Day 1 at Selva - yeh!

No thanks to the fun that is jet lag - I woke up at the somewhat ungodly hour of 4am.

Breakfast at the Hotel Olympia was a contential affair. You know - the cold meats, the cheese, the somewhat stale breads and the total lack of any toasting instruments. To add something to the strange mix that is European Contential breakfasts - they were serving a somewhat strange concoction of a stale crossiant with a (wait for it) marmalade inside - yes it is the worst of English breakfasts crossed with the best of stale French pastries which results in a bit of a European road crash.

I take my family to the nearby hire place (I was scoping out prices the previous day and this was the best I could find) - and my mum, dad and myself pick up some skis and stocks which were all pretty modern and fancy (and cheap- 70 euro for 6 days). Meanwhile - Sacha and Taeko find a snowboard hire shop and get some snowboards (my brother skis but he thought he would give it another go).

We make our way to the ticket office (after trying to buy tickets from the Gondola - but they don't sell the superpasses apparently) and pick up some 6 day lift passes for the low low price of 180 euros. The lift pass not only includes the Selva ski area - but all the adjoining ski villages. The price makes Perisher Blue seem like a total daylight robbery in comparison.

Anyhows - after we get all of our poo together - we all catch the Ciampioni Gondola up to the top of the Selva mountain. When we get to the top - we discover that Taeko suffers from motion sickness and felt somewhat nauseous after the gondola ride.

Although the weather was blue skies (and quite warm no thanks to global warming) - the visibility was really poor as most of the mountain was in shadows. Our first run was a black run - not because we wanted to be challenged before even warming up - but Selva was suffering from a total lack of signage...

To be continued...