Luxury Travel Insider  INTRO:

We’re all searching to get more out of life, to experience our world in unexpected ways. Welcome to Luxury Travel Insider, where we bring the magic of iconic destinations to life. Our guests are the visionaries behind the experiences that have inspired travelers for generations. Let’s make your life the journey and the destination right here with the Luxury Travel Insider herself, Sarah Groen.
Sarah: Hey hey, Insiders! Welcome to a wintery episode of Luxury Travel Insider. Today, we’re going skiing, not just in Colorado, or Utah or California, but all over the world, from Chile to Japan to Italy and France. Our guests today are brother and sister team Rick Reichsfeld and Richelle Blanken. The duo grew up skiing competitively, both raced in college, and then Richelle even raced professionally. When Richelle left the national team, brother and sister teamed up to find a way to make a living by helping others experience the joy of skiing around the world. We discuss everything from their best tips for families to their favorite destinations, ski runs, and the craziest après ski parties. If you are a ski lover, this is an episode you do not want to miss.

Short Excerpts from the podcast

Richelle: “…knowing it’s lunch-time, and you’re in Italy, so you know you’re going to eat well, and just skiing down one of their great tree runs to a place we call Giacomo’s. That’s actually the name of the owner, it’s actually called Maison Vieille, but we call it Giacomo’s… you’re gonna get a hug usually from the owner Giacomo… and you end up staying there all afternoon…”

Rick: “…every day it snows except for two sunny days a year… the storms come across Siberia, hit the mountains of Japan, and just sit. It’s really super dry powder… when you ski through the trees if you’re gonna ski under a lift, you have to make sure you duck because you’re gonna hit somebody’s skis that’s on the lift. It’s truly about the snow…”

Richelle: “… when we go there it’s like going home. The same shop owners and restaurant owners are there and remember our clients and people leave there with making new friends that they keep in touch with… “

Rick: “… three thousand people show up at 2:30 in the afternoon, they have a band on the roof of the lodge playing, and people shooting champagne off, it’s dancing until like 6 o’clock in the evening then the ski patrol makes everybody leave… people falling down, trying to ski to the bottom, it’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen…”

Rick: “Richelle had a booking from a celebrity a few years back and they had teenage kids and they wanted a half-pipe built in the house’s backyard… we pulled it off, and they loved it so much they ended up extending their stay sixty days… Those are some of the things that we can pull off, you know “oh we want an ice sculpture tomorrow”, or… one time we had to fly in somebody to give a mani-pedi from California, we had to fly them in because they wanted the next day, you can’t get that in Utah on short notice… Lots of fun things and special requests… we can pull it off.”