Only a week or so after returning from Australia, I left my Island home again to embark on another trip. This time to somewhere cold, close, and not solo! It had been a few years since I’d been skiing, the last time was Japan 2013. So I was keen to get somewhere close and on the cheap side, this time! I went with my GF Fran, who has been to Italy a few times but not to ski. We decided on Sauze d’Oulx, Italy. (This was in late Feb).
Sauze d’Oulx is situated in Northern Italy, about 2 hours train from Turin. It is quite inexpensive to get there from London. But since we were leaving from Jersey we always need to first get to London which can add another £60 to air fare! But anyway, we arrived in Sauze after 2 flights, bus from the airport, train to Oulx then bus up to the town. We stayed in the cheapest place on Hotels.com for a week at about £40 each per night, definitely on the upper end of my price range but low for a place 100m from the lift in the Alps! It was a massive hotel as it turned out, and I thought looked a lot like the later stage Grand Budapest Hotel from the film on the inside, lots of character.
We went out to explore the town a bit, very nice narrow winding streets, buzzing with life in the evening. We found a little pasta restaurant for dinner, it was amazing to have Italian pasta for the first time. I don’t think we had a bad meal the whole time we were there!
The next day we got out rental equipment from a shop near by and hit the slopes. Fran took a couple of days lessons, myself on the other hand having been on two ski trips before, decided to jump right in! I was a bit cautious to begin with, took a couple of easy runs, then I got the feel for it again. I did a few red runs after that. The snow was variable, it was late in the season and hadn’t snowed for about a week so the high traffic areas were solid ice! That made it a challenge at times! But there were still areas of good snow to be found, and the snow machines were running too.
We skied together for 3 more days, getting more and more adventurous until we decided to go for a black run! It was one that ran under one of the lifts, so we got a look at it every time we went up, we saw little kids zooming down it so we were like lets give it a go. It was super steep as expected! But way nicer and less scary than a lot of the red runs because less people had been through there, leaving good snow. We were feeling very pumped after that, but we had to call it a day on the high mountain because the wind had picked up and the lifts were shutting. So we relaxed in a cafe with coffee and cake, again we did not go hungry on this trip!
On our final day we thought we’d explore out into some of the connecting ski areas, Sestirere and Sansicario. We tried to get all the way across to the french aria Montgenevre but we didn’t have enough time before the lifts back to Sauze closed! But what we did see from doing this was that we had the best skiing where we were all along.
We were sad to have to leave and go home after a week, we’d both been amazed by this little vibrant town. For me it was nice to take a more luxurious trip, compared to my usual hostel/ van stays!
While we were there we heard that SARS-Cov-2 was getting a foot hold in the North of Italy, but largely near Milan. Just after we left though it had put the whole country into lock down! The busy town we’d left had become a ghost town as the ski resorts closed… Such a tragedy! I hope that eventually Sauze will return to life and welcome travellers once again.
If you’ve read this far, I applaud you and thank you! You might as well read a few more of my adventures, and follow along while you’re at it!
Fun Once Its Done 
Great post 😁
LikeLike