Livigno

Nice view from the plane over

Another year, another snow holiday. To switch things up this year we went to Italy and tried snowboarding for the first time. It was also our first time not going with the UCPA so had our own place which was great, but we did miss the great French food and we could have done with the week long lessons as snowboarding proved more difficult than I expected.

Our house for the week

Flew into Milan and got a minibus transfer for about 3.5 hours to Livigno. We were brought straight to our house which was really nice:
http://www.piccolabaita.it/piccola-baita.php#dettagli
€305 each.

We were able to collect our ski gear that evening and get some food for the house so we were all set for our first snowboarding lesson first thing in the morning. I went for boots slightly large for me as the correct size ones were far too tight.

Heading to Apres-Ski

Some Damme impressive dancing at the Apres-ski by some Russians

Graeme topping up his drink

We got our lessons from a company called Madness and had a really nice instructor, Gerry. Normally their lessons would be for 2 hours each morning for a week but we crammed all the lessons into the first 3 days. This probably wasn't the wisest thing as we didn't improve much in the last 3 days.We would have been better practising everything we learned each morning, in the afternoon by ourselves. I did start to pick up the forward and backward turn at the start of the first day and didn't really learn anything else for the rest of the week which was a shame.

Louise taking a deserved break

Livigno town was a nice place but very quiet. We had a great Apres-Ski session on Monday straight after snowboarding and we all ended up dancing on the bar which was a first for me. They are very generous with their shot pouring over there so that's how I ended up on the bar that night. Getting up for lessons the next day was rough and we were quite late meeting Gerry.

Toner and Gerry

We went out for dinner every night as Livigno is tax free so the prices were real good.

I'm not sure what to do next year, stick with snowboarding or go back to skiing. I found skiing much easier to pick up but I reckon a week of snowboarding classes would put me in a good position. I much prefer the snowboard boats and carrying around a snowboard is much easier too. Snowboarding is much more painful though and I still had pains for days after I got back which I never had from skiing.

Adam and Graeme

Phil riding in Livigno

Nice Livigno sunset

Livigno sunset