Xmas 2008

A white one!
Not snowing but snow covered. This was the view from our room on Christmas morn.
High in the Norwegian mountains we even had real reindeer. Real reindeer in the hotel that is, with santa giving out presents in the bar. Odd to say the least!
Our hotel also let us have our dogs in the room. We just had to hang a little note with 'Dog in Room' on the door handle. So cute. Mina looks like she is enjoying the floor here but don't be fooled, both her and Mojo were straight up on the bed the moment we left the room. They are not idiots! They also loved running up and down the corridors when we would get back - their feet sounded so cute pounding the carpet!
We stayed in a ski resort town called Geilo, about halfway between Oslo and Bergen. It had a pretence of being a bit flashy but was actually as good as empty in comparison to other major European ski locations, which was just perfect for us! Being Christmas, most Norwegians were celebrating with their family at home or in their cabins, so the hotel had just a handful of guest families from various places staying in it. They served a huge Christmas dinner buffet with traditional Norwegian dishes on the 24th: included cod, birch boiled lamb, mashed swede, salmon, various other seafoods and salads. No complaints from us. Well perhaps one little one when it cost us over $AUS100 to buy a bottle of wine to accompany the feast! On Christmas and boxing night we were served a set three course menu where the food was absolutely delightful! We also got massages and hung in the sauna and enjoyed the spa as often as possible. But of course the real reason we were there was for the snow, and board it we did!

Here I am specially dressed in my red, white and green contemplating the mountain on Christmas morning.
We spent all Christmas day and boxing day exploring different trails down the mountain, repeating the ones we liked and scaring ourselves a little taking on the main drag with enormous jumps splashed in various people going crazy all around us! My favourite track was one that took large tracks of quiet, gently sloping trail through a forest. It also had sections of wider faster dashes down to various lifts onto various other levels. Here I am resting at a turn in the forest, having just videoed J scoot past me at 100 miles an hour and throwing snow in my super slow face.
While the snow was a little short on the ground, a bit hard, and occasionally icy towards the end of the day, I did manage to use the terrain to really start working out my toe turns. J gave me some pointers early in the day and for the first time in my snowboarding experience (all of one whole season!) I managed to really pull them off, and to link them with my heel turns. This was a major progression for me and at times when I was in a little zone going through the forest on my own I was quite proud of myself. Of course there were many many other times when I fell on my arse and was not so proud - one occasion actually resulted in some serious pain, the kind of pain that involved little involuntary cries when trying to move around. I ended the days with a black as pitch knee and a deeply bruised coccyx, that is actually still too painful for me to roll over. No pain no gain though, right, and it was all in good fun. I actually can't wait to try my moves on some serious powder in the near future. As soon as I get the new snowboard boots to replace the ones I broke that is - sorry, still a sore point at the moment, let us not speak of it further.

Sorry for all the snowboarding talk! We also tried cross-country skiing this Christmas so I promise more about that next time! xxx