Our Little Gift to Val D’Isère

You may have noticed there has a distinct lack of blogs from me over the last few weeks.  This is mostly down to laziness but also because of the absence of news worthy activities.  It seems we have settled into the life in the mountains & although it’s not your every day routine its routine none the less.  Its not that we’re enjoying it any less its just the things that were novel & exciting to start off with are now constant & satisfying.  We still get out & board, we still get drunk, we still eat far too much  & there is still a lack of snow. Couple this with the fact that its been half term week for European schools & the slopes are heaving with irritating kids all full English & horrible Parisians we decided to have a little break from the mountains, in fact a break from France altogether so we have just popped over to Italy for the last few days & spent our time chilling out in Turin.

As I have banged on enough in previous blogs we are currently experiencing somewhat of a snow drought.  It hadn’t snowed with since early Jan & since then we’ve had warm weather that has contributed to 1 of the worst snow records in the last 30 years & the snow depth is actually only 25% of the average amount.   Snow was desperately needed so when we booked our holiday we had a bit of laugh about the fact that at least if we go away then it will snow in Val.   Sure enough that’s what happened.  As all you skiers out there know skiing when its actually snowing is tough & not all together enjoyable suffering from white out conditions.  The best time to ski is to get up on the 1^st lift of the day & make fresh tracks in the fluffy powder.  It snowed continuous from Sunday morning to Monday night, we had to leave for Turin on Tuesday morning.  So we missed out, our bad weather curse continues but at least the slopes of Val have been refreshed

So Turin then.  For a start it was great to just get away from the little bubble of mountain life, away from the scuzzy people, the whinging kids, the smelly French & the downright horrible Parisians.  Incidentally if the French are the most hated people the world over then it’s the happy people from Paris who are to blame.  Everybody hates them, even the French hate the Parisians, even the Parisians themselves hate each other.  We all know that Paris itself is full of art, culture, history & all that bollocks but how is it possible to enjoy it sounded by these people.  In a recent travel magazine there was an article titled ‘Paris, the Dead centre of Europe’ because even the people that live there can’t even be bothered to go out.  I digress, Turin.  It was just over a 3 hour drive through the alp’s, I’d like to say the scenery was amazing but as almost the entire drive is through tunnels it would be a lie.  Luckily we borrowed a friend’s sat-nav because, as with city, it was chaos.  We made it though & had a thoroughly lovely time.  Italy is amazing wherever you go, the food, the drink the people & Turin is no exception even though the French influence (as its so close to the boarder) makes for some difficulties.  Having a coffee isn’t as easy as it should be & going out for a few drinks in the evening is a little unusual as all the bars do ‘Aperitevo’.  This is a set price for a drink & includes buffet style antipasti.  All very nice but expensive if you’re not hungry.

Just as well they don't do it in Val, as it is I'm so heavy that whilst dropping the kids off at the pool this morning the toilet seat shattered, it was a right pain in the.........