Cortina d'Ampezzo

After leaving Col Riser parking lot—i.e. Fermeda rifugio and Seceda—we stopped at picturesque St. John's church, enjoyed some live entertainment at a festival near the church, and then drove to our AirB&B in beautiful Cortina d'Ampezzo, or Cortina for short.

Cortina, along with Milan, are hosting the Winter Olympics in February 2006. Here is the official count down clock counting down the days until the start of the Olympics!

And here is the official Olympic Logo! Come Feb 2026, there will be many athletes and famous people taking their pictures in front of this sign!

We were lucky enough to get our whole group's picture in front of the iconic sign!

Here is another official sign. The downside of visiting Cortina during this time was the constant noise, construction, road blocks and barricades!

Because of all the confusion in town, it was much easier just to walk everywhere—grocery and other shopping, restaurants, and just perusing the town in general, and looking at the beautiful views of the Dolomites completely surrounding this hidden gem!

Multi-colored buildings

Window boxes with colorful flowers flowing from them!

Architecture similar to what we saw in Switzerland.

And of course, amazing views of the Dolomites at every turn!

Cortina was a central and convenient home-base for our many day and overnight adventures. Roger sure knew what he was doing when he planned this trip!

And as you already know, a church stood in the center of town!

St. John's of Cortina was beautiful both inside and out!

Amazing pipe-organ!

The church was built in 1773!

Brad, Blake, and Josie deciding where to eat.

We chose a restaurant close to the church. I don't remember the name, but the food was good and hot, and the dessert super fun…

Chocolate balls filled with ice cream.

And then hot raspberry sauce was poured over the top.

Then add to that a hazelnut crunch on the side—it was quite the dessert, and tasted better than it looks!

After dinner we walked backed to our AirB&B, which was very close to everything. We couldn't finish off the night without some intense games of cards (compliments of Roger & Leanne).

Other areas of interest in our B&B was the very large kitchen and laundry room with drying racks,

Our comfortable bedrooms, this was Brad and my bedroom, I slept in the little cubby area!

Our bathroom was connected to our bedroom and it was small but sufficient. It had a bidet (we didn't quite know what to do with that) but we made good use of the warming rack which is where we dried most of our clothes!

Huge windows brought in a lot of warmth and light into the dining, sitting and living areas!

Our last evening in Cortina we took pictures of the sunset…

Back of Cinque Torri

The morning of our departure from Cortina, we were all feeling a little melancholy as we thought about leaving this beautiful place, and going our seperate ways. Roger and Leanne planned on visiting Venice and its surrounding islands, Blake and Josie would stay in Venice for a night or two, and Brad and I would spend a couple of days in Verona—since we had already stayed in Venice and visited the islands on a previous trip.