Hi all -- we returned last night (after skiing we also visited Venice and Florence). I absolutely loved the Dolomites and hope to return both for skiing and hiking in the future.
We skied Tofana (twice), Faloria, and Alta Badia. The first two are very local to Cortina (there are cable cars from town up to both) while Alta Badia is about an hour away by car, crossing several passes along the way. They had fresh snow two days before we arrived but none while we were there -- with cold temperatures and snow-making, there was plenty to ski on but not really any off-piste. (Which was fine for us.)
We most enjoyed Tofana, which had plenty of blue and red intermediate runs for my daughter and some challenging (steep!) advanced runs as well. We also enjoyed Alta Badia (the scenery was gorgeous) but found it harder to navigate -- we ended up on some seemingly-endless traverses and could not always figure out how to get where we wanted to be. I think skiing at Alta Badia with someone who knows the area would have been helpful. (The drive to and from Alta Badia was a little hair-raising, too -- next time I am going to figure out how to get a rental car with snow tires -- the rentals in Venice only included chains.) We skied the week before Christmas and none of the resorts felt crowded, although the Friday before Christmas started to feel busier.
Overall it was a terrific experience -- the scenery, the food (a big, big improvement from hamburgers and fries at a WV ski area cafeteria!), the sunshine, the hot chocolate with cream, the Aperol spritz at lunch -- I would go again in a heart beat. I would love to do a "ski safari" and stay in some of the refugios on the mountains, but we were also super-comfortable in our AirBnB in an outlying part of Cortina. Cortina itself is pretty small but has good restaurants, plenty of ski gear for sale and rent, and lots of aspirational shopping (way out of our price range). I did love the Cortina Co-Op, though -- a department store that includes a grocery store and wine store on the ground floor, designer clothing on the next few levels, and outdoor gear on the top floor.
I hope everyone else had as much fun on their ski holidays as we did!
