midday and we only had two lifts to go to get back to Arabba - the Sellaronda is meant to take 6 hours, and we were almost home in less than 3 hours! All that skiing had made us hungry and since we had time, we decided to stop for lunch. We decided on the Rifugio Kristiania - a lot less fancy than most of the places we have been, but still delicious. Cameron had a wienerschnitzel, Sean had lasagne and I had a Bauern toasted sandwich ie. ham and cheese toastie on the local Schuttelbrot, which is the South Tyrolean crunchy flat bread spiced with fennel baked in a large disc shape - kind of like flat sourdough. Cameron and I had to order Aperol spritzes, of course! As the waitress went to put the drinks down in front of us, she tipped the entirety of one of the Aperols all over Sean, showering his thermal shirt and ski pants. Eeeek! There was a rush of apologies, towels and sponges and everything was cleaned up at speed - and a new Aperol promptly arrived. Lucky for Sean he dried quickly and wasn’t sticky. Cameron did a quick FaceTime with Jacob, who got the full rundown on our dramatic lunch, and then our Sellaronda mission was back on track. Also importantly, we could see that the men’s Australian Open final was underway between Medvedev and Sinner (the local guy) and it was two sets all - but we couldn’t wait for another set before setting off again.

Rifugio Kristiania

Oh god not more photos!

Bauern toastie - I recommend it!

Leaving the (absolutely pumping!) rifugio we headed back out on the piste and up the last lift for a long cruise descending around the mountain and down through the forest at Passo Pordoi, all the way to Arabba. We had thought we could ski straight home, however the path from the run we were on to our apartment block was fenced off, and so we had to continue down to the bottom. We took the Burz lift up and then cruised down the wide steep black of the Burz run and then negotiated the very icy slide down to home. By the time we had walked through our doggie door, locked our skis and boots in the ski room and let ourselves into our apartment with our “Harry Potter” room key, it was only just past 2pm. Barely 5 hours including a lunch break - a very speedy Sellaronda tour indeed! Also we saw Sinner had won the Australian Open - maybe there will be some celebrations this evening.

The ‘Harry Potter’ key

We cleaned up and chilled out, and then decided we’d head out for ‘afternoon tea’, which turned into apres ski (what were we thinking). We went to Miky’s Grill which was nice and cosy, with only one other table occupied with four Englishmen in their mid 70’s playing some slightly morose music on their iPhone. We decided we needed to spice things up, so we all ordered Bombardino drinks - a hot egg nog style drink that my friend Vicki from Uni recommended: “You MUST try it, it’s very traditional”, she said. The drinks arrived in a small glass mug, looking like hot yellow custard topped with Dairy Whip. We took one sip - Cameron’s eyes went wide, Sean went “ooooh!”, and my head almost blew off! Wow it was strong. I looked up the ingredients: Half egg nog and half brandy, the name means “bomb” - holy crap! I probably should have done that BEFORE I ordered. Good thing we don’t have to ski home after this little effort. I promptly texted Vicki to let her know that thanks to her helpful recommendation I couldn’t feel my face, which she thought was hilarious. Having said that it did not hit us anywhere near as hard as the deadly Limoncello spritzes, plus Cameron and I had to have an apple strudel to help soak up the booze - I guess that counts as afternoon tea…

Out and about in Arabba

Don’t try this at home…

Back at the apartment, we again chilled out - Cameron doing social media catch ups, me blogging and Sean having his afternoon siesta - still with his new snow boots on, I guess they must be very comfortable or he is very tired…or both. I have not had much opportunity to take photos on-piste because it is hard to find a place to stop for long enough. This is a shame because there is some pretty wild on-piste fashion happening here - there are plenty of crazy grannies in wacky outfits, giant mullets, kids with yeti-heads, lots of metallic, stylistas in monochrome, Tommy Hilfiger eshays, USA astronaut-like suits, high-fashion brand parkas (think Gucci, Chanel, Chloe), “Eastern Europeans” in head-to-to Bogner…and the list goes on. Although our outfits are bright, they are pretty boring compared to some of the crazy getups I have seen. The winning outfit for this trip has to be the guy standing at the counter at lunch confidently in head-to-toe gold metallic. He literally looked like a shiny gold Michelin Man - you wouldn’t miss that coming down the slope!

Wear it with confidence babe

My left thigh is winning the bruise competition…

Dinner tonight was another four course effort - fondue with baked ricotta, cannelloni, cod for Cameron and I, veal for Sean and finished off with a dessert of crepes with caramel sauce and berries. Good thing we kept a lid on it at lunch. We decided on Negronis with dinner, much to the bemusement of the restaurant staff who I suspect think it is strictly a pre-dinner drink. We trundled down the hill, trying not to slip on the ice - despite a clever person sprinkling gravel on it, it’s still scary - and collapsed exhausted. Only one more day of skiing left, oh no!

Dinner