Marta's Monterosa Blog

I am passionate about the Alps. They are my heart's home and the place where I would like to spend the last day of my life. I have been a tourist in the village of Champoluc in the Italian Monterosa for all my life and worked as a tourist operator in this area since more than 15 years.

I believe in respect for the special environment of this place that you can find only here. We all gain by enjoying its beauty, while trying to make a minimum impact at the same time. Leave it for our children in the future!

I believe in respect for people who live here with their traditions and culture, language, and work, their genuine products and delicious wines. They open their homes for us, tourists and meet us as their guests, if we are able to open our hearts for them. I have a friend who is a hotel owner and he says that when stressed people from the city come to his place, he tells them to sit down and take a drink before they even begin to worry if they have a room. Perhaps, we can bring a little of their kindness and calmness with us on our way back to the city.

My philosophy is to give back a little of what the mountains and the people from this place have given to me and to my family through my work, to communicate my philosophy and my passion to those who follow me on the blog, and in my trips as a tour operator.

If you would like to visit Champoluc, Gressoney, Alagna or other villages in the Aosta Valley, trek or ski in the Monterosa, discover Sardinia or other places we offer, contact us.

Posted: Nov 8, 2010

”For each small language that disappears, the world becomes a less free place”

says Maura Susanna, to introduce herself.

We sit in the dining room at La Torretta hotel, and sip a drink after a long day spent hiking in the special landscape of the mountains in fall. A little tired but also very relaxed; walking in the fog and woods, through the ancient villages of the Monterosa, is for me as good as honey. Today it is my birthday.

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Posted: Oct 30, 2010

Slow Holiday or holiday frustration

Paola and Nica are the spiritual and also very physical power behind hotel La Torretta in the Aosta Valley, and a lot more. They have restored Paola’s family possession into a beautiful house for resting your mind and your body, and they have funded a local organisation of hotel owners in the Aosta Valley, where the focus is on ”Slow”. Or as they declare in their programme: ” the most important thing is to stop in order to know places, spaces, silences, perfume, colours…” http://www.slowholiday.it/index.php/filosofia-eng.html

Except for the name of the club, ”Slow Holiday”, the ladies are really sparkling, and filled of energy and fresh enthusiasm. Probably a consequence of the application of this philosophy.

This is again coherent with some of the ideas behind the ”genuine tourism” that I am working for today. Thus La Torretta http://www.latorrettahotel.com/ is the hotel where I invite my guests during this October tour.

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Posted: Oct 22, 2010

Beginning of October in the Alps: Another tourism, a genuine one!

I was a little bit nervous because I had a group of guests from Sweden for three days, and I was going to proof that autumn in the Alps is a perfect time for tourism. But, would they really enjoy my beloved valleys and mountains as I hoped?

Well, if nothing else, at least the spectacle of the mountains with the colours of fall and the crazy blue sky, would be enough to highten their spirits, unless…

Unless…

the weather is thick with fog, and we do not even see a hint of the 4000m peaks that only I know are around us, behind the white courtains!

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Posted: Mar 9, 2010

Magic


My knee is injured.
I cannot sit still.
I go by snow shoes.
If you have to start moving but cannot press your knee too much after an injury, as it would be if you will go skiing, the snow shoes are a very good solution. Not that it is not tiring but you move in a way that is pretty smooth for the knee, especially when the broken thing is a cross ligament..

Posted: Feb 15, 2010

Unusual lunch



Sometimes it happens strange things: I go to visit a very special and cosy hotel lying in a tiny village from 16th century, at 2000m high above Champoluc, the village of Crest. The hotel is called Vieux Crestand is lodged in the family house of the owner, since generations.

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