Famous!

In an effort to win a new camera (having sadly not replaced mine since breaking it on the dance floor in South Africa...), I've entered a competition to win one by writing about my experience at the UCPA (a non-profit French organisation which aims to make outdoor sports holidays affordable to the general public).

My post has just gone live - have a read here!

Out of the cold came Russia: St Petersburg and Novgorod

It's been about a fortnight since we got back from Russia and I'm still absolutely raving about it to everyone we talk to.  And now I get the chance to do it all over again here!

So we flew in on Christmas Eve, got to our enormous hotel (Hotel Moscow, but in St Petersburg...confusing!), and had our group meeting.  I was apprehensive about travelling on a tour group, but our guide, Vladimir, and the other people, were all really great.  Vlad especially was so knowledgeable about everything - I was in awe of his demeanour and random facts, especially when we found out he was only 24!

We spent our first few days in St Petersburg and covered a fair amount of ground.  My favourite thing was The Hermitage, which was absolutely spectacular.  I had no idea at all about it really, and to see such beautiful art (especially the stuff I'd learnt about at school) was such a wonderful surprise.  The building itself (it's the Winter Palace of the Tsars) is stunning as well.  We also went to one of the summer palaces, the palace of Catherine I on Christmas Day (although the 25th of December means nothing there - Christmas is actually on the 7th of January in Russia).  It was ridiculously opulent and lovely to prance around in the snow for a bit.

Other highlights in St Petersburg was a folk dancing show which was quite hilarious and ice-skating afterwards in the middle of town on a rink nearly all to ourselves.  That's not to mention the food!  We had pancakes with caviar, delicious pies at a place called Stolle (cabbage and rabbit were the best flavours), dill flavoured everything (Adrian will tell you it was dill-icious...bada boom...), and obviously, vodka!

After St Petersburg we travelled down to Novgorod, which is about a four hour drive south towards Moscow.  It's one of the most historic towns in Russia, founded in about the 9th or 10th century.  We saw their kremlin (fortress), a very cool massive brass sculpture which shows the history of Russia, ran around a church (more on that next post!) and went ice-skating again.  I still can't stop very well, but Adrian managed to skate backwards pretty well which were all very impressed by!

From Novgorod we got on the night train down to Moscow...stay tuned for more adventures on that front!

But I will tell you about when we got back to St Petersburg so you can understand the rest of the photos.  We had a huge dump of snow which was great fun to play around in and we stayed at a very friendly hostel called Mir Hostel right on the main street (Nevsky Prospect) which was great (the link actually shows the room we stayed in - it was so cute).  We climbed up to the colonnade of St Isaac's Cathedral and looked out over the whole city, went to the Kunstkamera aka the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (which was a bit odd - not so keen on pickled babies - don't click through to the link if you're feeling a bit fragile!), saw the haunting monument to the Siege of Leningrad, and finally had a delicious meal at Chekov, a very traditional Russian restaurant, which included a crayfish salad and a magret of duck...mmmm!

Click below to see the photos.  Let me know if you can't see them!

Out of the cold came Russia vol 1

Snowing!

Just a quick update to say that today we've had the first snowflakes in London! I saw a few as I crossed Waterloo Bridge to go into uni, and then have seen some more from the 10th floor window as well. It's definitely of the 'blink and you'll miss it' variety, and I'm sure this is nothing compared to what might be in store for us in Russia, but still, the first snow of the season is always pretty exciting!

Throwing ourselves down steep cliffs for fun

As is becoming a slight habit now (well definitely for Adrian!), once winter arrived, it was straight online to book our ski trip.  Having gone with the absolutely brilliant UCPA last time (kind of like the YMCA for France – ensuring that expensive sports like skiing or diving are available for those with less generous means), there was no question about who we’d choose this year. 

Adrian was keen for a bigger challenge than La Plagne, so we decided to go with Val d’Isere from 1-8 Jan.  There’s lots of back country area and it had a specialist ‘off-piste’ group which Adrian could join (think lots of hiking up mountains with a shovel strapped to your back).  I went with snowboarding again, and as usual with the UCPA, everything was thrown into the price (accommodation, four meals/day, gear, lift pass and full-time instruction).

This time we also learnt from our mistakes and flew over rather than submitting ourselves to the torture of the bus ride.  And thank goodness we did – we learned on arrival that something had gone wrong with the buses and they took nearly 40 hours to get there!  Yikes...  Although we didn’t do amazingly well either – a slight miscalculation of the tube times meant an incredibly stressful sprint to the train which we made with literally 90 seconds to spare!  It was a bit of a hectic start to 2011 that’s for sure.

We went with Bryony, a friend from Oxford, and Frances, a friend from Adrian’s work.  It was good having four because we got our own little (very little) room and could all compare notes from when we got back from our respective group sessions.  The snow was pretty icy for the first few days, but luckily we got a big dump on the Wednesday night and so everyone got some excellent powder runs in.

One of the crazy things about Val d'Isere is this bar called 'La Folie Douce' which is located right in the middle of all the runs and only accessible either on skis (or snowboard!) or via a telecabine.  It was crazy to come over the crest of the hill and see it with all the music pumping away.  This is what it looked like in the middle of the madness:

At the UCPA they didn’t supply helmets with the gear so I ended up buying one (just about as cheap as renting one).  Thank goodness I did because I took two big falls in the first couple of days (one completely my own fault, the other when someone ran over my board) and broke my helmet!!  Better than breaking my head...  Luckily I’d remembered to keep the receipt so now have a brand new one nestled in the cupboards at home.

It was awesome snowboarding down the glacier right at the very top of the ski area – I think it’s about 3600m above sea level.  I loved the off-piste powder too – makes you remember why you pay all that money to go!

As usual, lots of photos uploaded here – enjoy!

(Finally!) some photos of the snow

Having not yet managed to transport all my files over from my nearly dead old laptop to my bright, spanking, amazing, lovely, so fast I can't believe it, incredible in every way new laptop, I realised that I forgot to put up the photos from February online.

We had a HUGE dump of snow here in Oxford in February and I went a bit crazy taking photos of everything I could see! We made a fantastic snowman in Port Meadow, but those photos are still on Adrian's camera (which he has taken away with him on holiday obviously so I'll have to add them to the album at a later date).

The other photos are of Duncan's visit to Oxford and our excursion to Christ Church college.

Enjoy!

“When it snows, you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels”

This New Year's Eve there wasn't an option to just pack the car with a tent, a sleeping bag, mozzie repellent and a few boxes of food from Pak'N'Save (unless we wanted to die of hypothermia somewhere in the British countryside) so an alternative form of entertainment was required. Despite the outrageous (insert high pitched sounds of disproval here) increase in cost between a NYE ski holiday and one later in the year, the timing was right.

After much miserly deliberation, we found a package holiday in La Plagne 1800 (France) for nine days including all accommodation, return travel, food, lift passes, ski hire, and 12 hours of guiding for about £600. While it is an horrendous amount once translated back into NZ$, in pounds it didn't seem too bad so we jumped at it. We convinced Lisa, Duncan and Devin (friends from NZ and Amelia's NSEP class) to come with and so on the 29th of December all met up at the Hatton Cross tube station just outside of Heathrow. Little did we know the horrors that awaited us... The 17 hour (no, that's not a typo) bus ride from London to the French Alps via a ferry over the Channel started off ok, but after several hours without heating and absolutely freezing our bollocks off while our crazy drivers got lost trying to find our accommodation, the fun had somewhat worn off.

But, onwards and upwards. We were in France! The sun was shining, the birds were singing and Amelia got brand new rental boots and a practically new board to play with so it was all good. The place we were staying (UCPA) was extremely generous with the food (I reckon we all put on weight despite the constant activity!), and despite the tiny rooms, it was great fun to people watch the other (French) group there - particularly when some of them decided to strip down to their undies for a particularly raucous demonstration of the Macarena!! We also played several (read, A LOT) of games of 500, which Devin took to like a duck to water. Just as long as Duncan didn't play too many hands of misere!



But, onto the most important part - the skiing/snowboarding! Lisa and Duncan were tentative, in the advanced beginners group, and fortunately only ended the week with a cracked rib and massively bruised elbow between them. Devin and I were in the advanced snowboarding group and Adrian was in the expert ski group. Fortunately, I still remembered enough of what to do to go exploring with Adrian after our guiding, although I had to leave him and Devin to the rope tows which were at crazy vicious angles and would have only ended in total and utter disaster (not to mention tantrums) had I tried to partake!


We had lovely sunny weather for the whole trip, apart from NYE itself where it snowed pretty heavily all day and night, meaning New Year's Day itself was stunning with blue sky and between 5-10cm of fresh powder. Devin and my guide was qualified to take us off-piste and we spent the whole morning just carving fresh tracks through the pow-pow. It was well worth the 8am wake-up after the night before!

Speaking of the night before, NYE night itself was unexpectedly great fun. We went to Belle Plagne where they had cleared an area at the bottom of the chair lifts and in front of the shops/hotels for a big outdoor nightclub. They had a DJ/VJ set-up with fireworks and an ice bar and there were thousands of people partying the night away while the fresh snow rained on down. It was quite surreal being outside dancing while it was snowing and definitely made it a memorable evening.



Later in the holiday Adrian tried his luck at a slalom event - it took a bit of persuading for him to take part, but my (increasingly rusty) French came in handy and he got a number in the end and raced down the hill in a very respectable time of 51.17 seconds, earning him 103rd place out of nearly 200 and a 'bronze' level qualification (whatever that means!). We also went and checked out the Olympic bobsleigh course. Adrian unfortunately missed out on having a go due to a booking error, but we still got an up-close-and-personal look at what it would be like to race down an ice track at speeds approaching 100km/hr.

And then it was over. We somehow survived the return bus journey (again with the dodgy heating!) and made it back to Oxford for a well deserved sleep and a chance to rest our aching bones. Seven days straight snowboarding without hot pool access (France really doesn't know what it's missing on that front) isn't something I think I could do again without a bit of training first that's for sure!

Lots more photos here.

Aiguille de Midi

On our last day in France we headed over to Chamonix to go up the Aiguille de Midi cable car. It's an amazing cable car that heads up to 3800m to the highest point of the French Alps that you can get to without climbing!

The first cable car heads up to le Plan de l'Aiguille at 2300m. The second cable car is definitely vertigo inducing as it heads up on a single cable with no supporting pylons in sight. It traverses the Les Pelerins glacier before rising up to 3800m.

It was FREEZING up there! The wind on one side was just incredible and we were well under-prepared in terms of how many layers we were wearing! The views over to the Italian Alps were fantastic and it was cool to be able to see all the people heading off on the Vallee Blanche ski run. The vertigo came on in the most unexpected places - particularly looking up and then back down.

Enjoy the video and there are loads of photos here as well.

Au revoir France - bring on the rest of Europe!

Telemark day

I can ski and I can snowboard, so I thought I would learn to tele-mark. On my day off I rented a pair of tele-mark skis and boots and got a lesson first thing in the morning. Renaud my instructor took me for an hour and a half (he chucked in an extra half an hour, nice guy, who ever said the French are all bad). At the end of the lesson I had the idea of what I needed to do, and had even done one proper tele turn. My legs however were starting to burn already, but with the gear for only one day I pushed on. 

I think I got the hang of it by the end of the day, even if I didn’t have complete control the whole time and couldn’t do a whole run without stopping. I will definitely look to give it another go, even if it did take my legs a couple of days to recover. It was a great day again with no lift lines, perfect snow and sunny, warm conditions.

 

On the same day, Amelia swapped over her rental board for a brand new Rossignol board as they were having a demo day at the top of the St Gervais lift. We also got to try out a new shockproof Olympus camera and take as many photos as we liked before they burnt them onto CD. All the (good) photos of the day are here.

Chamonix

Ever since watching “The Blizzard of Arhhhs” during my second season I have wanted to ski Chamonix. Today it was to happen! I was still tired from my exploits the day before so I started at what I thought was a reasonable hour, getting to Argentière at 9:15am. Unfortunately I arrived right in the middle of the rush which meant I had to wait for an hour to get my lift pass. Thankfully that only cost 3 euro as I had a season pass. I had however arrived too late to get a ticket up the Grand Montet which takes you to the top (they sell only a limited amount each day).

I got back to my skis to find someone had taken my skis (instead of theirs). Talk about a pain in the arse. I waited another hour for them to return, but no luck. When my boot popped perfectly into the binding I realised the other person probably didn’t even notice, as the skis were pretty much exactly the same (mine were 6cm longer, but his poles were nicer). Not a great start to the day. Luckily the rest of the day was great, perfect blue skies, the lift lines weren’t too bad, and the snow was soft even if it was tracked.

End off the day (I caught last chair), I skied down to find the car was having issues starting. After half an hour of waiting and trying and starting to think I was going to have to give it a push it finally started. Not a good end to the day.

The Face

While the cat’s away the mice will play. With Amelia up in the north I took the chance to get some of my more adventurous skiing in. I had been looking at these two chutes (or couloirs as the French call them) from early in the season. I had planned on doing the easier one on the right from the top but saw some tracks leading down so decided to give the harder one a nudge. After a couple of turns I had covered the other tracks with my sluff and was on my own.

There were a couple of hairy moments when I was wondering what I had gotten myself into, mostly at the top of the first rock band when I had taken a turn too many and was facing the wrong way. I then had to step over a rock backwards and keep my balance before navigating a second rock band and a 2m hop out to safety.

As I stopped and looked up I could only but think how lucky I was (even though later that night I was thinking, “I know the route now; I can do it a lot better next time”). I skied off and stopped down on the piste to dust off the snow and check my bases (I skied over a lot of rocks). A guy skied up and asked if I had just skied “The Face”. We talked and it turned out he had taken photos of it all. He laughed as I said it was a bit difficult for me. I asked if he had skied it to which he replied, “No, too many rocks, I prefer to ski on snow. Next time take a rope”. Anyway check out his photos here. I’m the black dot that moves position. The places where I am smaller are where I am sitting, stepping down rocks. Tomorrow Chamonix!!

Big snow!

On the 22nd of March we woke up to one of the biggest overnight dumps of snow we’ve had yet. February and March seem to have been all mixed up, with hardly a flake of snow during February and temperatures reaching nearly 17 degrees, and March seeing temperatures plummet again with metres upon metres of snow.

This was outside our front door – that hill in the background which is known as the ‘Jaillet’ side of the mountain had been green grass only a couple of days before.

Check out the snow on the window wipers!


These pictures are from in front of the ice rink in town and then another one showing just how much snow the bulldozer had already taken off! (Nice bleary/puffy morning eyes are also on show in the latter pic).

This one’s the best though – how on earth is that car going to get out of there?!


Click here for the rest of the pictures.

Tobogganing!

When the idea of throwing yourself down steep, snow covered hillsides on skis or snowboards becomes a bit passé, what else is there to do but throw yourself down less steep, snow covered hillsides on uncontrollable pieces of plastic. Yep, that’s right, it was time for some tobogganing. We couldn’t find the ‘uber’ toboggan (the one that actually has brakes and is adult-sized) so made do with what is stylishly known as ‘bum boards’ and a baby-sized toboggan.

The snow was a bit thin on the ground which meant runs had to be picked carefully, but we generally fell off before we’d made it too long anyway!

For anyone who hasn’t done it, tobogganing is o for oarsome – particularly the bit when you completely fall off and roll around in the mud (see classic example below - hopefully you don't get as sore a neck watching it as I got actually doing it!).


A bit of hiking is involved, although any and all cardio is a good thing these days considering the amount of croissant-related energy that needs to be burnt off on a daily basis…

Two styles of tobogganing were also in evidence – the planned approach and the ‘let’s just get down here whichever way possible’. As you can see by these two stills from the videos both get you to exactly the same place!

Cross-country skiing

The Ecole de Ski Français here in Megève (French Ski School) has been putting on a demonstration of cross-country skiing every Monday night for the last couple of weeks. The other Monday I was working but Adrian had the night off so he gave it a go and thought it was so much fun that I should have a try the following week. It was a bit iffy in terms of how much snow was left (it was in the middle of town and we haven’t had snow in aaaaages), but luckily they were foolhardy enough to put it on so we headed on down. We conned Ed, our new Ski Royale recruit and fellow driver/chambermaid, to come with us and try his hand as well – he’s a fellow snowboarder so I didn’t feel too bad about embarrassing myself in front of someone else who can’t ski to save themselves!

Swapped over the shoes for some random soft bootie-like things with hard clips on the edge and headed over to get fitted for some skis. They’re about as tall as you are, but only about 5cm across which makes it pretty hard to get your balance! I had a French instructor helping me out and we palmed Ed off on the poor English speaking instructor who had had to deal with Adrian the previous week as well… (I hope she gets paid well!)

When you’re on the flat it’s kind of like walking (because you’re in the grooves that have already been made by other skiers), but uphill you have to use your poles a lot more and then downhill was a bit interesting! I got to grips with snow ploughing in the end though!


Couldn’t really handle the whole ‘skating’ across on the flat (when you ski without the pre-made grooves) but on the whole it was heaps of fun and a big shout out to those ever patient instructors!



As well as the skiing they had a place where you could try shooting (so, trying the entire winter biathlon competition where they cross-country ski and then shoot at targets at different points along the course). I hadn’t shot an air rifle before and was totally up for it! It was pretty easy lying down when you could steady yourself (I got 5/5 of my targets!) but standing up it was a different story completely…(I think only 2/5 there).

I could definitely consider doing the rifle range again, but I think I’ll stick with the snowboard thanks! Check out all the photos here.

New skis

After a hard season tree planting, my skis had seen better days. The edges are rounded, blown and depressed. If you could see the state of my bases you would be depressed also. The shock absorbers were leaking their fluids and my bindings are starting to strip their screws.

My skis had had a good life, but it was time for them to retire. I had been enquiring around the shops about prices for the type of skis I wanted and in general putting off the outlay of a large wad of money (those who know me will know I don’t like that much either). Then I stumbled across the perfect buy. They are ex-rental touring skis which come with skins. Being touring skis they weren’t rented out much so are in good nic. All for only 300 euro, super! (Would be 1000 euro new) Now if only I could get out of the hotel onto them…

Staff ski days

Our day off is on a Tuesday and our company has arranged to meet up with the skiers from another company (Stanford) for a joint ski every week. We meet at the Rosay café on the Mt d’Arbois side of the mountain and after a bit of a drink/bite to eat, we all head up together. At the moment I (Amelia) can’t keep up with the good skiers (Adrian etc.) so either I hang out with Lauren who’s learning like me or head off on my own. I wasn’t quite up to the ‘off-piste’ action a couple of weeks back that all the skiers managed (snowboards don’t lend themselves to sections of flat powder!) so did some blue runs by myself.

That powder day was pretty sweet!! One of the best ever! I (Adrian) rose early on my day off (those who know me will know how much I love to sleep), and got to the front of the lift line for first lift (Yeeha!!!), only to hear some British lady behind me say “What the lifts aren’t going yet? We’ll get a later bus tomorrow.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Needless to say I had fresh tracks all morning till I meet up with the rest of the crew. I was pretty shattered but skied on for the rest of the day. We got some footage of the afternoon, which I will have to try and nab it somehow. We stopped at the pub at the bottom of the mountain for a couple of beers and to talk about the beauty of skiing for seven hours. After the two pints we attempted to ski back into town with a little success and a lot of laughter. We then moved into town for a great night on the booze and the dance floor. If you can’t dance well, dance enthusiastically!!

Team Ski Royale (L-R): Amelia, Charlie, Simon, Lauren, Michelle, Adrian, Matt, Adam

Adrian and Lauren on the 'Les Mandarines' run.

Paraskiing action! Oh yeah that helmet's a good look!

Le Calvaire de Megève

Le Calvaire is a pilgrim route in Megève from the 14th Century that has the 14 Stations of the Cross represented in little chapels. The doors are locked, but you can peek through and look at the different styles and types of paintings and statues. It’s set in a 10 hectare park just down from the Mt d’Arbois ski lift. The ‘Calvaire’ translates to ‘martyrdom’ or ‘calvary’ which apparently means ‘living death’.




So on a sunny afternoon (nearly every day is sunny here, it’s a hard life I tell you) we headed off for a walk to see the sights. I (Amelia) had done a long walk the week previously and chanced across them, so thought it would be cool to show them to Adrian.

Most of the buildings are pretty small with just one picture or statue in them, but there are a few that are on a much grander scale and have a whole series of events. The stations are represented in quite different styles which made it interesting to compare between them.

There are heaps more photos here of us and all the different little chapels and the interiors.

We ended the walk with a visit to the local church in Megève. It’s called Eglise (Church) St Jean Baptiste in the parish of Sainte Anne d’Arly Montjoie and our apartment is just behind it. The church fronts onto the main town square which also holds the Mairie (Mayor’s offices), a Hermes store and a few cafés etc. While looking pretty plain from the outside, it’s a completely different story inside. Again, the 14 Stations of the Cross are represented inside, as well as having an amazing painted ceiling and some altars.

 

Learning to snowboard

So, despite what I told Adrian when we first met, I am not actually the world’s most amazing snowboarder… Jeff L and Bas witnessed my efforts last year which saw my knees swell up to football size as a result of coming into far too much contact with the sheet ice at Turoa! So I got me a snowboard here in Megève and took it out after about a week here to see how much work I needed to do before I could learn how to turn etc. Actually putting on the bloody thing was the first mission because it had completely different bindings (what holds the board to your feet) than what I was used to back in NZ! But once that small milestone had been achieved I was raring to go. And go I did…right towards the ground! I won’t go into the (embarrassing and painful) detail, but after several days of “I hate this, I’m never going to like it!” and other minor tantrums directed at the ever patient Adrian, I finally managed to learn how to turn. It was a big day! In the interim I was forced to wear a helmet because I was coming close to concussion with the amount of times I was falling over…


But once that had passed and I was (more or less) whizzing down the green runs (I was allowed to say that I was a snowboarder once I completed a run without falling), I became a bit more adventurous. Bring on the blue runs! (In France they go from green, to blue, to red, to black). We had a big day out on the mountain (Adrian, Lauren and I) and I was heading down Les Mandarines run which is a big green run (green number 30 on this map where it says Mt d'Arbois) and I had nearly got to the end when I took a big tumble and banged up my knee. The gory results are below…

Needless to say that now I wear kneepads as well! But after about a week’s rest I was back up there full of enthusiasm (and only succumbing to very seldom tantrums – like when Adrian takes me down the world’s steepest red run…but that’s another story!)

Bienvenue!

Hey everyone, kia ora, bonjour, ciao and welcome to our brand spanking new travel blog. Instead of being slavishly tied to the laptop (or dodgy internet café) writing indivdualised and highly personal emails with lots of love and attention in them to each and every single one of you, we thought we’d take the lazy route and just create a blog. So here you can read about the exciting (and mundane) things that we’re getting up to on our big Europe OE and leave comments to your hearts’ desire.

At the moment we’re in Megève, France, doing a ski season. Adrian’s a ski guide/driver and is dominating the mountain with his daredevil off-piste skills, and Amelia’s a chalet host (i.e. maid) getting to grips with snowboarding and modeling the latest in bruises to show for it.

Here are a few photos of Megève to whet your appetite – for more click here. There will always be more photos on Amelia’s Facebook page – if we don’t put in a link to them and you want to know if there are more photos just ask in the comments section or send an email :-) PS I’m a nerd (Thanks for that input Adrian).

Powder! The Church of Jean Baptiste in the centre of town.

The Aallard store and the town square Christmas tree (in Megève it's Christmas all winter long...)