Skiing at the Ski Resorts of Lake Tahoe

Hello dear ones,

We are back from Pittsburgh now. From last Tuesday until this Wednesday, we were in Sunnyvale again. During the weekdays, Julian was at work as usual. I did a lot of sports, kept our travel diary, and tried to catch up on our photo book.

After picking up our ski equipment at Sports Basement on Thursday, we set off for Lake Tahoe on Friday around 1 PM. With great anticipation, but not too many expectations of the ski resorts, we began our journey. In Heavenly, a small town by Lake Tahoe, we met Timothy (a colleague of Julian) at the hotel. We would be skiing with him for the next two days.

Saturday morning, we were ready to go. Our first ski area was the 'Heavenly Ski Resort', which was right next to our hotel. So we could walk to the gondola. Having already purchased our lift tickets in advance and having them on our phones, we got started right away (you just keep your Bluetooth on, and the lift ticket gets scanned in your jacket). With perfect weather, we hit the slopes. Heavenly is a somewhat smaller ski resort but is known for its fantastic view of Lake Tahoe while skiing. We can absolutely confirm that! For lunch, we went to a 'lodge' in the ski area. As expected, there was unfortunately no Kaiserschmarrn, Knödeltris, or apple strudel as is typical when skiing. We had to make do with simple sandwiches. This was because the ski resort had only been open for the second week and not many guests were around. Normally there’s BBQ here, so a variety of burgers for lunch, which is very American. In the afternoon, we continued to explore the ski area.

On Sunday morning, we drove another hour along Lake Tahoe to our next ski area, the 'Palisades Tahoe Ski Resort'. Right at 9:00 AM when the lifts opened, we started the day. Palisades Tahoe is one of the larger ski resorts at Lake Tahoe. It is a truly great ski area. Beautiful runs of all difficulty levels, so you'll never get bored. You could also catch a glimpse of Lake Tahoe from some mountain tops. For lunch, Julian had typical American mac & cheese with pulled pork, while I had something quite extraordinary that we hadn't found on any menu before: baked potato with sour cream, cheese & green onions. In Germany, this is quite normal, but here it is considered something special and labeled 'healthy'. After eating, we of course continued skiing to enjoy the sun.

After that, we got back in the car and drove four hours back to Sunnyvale. On Wednesday, we flew back to Pittsburgh and are now fully enjoying the Christmas atmosphere in the city.