Ski Trip to Pila, Italy, 2023
On January 28th, we set off on our 16-hour coach journey to the magnificent landscape known as the Alps. Once we reached our first main stop, Dover, we boarded the ferry to the French port of Calais. Whilst on the ferry, me and my friends enjoyed some tasty pizza after bidding our goodbyes to England. After travelling through the night, we went to a service station in France where we had a much-needed breakfast including croissants and bread rolls. This fuelled us for the rest of our journey, as we headed onwards to Italy. When we finally arrived at our destination, Hotel Bellevue in Gignod, we were treated to a classic Italian dish of lasagne. Afterwards, we unpacked and headed to bed for skiing the following day.
The next morning, we woke up early in preparation for skiing. Once we had arrived at the ski resort, we strapped on our boots, took our skis and headed to the slopes. We took the gondola to the top station, where we were able to see the beautiful town of Aosta below, with the glorious mountains surrounding it. Once at the top, we met our instructor Julio who taught us the basics of skiing, such as snow ploughing and turning. Later that day, we were treated to the “Joy Village” where we went for bowling. As well as this, we enjoyed some fun arcade games, with the highlight being the Formula 1 racing simulator which allowed me and my friends to compete against each other.
On our second day, we had finally nailed down the basics of skiing and began to go down some of the steeper slopes. As the days went on, the skiing just got better and better as we stopped using the snow plough and started to integrate parallel turning into our skiing. On one slope, we even reached speeds of 35 mph. On one of the evenings, our teachers took us to one of the town’s restaurants, ‘Moderno’. Here we were able to taste the dish that Italy is most known for, pizza. The pizza was delicious and totally undermined the pizza back at home.
On Thursday, after skiing we had a quiz night organised by the teachers, testing our knowledge on Italy and its food as well as TV shows and movies, with the winners receiving slightly underwhelming prizes including a water bottle!
On our last day, our instructor took us all the way to the top of the resort (2700m). Here we were able to get a clear view of the fabulous Monte Bianco or, as the French call it, Mont Blanc. Then we got to feel the enjoyment of skiing all the way to the bottom, leaving us with mixed emotions of not wanting to leave after the fun we had just experienced. We were devastated when we had to go, with us feeling that the time had flown by during the week.
Overall, we think this is for sure the best trip that we have been on and would certainly consider going again as we had a great time skiing with friends.
Hamthan and Jay, Year 10
