picture taken on the chair lift
Jacob and I have been major slackers on this site. Sorry. And I've decided to just write it just like I am the one writing it, since Jacob (ahem) refuses to actually help write.So here I am, Christina, and here's what we did two weeks ago.
Because I packed all our winter and ski wear into our already bulging bags when we came to Libya, I was determined to use them. So Jacob and I planned a ski trip. We decided on Chamonix, France because a) we had heard it's a really great ski resort, b) it's France, and c) we've never been there before.
So it was set. We booked this trip through our travel agent, which doesn't seem all that strange, except that they only take cash. So we had to pull oodles of money out of the ATM over a course of few days, and then I had to carry around over 2000 LYD in my purse for a few days. It felt very strange to hand over such a wad of cash. It also didn't help that one of the ATMs we went to only gave us tens, so we had about 1000 LYD in tens...that's thick.
Anyway, so we actually flew to Geneva, Switzerland, and then we were going to catch a bus over to Chamonix, France. I was really excited because I thought I would get more stamps in my passport. So wrong. Because Switzerland is so open, they don't even have any passport control or passport stamps. And because we drove across the border, we didn't even get French stamps. Major bummer.
But back to the point: skiing. This was my first time on actual skis (I had done snowboarding before with my best friend Anna), so it was a learning experience.
Chamonix is a ski resort town which is within public bus distance to seven different mountains. The first day, we didn't know where to go, so we just hopped on a bus and went. First mistake. Then we got on two successive gondolas without really checking the map of ski runs. Second mistake. As a result, we ended up at 2700 m (8900 ft) with nothing but reds and blacks to get back down. Let me remind you that I had never downhilled skied before. So I had to learn on a two-mile red run with some very steep parts how to ski. There were lots of falls, lots skis, and tears, but we eventually made it down. I won't even tell you how long it took. It's that embarrassing. That day wasn't the best.
But the second day was much better. We picked a mountain with some good blue runs, and I was able to actually learn how to maneuver the skis a bit, and we actually had some fun. We explored the mountain more and got to go on exponentially more runs than the previous day.
The last day was just a half day for us, we only had the morning because we had to catch a plane back to Tripoli in the afternoon. We went back to the mountain from the day before, which worked out quite nice. Now it had snowed almost all day the day before and was continuing to snow that day. As result, we had to wait around a little at the beginning because there was some risk of avalanche. We heard some big booms and later realized that they were setting off some explosives to make the risk lower. That was exciting. But not as exciting as skiing in knee deep powder. It was crazy and fun. There were plenty of times when we couldn't see our skis at all! And of course, on this day of snowing, snowing, snowing, that's the day we decided to bring the camera with us. So bear with me as I share some pictures.
from the top of our "blue" mountain
another one
another picture taken from the chair lift
us in the town center
the river that caused the valley known as Chamonix
church covered in snow in the town
us waiting in line while they blow up the mountain
a look down the mountain
We had a lot of fun, and we've decided that we would like to make skiing a semi-regular thing. But as it's so expensive, we'll just have to see.
