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April 1999

Lombardia - Livigno

David Aaronson
2005-09-23 23:24:14

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Livigno is primarily an Italian ski resort in the far north of Italy, not far from Bormio. The mountains on the west side of the valley are shared by St. Moritz in Switzerland, and in fact it is possible to ski there from Livigno. The town itself is an odd collection of Alpine bed and breakfast type hotels which almost invariably contain a restaurant and a bar. It doesn't look like much of a town in this picture but when you consider that each of those buildings contains a restaurant and a dozen hotel rooms (and in some cases a nightclub in the basement) it becomes more appealing. When we came out of the tunnel from Switzerland into Italy, it was already snowing heavily. We checked into our hotel (The Zodiac - very highly recommended) and went in search of dinner. Each of the hotels has a menu posted out front so we picked one and went inside to have our first Grappa experience. Grappa is similar to brandy, made from grapes usually but it can be any fruit. The mashed remains of the skins are fermented to form Grappa. We sampled a traditional grape as well as blueberry before dinner. Grappa tends to be pretty strong by nature and it is definately warming. Dinner was fantastic involving venison, polenta, and a northern Italian speciality: pizzocheri. Pizzocheri is a type of rye pasta vaguely similar in shape to tortellini. It seems to be very regional but quite popular in the Valtellina area. (Valtellina is the valley Livigno is located in). After dinner we returned to our hotel to sip cognac and play cards in the bar.

It continued to snow during dinner, the time in the bar and the apparently the whole night through. The next morning we rented skiing equipment (always fun in a foreign language) and headed up to the top of the mountain. As it turns out, only a few of the lower lifts were running because it was still windy and snowing heavily. We were disappointed by this at first, but in the end it was more than sufficient. Visibility was extremely ...

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