After our first combined city-snow trip in 2018 (Grenoble – Chamrousse – Lyon), I fell in love with these kind of trips, and they became my favorite type of trips. They are not the easiest, though. Usually we travel only by back pack, but having equipment requires checked in luggage, so we are 3% less flexible than usual.

Since it was a family trip we were looking for airport options that were easily accessible and with similar schedule from Berlin and Skopje. The options were Milano or Venice and we decided for the later one, because of the traveling time between Venice and Cortina.

The one thing that we decided to save on was our night in Venice. Our accommodation was in Cannaregio, but what I didn’t know when I was booking was, that we booked a room in a student dorm. One night is totally OK. We have done this before in India, but it was not arranged by us. What I really liked about it was that it was directly on the water, and in not so crowded area of the city. (Not that Venice is crowded in January).
We arrived late so our food was pizza to go and supermarket sweets. Choco-glazed oranges to be exact.

The next morning we had around 6 hours for almost everything that we wanted, croissants, pizza, bookstore, cappuccino and strolling. It was perfect day, with the exact amount of sunshine that we needed. I have seen the main attractions some years ago, and I was more interested in exploring food spots, but being limited in time, and visiting in winter was not really helping. As I always say, another reason to return.

In Cortina d’Ampezzo we had the most beautiful accommodation, for a winter holiday. Even though shared house our apartment was so cozy, and we had rooms with mountain view.
The schedule for the time being was breakfast at home, lunch on the slopes, and dinner out.
Perfect balance. My highlight meal was pasta with mushrooms and raddicio, but not that something else was less good. I mean it is Italy.

The price for 3 days ski pass was around 45euros, I got the courage to excel the red slopes, and my favorite part of the day was the last ride of the day. Ski to door. This has always been my number one snow ride. There was an opportunity to combine the pass to extended Cortina area, but it was not something we were interested in.

The town had more restaurants bars and shops open, then Venice, fully crowded, but it was always possible to find a spot. I haven’t been to too many ski resorts, in order to say whether the slopes are good or not, I can say I liked them, and having in mind that most of the times it is in the top rated ski centers, who am I to judge.

Because of lack of days of and too many thing planned in the beginning of 2020, I returned back to Berlin, being jealous to everyone that got to enjoy another 3 days in Venice.

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