Yes, You Can Take Two Kids Skiing Across Italy

How our family of four navigated Milan, the Dolomites, and Venice in one February week — and proof you can too.

All smiles as 18" of fresh snow falls on the slopes

Sixteen hours after we left Boston, a border agent at Milan’s airport waved our family out of the fast lane. Children under fourteen can’t use express immigration in Italy (true as of February 2024), and we found out at the worst possible moment: two jet-lagged girls, 9 and 7, slumped against the rope, forty-five minutes of switchback queue ahead of us.

That’s when the thought hit, the one every parent has at the start of a big trip. What did we just sign ourselves up for?

A week later I had the answer. We’d skied fresh powder above the clouds in the Dolomites, eaten gelato on Milan street corners, and floated across an empty St. Mark’s Square before dawn. None of it took fluent Italian, a small fortune, or kids who travel like seasoned diplomats. It took a little planning, an International Driver’s Permit, and a willingness to let the slow parts stay slow.

If you’ve ever assumed a European ski trip is too complicated to attempt with young kids, this post is me talking you out of it. Here’s exactly how we did it.

The plan: one triangle, a few hours of driving

We’re a Boston family who skis, and we wanted a winter trip that was more than lift tickets and lodge lunches. The shape we landed on was a triangle, each leg a short hop from the last:

• Milan for art, food, and city energy.
• **Kronplatz, in the Dolomites,** for the skiing.
• Venice for one last hit of Italy before the flight home.

Three very different places in one week. Here’s how each leg went, friction and all.

Milan

Wes Anderson vibes at the Fondazione Prada café

Once we cleared that passport line, Milan got easy fast. The €33 family ticket from Malpensa Airport dropped us in the city center in under an hour: clean, quick, and ideal for a red-eye recovery nap. After that, taxis, the metro, and a lot of walking covered everything.

What we’d go back for:

• **The Duomo rooftop.** Book ahead. Standing among the spires with the city below is worth the ticket.
• **Fondazione Prada,** where even the café earns the detour — it’s done up in full Wes Anderson, and it looks it.
• The Navigli canals at golden hour, lined with outdoor cafés and Aperol Spritz happy hours.
• Gelato on nearly every corner. Our favorite was Ciacco — Gelato senz’altro.

Milan has a gritty edge, especially around the train stations and a few of the playgrounds, but that grit is part of its pulse. The trip clicked for me on our last night there. My wife, Nicole, and I lingered over small plates and wine at Osteria Alla Concorrenza (a tip from our friends at Popina in Brooklyn) while the girls pulled out their travel journals and started sketching. Nobody was bored. Nobody wanted to leave. That was the first sign this might actually work.

One hard part, and a warning for the next leg: picking up the rental car. The Locauto/Alamo counter is buried deep in the parking garage at Milano Centrale, the selection is thin, and you’ll need an International Driver’s Permit (IDP) to drive in the Dolomites. Sort the IDP before you leave home. You can’t get one over there.

Dolomites

Nighttime at the Hotel Mirabelle

The drive from Milan took about four and a half hours, and the Italian highway rest stops turned out to be a highlight of their own: fresh sandwiches, real espresso bars, spotless restrooms, mountain views out every window. American rest stops, take notes.

We based ourselves at Hotel Mirabelle near Valdaora, at the foot of Kronplatz, for its family setup, half-board dining, and easy reach of the beginner slopes and kids’ areas. The valley had almost no snow when we arrived, and I’ll admit I worried we’d timed it wrong. Then we rode the gondola up.

Above 1,000 meters the mountain had everything: sun, packed runs, and mid-week, an 18-inch storm that turned the whole place to powder.

Striking a pose outside the Olang high speed gondola

Why the Mirabelle worked for us:

• Afternoon welcome drinks and homemade cakes when we came off the mountain.
• A warm indoor-outdoor pool looking straight at the snow-covered peaks.
• A family sauna, plus an adults-only spa for the quiet moments.
• A multi-course dinner every night at 7 p.m., with kids’ menus and South Tyrolean wine.

Dinner ran long — a little too long for our American pace, crayons and all. (One quirk to budget for: water and seltzer cost extra at meals.) But that slowness turned out to be the lesson of the trip, and I’ll come back to it.

The skiing was the easiest part. Lift tickets ran about €45 a day, kids under 7 skied free, and the rental-and-locker setup at the base station was painless. Leave your gear with the shop overnight so you’re not hauling boots to the hotel and back. We never once waited in a lift line, and ski schools ran all day across several beginner zones. For lunch, book a table at the mountaintop pizzeria — the pizza is genuinely good and the view does the rest.

By 4 p.m. the shuttle rolled back to the hotel and the mountain went quiet. Ski, sauna, dinner, sleep. That rhythm became the best ski day I’ve had with my kids.

Venice

View from the drive to Venice from Kronplatz

We drove south through passes where the snowbanks stood taller than the car. Three hours of icy peaks giving way to green valleys, and to my relief, no need to learn how to fit the tire chains.

Then came the part that tested every nerve I had: parking outside Venice. The garages are tiny, so call ahead to confirm where you’re returning the rental. From there it’s a short train ride in, then an overpriced but unforgettable water taxi to the hotel.

Venice was the city we’d pictured:

• Narrow streets with bridges and stairs and not a single car.
• €1 espresso at the bar, taken standing up while the city goes by.
• Centuries-old buildings with high-end shops tucked inside.

A glimpse at a quiet, hidden Venice canal

Our family favorites:

• **The Peggy Guggenheim Collection** — small, walkable, the right size for kids’ attention spans.
• The Leonardo da Vinci Museum, hands-on and a bigger hit with the girls than I expected.
• A spontaneous vaporetto to Burano, the island of candy-colored houses.

The ride back from Burano on a jam-packed local boat frayed everyone again. But the next morning erased it. Our pre-dawn water taxi to the airport carried us through a St. Mark’s Square that was completely empty, lit blue before sunrise. It felt like the closing shot of a film, and it was the ending the trip deserved.

St Mark’s Square at 4am has few crowds

What I’d tell another family before they go

The trip worked because each leg did something different — city, mountain, classic Italy — and none was more than a few hours from the next.

• The best surprise was how warmly Europe treats families, even in upscale rooms where I braced for side-eye and got high chairs and crayons instead.
• The hardest lesson was the one those long Mirabelle dinners kept teaching: build in downtime. Europe rewards slow wandering, not a packed itinerary. Stop trying to optimize the day.
• What I’d change: run the triangle in reverse. Fly into Venice, ski in the middle, end in Milan for the shopping and city food before the flight home.

Remember the parent in that passport line, sure he’d over-reached? He was wrong. Between the trains, the half-board hotels, and skiing that holds its own against anything in the U.S. at a fraction of the price, a family ski trip across Italy is far more doable than it looks. The hard parts are real. They’re also small, and every one of them has a workaround.

Italy was the first of three. The next winter we went back for more, this time with the girls at 10 and 8: Munich, the Stubai Glacier, and Innsbruck, to find out whether one trip could be a beer-hall city break and a glacier ski week at the same time.