The Dolomites

Vivian and Jack's school had the last week of February off for what they call "ski week".  I guess there's no better time to ski in the Alps than ski week!  We went to the Dolomites which are a specific group of mountains in the northern Italian Alps, right on the other side of the Austrian Alps.  We went with an Italian family and a German family who we have become friends with at school.

Here are some of the highlights...

Here's the big group!
Our family and two other families from St. George's School spent the week skiing together.

We stopped in Austria on the way there and stayed one night in the city of Innsbruck.  

This a building in the Olympic village.  Innsbruck was the home of the winter olympics in 1964 and 1976.

The only highway from Innsbruck to Italy was shut down the next day due to an accident, so we drove slowly through various mountain side towns to get through to an opening on the highway.  The picture above is of a church steeple in one of those towns on the mountain.  We had fun driving along the mountainside despite our delay.

The Italian Dolomites were amazing!  Some mountain peaks rise to almost 11,000 feet.  The dolomitic limestone peaks of the range are famous for their vivid coloring at sunrise and sunset. 

We stayed in a cute apartment in La Villa which was owned by a local Italian family.
It was also the home of two award winning European lamas.

Vivian had fun feeding them!

The first few days were quite snowy!  

It was fun to see winter since we haven't had any snow in Dusseldorf.  

We ate lunch in the house next to the church.

There were so many great places to stop for lunch in the mountains.  It was so nice to be with friends that explained the menu and recommended things to order.  The tyrolean food was awesome.  

We stopped at a restaurant in the mountains on one of our ski excursions and I just loved the decor!  

Mark enjoyed the beer!

We were so glad we went with friends!  I didn't feel like such a foreigner because I was with them.  I think we were the only American family on the slopes.  

I am sure we weren't, but we didn't see or hear any other Americans.

 Vivian and Jack went to ski school everyday and competed in some races on their last day.

 This is their italian instructor, Ricardo.

We truly loved this trip.  It was such a fun adventure.  We are all trying to recover from all the skiing and fresh air that we were not used to.