Let's take a walk

I've made a few trips from my hotel in the Valle di Casies over to Cortina over the course of the last week and each time I make one of those trips, we stop in the small town of Dobbiaco. And every time we do, I feel like I want to get out and walk around because it just looks like a cool place.

So, today, that's what I did.

There was nothing on the Olympic schedule that I needed to see or at least nothing that I needed to see that I was able to get to in an hour or two. My original plan was to walk up to the ski area up the hill from my hotel and rent some skis. One of the photographers staying at my hotel said he went up there and it was very inexpensive. Despite not having gloves or ski pants, I walked up with the intention of spending a few hours skiing, but there was a pretty big race going on and the race course was taking up most of the trail and there were lots of kids and parents racing and watching, so I thought it might be a good idea to wait for a day when there was no race.

So, I walked down the other side of the valley, which I can see from my hotel but had not gone through yet and then back up to the hotel. I then got on one of the local public transportation buses and rode it about 40 minutes to Dobbiaco. I spent a while walking through town, taking some pictures and just enjoying the falling snow in a pretty cool place.

Each time the bus stops at the train station there's a number of small food carts there and I walked down to the train station and got a delicious sandwich before heading back to the bus station at the other side of town. I stopped in a small store and they had Reese's peanut butter cups, which worked out perfectly because I have been craving peanut butter.

I hopped on the bus and came back to the hotel, wrote a couple of stories on things happening back in the United States and then did an interview with Kennett graduate Mike King, who is a video coach for the US men's hockey team. My hotel cooks some delicious food, so I had dinner and then had another phone interview, this one from the United States with Kingswood graduate Sean Stackhouse, who had the chance to cover the Super Bowl as part of his job for News Center Maine (Channel 6).

So while I didn't see any Olympic action in person (watching Waterville Valley's Grace Henderson in big air qualifying as I write this, with men's hockey next up), tomorrow will bring another trip to Cortina for women's giant slalom. 


The Dobbiaco Grand Hotel features a cultural center focused around famous Italian composer Gustav Mahler, who summered there every year.

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