A Day in the Alps!

Last Friday, Chiara took me to Decathlon, a sporting goods store, to buy me snow gear for the Alps!!  As we were looking for snow pants, boots, and gloves, the children were running a muck. They were playing in a tent in the middle of the store and had these exercise balls bouncing everywhere. I'm sure the associates hated us. Chiara bought me everything I needed, which was so nice of her. We had planned to leave Sunday morning with the entire family. Sadly though when I woke up Sunday, Chiara informed me that Mattia had been up all night sick so she would be staying home with him. I was a little bummed because Chiara is hilarious. The fact that half her jokes are in broken English make them even funnier. I was also worried because Marco and I have a hard time communicating sometimes with the language barrier. But everything went smoothly. There were a couple times when he couldn't think of the word to use, but it wasn't anything important. At least, I hope not. He did tell me how he wished he could've spent this day with Chiara since during the week they are apart. So sweet!

The drive to the mountains was about two hours, which consisted of Giorgia asking her dad to tell her stories the ENTIRE time. Of course the stories were all in Italian, so I had no idea what was going on. I could only understand random words like "here, there, two, wait, and Snow White". And when the stories are being told the radio must be off so Giorgia can hear clearly. Not a fan of story time during car rides.

Once we got up in the mountains the roads started getting super windy and narrow. Lately I've been getting car sick with all these round-a-bouts, so I was a bit nervous. Once we arrived, it was a madhouse. The parking lot was insane. Cars were parked every which way. (Side note: Italians park anywhere. If the parking lot is full no worries, there is always the sidewalk.) It had recently snowed, so obviously everyone was going to the mountains. After driving all around the parking lot, we finally saw a car leaving. Marco said, "I love that man!" as we pulled into his parking space.

We got all bundled up, grabbed the sled then walked toward the slopes. Giorgia wanted to play on the slide when we first arrived. While she was playing, Marco went to look around while I stayed with Giorgia. Well when Giorgia realized her "Papa" was gone, she started crying and running off. I don't know many words in Italian but "Basta" meaning "Stop" gets used quite frequently. I was yelling her name, but she just ignored me. It wasn't until I raised my voice and said, "Basta!" that she finally stopped running. I picked her up and walked back to the slide where I knew Marco would be looking for us. As soon as he saw that she was crying he took off running towards us. He hugged her tight and asked me if she had been crying long. It was sweet how concerned he was, but I mean the kid was fine.

One of the first things I noticed was that the lodge was playing American music. I sure wasn't complaining, but I found it odd. Marco said, "We like American music better. It's all they play at the disco." He asked me if i wanted to go skiing, but I chose to just go sledding instead. I haven't been skiing in ages and would much rather snowboard. But I'd definitely need some lessons first. My first time down the hill with Giorgia went off without a hitch! Once we made it down the hill, we hiked back up the walking pathway. Not to be confused with the moving sidewalk. I wish it had been the moving sidewalk, but no, you had to have a pass for that. Believe me, I tried. Anyway, my last time down the hill with Giorgia was terrible. She would not listen to me at all and was attempting to walk up the hill where the other sledders were coming down. I was afraid she was going to get wiped out. As I'm chasing after her yelling "Basta!", she just ignores me. Luckily Marco sees that Giorgia is out of control and walks down the hill to meet us. I'm pretty sure he told her that she needed to listen to me, but she doesn't even listen to him so that got us no where. After that Marco said, "You can't be alone with Giorgia anymore." I was thinking, "Thank God!".

We ate lunch in the cafeteria at the ski lodge. It was very crowded and hot inside waiting in the buffet line. I'm not sure if it's an Italian thing or what, but people kept hitting me with their trays and paying no attention to it. Like seriously?! I got pasta, a roll, pudding and french fries (don't ask me why). The food was decent. It took forever to find a seat, so by the time I was able to eat everything was cold.

To get down the hill to play in the snow, Marco thought it would be a great idea if all three of us rode the sled or "bob", as they call it. I was a bit hesitant, but he was all for it! I sat in the front with Giorgia in the middle. The sled was digging into my legs the entire time, but it was actually really fun. I was scared we were going to tip over though. Giorgia got upset afterwards when she realized her stuffed unicorn, Lillia, got snow all over her! I mean, she did bring her to the snowy mountains, not sure what she expected. We spent about another hour and a half playing in the snow, which was terrible by the way. It wouldn't stick at all so we couldn't even build a snowman. Such a bummer & some random little boy kept throwing chunks of ice at me. Not okay. The mountains were absolutely beautiful though!


Marco said, "I never let the sun set on me", so we headed back to the car around 4pm. I'm sure it's a proverb or something, but it was pretty funny when he said it. The ride back was relaxing as we listened to Jazz music. Giorgia and I even fell asleep. When I woke up, I was really enjoying the music. Unfortunately, shortly after, Giorgia woke up and it was of course story time.