Sestriere, part 1

Where is Sestriere you ask? Fear not, I'd never heard of it either. I think Louise (Cath's bridesmaid, of Stellenbosch fame) was the only one of us who had, and she was eager to go there as apparently the slopes are good.

As it turns out, its in Italy, in Torino (that's Turin to you ignorant peasants) and as the Winter Olympics were there in 2006, we had the opportunity to test ourselves on a few Olympic runs - shah! Like that was gonna happen.

The Start

This was in the Turin airport actually, I just thought it looked cool... but back to the skiing stuff...



We caught up with Lou and Werner (the first time Cath and I had ever met werner) at a train station and bought some tickets to a place where we had to catch a bus to another place where we had to catch a bus. If that seems vague, it's because it was. We only got to Sestriere at about 5 or 6 pm. We were tired, not only had we been dragging our wheelie bags everywhere, it was so snowy that we'd been dragging about a ton of snow along too.

But when we had checked in, etc, we headed off to the place where you hire the skiis and ski boots and got ourselves kitted out.

Later that night - we went walkies looking for a shop to buy some FOOD.

When we got home, we found a place to keep the beer cold on our stoep, and proceeded to bury our reserve drinks...
... and then we made food.
It was the 26th of December, so Christmas hats were still appropriate.



The next day we hit the slopes. I was sick as a dog - all sinusy, so I tried to sleep it off and only went out after lunch, but they went out the whole day.

Now admit it. If you saw that guy behind you, you'd poep yourself too! This was Werner's attire. I had to continually stop myself from throwing my hands in the air and yelling 'Don't shoot!'

The main thing is that when you're sick and not feeling great, that you don't overdo it by carrying heavy stuff and walking in heavy boots that make walking a metre a mission, up a hill. That's the main thing. ..



Okay, these pics are for Martin basically, these show Sestriere and the other area we skiied to, and some of the slopes we went down. They won't mean a lot to you if you haven't been skiing before so don't bother clicking on em if you haven't I suppose.

And here we are... your heroes. It would be great if we had different clothes for each day but alas, one wears the same stuff for the week and only changes the underneath stuff. So get used to the pink and the blue. We got Cath a nice pink one in case she ever got lost, we'd be able to pick her out from the other 1000 people on the slope - and the plan worked!

These are the bum type ski lifts. They're can actually be quite scary as they give you a moerse pull to start off with and you really don't wanna fall off (which happens quite often to the kids) cos then they have to stop the whole thing and everyone looks at you and thinks... doos!

Looking down on Sestriere, Alan was hit by the blue steel urge. Louise is in the middle and you've met our bank robber friend.

Louise, on left, goes for some pace while Alan, on right, takes the windey route home.



This was us at the top of the mountain, about to ski into the other ski area - Saux de Oulx. I think I spelt that wrong, but hey.

Bloody good looking couples if you ask me.




And what ski trip would be complete without the customary trip to the eating hole at the top of a mountain. Sorry for the grubiness of the photo, the camera was cold after a morning of skiing and was steaming up every two seconds so this was a quick snap before it did it again.

On a ski lift.



I went walkies one night to try and get a few night snaps of our place. Lou, Werner and Cath are poking their heads out of our place below near the right of pic. This was, remember, the Olypic village. We could have stayed in the same room as Nolaf Njorjallsonn, the Olympic gold winner in the ... okay I made him up, but could you really tell? Could you care?



Me walking around, snow falling heavily.

We took it in turns to cook and wash up too, which was very good of us.



Catch a falling snowflake on your tongue...

Now, seeing as I'm secure in my sexuality I feel I can admit that this must have been the hottest damn policeman I've ever seen. I thought he was so good looking I insisted Cath have her photo taken with him! She didn't protest too much.

Cath cooking up a storm...

Another night of entertainment after a hard day of skiing. Cards... poor man's bridge, canasta, poker or 30 seconds. Louise is smiling cos she's cheating again and thinks we don't know. Werner's patience is being tested as he's teamed up with the doos that doesn't know the rules...

The Olympic sign thingy for the Torino Games.