Our weekend Italian adventure
Lija and I flew to Italy for the weekend to go skiing for Lija’s birthday, yes that’s right, Italy for the weekend!
I left Clapham on Thursday night and met Lija at our place in Bromley-by-Bow. We had the biggest catch up for several hours, chucked everything in our bags, and sat downstairs and watched Transformers on DVD.
Earlier in the week we had been shopping down this street in between Strand and Covent Garden, it has all these discount ski shops. Lija had some stuff from Budapest, but we also got ski pants for only ₤30 each. I got some hiking boots for ₤44, down from ₤90, which will be good for the summer in England.
Anyway, once Transformers was finished at 2am, we went to sleep for an hour and got up at 3am yes an hour later on Friday morning, to go catch the bus to Stratford, and the National Express to Stansted. We were at the airport by 5am and caught our flight at twenty to seven. Ryanair’s 1p flights always seem worthwhile, but once you pay all the extras and then deal with their Arschloche staff you think why bother?
First of all you can’t self check-in at the airport, and the guy wanted the flight reference even though they never ask for it and we could see he already had our flight details on his screen because we’d already given him our passports. Then he turned around and said our travel packs had to go on the fragile conveyor belt, which is the first that’s ever happened.
We wandered around Duty Free for a while, and then found our gate. Of course Ryanair has no allocated seating, so everyone rushes to get seats. The flight was fine; we slept most of the way of course, and took the local bus from Bergamo Airport (the same one we went to when we did Milan last July) into the Citte Alte – old city of Bergamo. Last time we went straight to Milan, and didn’t realise what a nice place Bergamo is. The old town is similar to Monte Carlo, high on the hill with pebble stone streets and nice little boutique stores. We got chocolate canolis and made it back down to the town, where we found a nice café for lunch. They were slow on the service, but our foccacias were yum.
We made our way over to the bus stazione and spent an hour and a half to get to Boario on a normal uncomfortable bus, where again we managed to get a few nods out, luckily without missing our stop. We found our hotel – Armonia – really easily, run by an older husband and wife who also run the company where we organised our package deal. They were both really lovely, and her English was quite good, his not as much – but he made up for it with the smiles and winks directed to us girls when we walked through the lobby.
We only had half an hour to settle in to our room before our mountain guide Roberto came and picked us up at 5 to drive out of Boario and up to the top of the Monticolo peaks at 1800ft. It takes 45 minutes to drive to the very top, and because we were the only ones in the ‘group’ for the snow hike, Roberto just had his 4-wheel drive. He spoke good English, but of course we spoke too fast as Aussies, so we had to slow it down a bit!
We had to wear these really ‘stylish’ ahem snow shoes, better than the old fashioned tennis racquets they used to wear, but hilarious to walk in. They’re in two parts, the inner attached to our shoes with spikes to dig into the ice, and the outer gripping the snow and ground below.
Roberto walked us all the way to the top of the mountain, and showed us both sides looking down into the valley, both where Boario is to the right, and the big lake to the left. The sunset was beautiful, but it didn’t take long for the moon to replace it, lighting our silhouettes against the snow. We still needed Roberto’s helmet light to see where we were going though. We hiked all the up to this small restaurant at the top of the mountain. It is run by locals, none of whom speak much, if any, English.
Roberto thought he was in for a boring night, thinking we were a couple that he’d have to put up with and leave alone. He was stoked to land us giggling Aussie girls, and we insisted he sit and eat with us. It was funny, he had his English-Italian dictionary with him so we sat there looking up words we didn’t know when we couldn’t explain things to each other. Dinner was amazing. We began with a platter of procciutio, salami and antipasta on a lazy susan, with soft bread. Second course was a pasta, very tasty, and then came roast turkey, deer (‘NOT Bambi!’ as Lija said!), potatoes, cheese, I mean it was all so much we really couldn’t eat it all.
We had nice espressos as a digestive, and Roberto had told the waitress (in Italian, cos we didn’t hear!) that it was Lija’s birthday, and she put a candle and the number 23 on the slices of cake!
We walked back down the hill, half rolled with bellies full of good food (okay I literally slid on my bum at one stage – but so did LIja!), and finished back at the shop at 1800mts. Roberto had to work early on the mountain in the morning, so he got the cook Domenico to drive us down, as he didn’t have to be up the mountain till 11am for the lunch hour. Domenico spoke barely any English, but we tried to talk to him a bit. He also had some ‘interesting’ Italian music on which was basically just a guy and girl singing “Amore, Amore, Amore” (Love, Love, Love), in high notes, in low, fast and slow. Uh, yeah, 45 minutes of that and I was ready to jump headfirst out of the four-wheel drive and down the mountain myself.
I think we were in bed by 1am, but we had to get up at 7am to go up the mountain on Saturday. We got our ski pants and thermal undies on, gloves, boots and sunscreen. Thirteen degree weather and we were wearing sunscreen, not only that, but we did end up with tanned faces at the end of the day. A bit of sunburn, a bit of windburn.
We had breakfast at the hotel, and pocketed a few biscuits for the long drive down in the afternoon. Our ride up the hill was not a four wheel drive today, neither was it a bus, it was more like an old-fashioned tram coach on wheels, with baskets at the back for your skis and wooden seats so you can’t dirty the ve-hicle. There were about ten others from different accommodation on there as well, on the way down we met a Melbourne girl skiing with her British friend. We were skiing at 1200mts. Lija and I had to traipse over the snow (someone nearly ended up on their butt and it wasn’t me haha) to get our skis and ski boots – how daunting, within 20 seconds you need to divulge to a stranger your shoe size, height and weight, just so you have the perfect ski balance that doesn’t leave you hugging trees.
So we headed off to ski school, where our teacher Norman helped us put our skis on, and marched us straight over to the chair lift. “Where are we going?” Lija asked. “Up the top,” Norman said, pointing to the top of the lift, which was only half way up the mountain on the small slope, whereas the lift on the right hand side went all the way up to 1800mts. “Don’t we have to learn things though?” she asked. “Yes, up there,” Norman kept pointing. “Now we go up.”
Our reaction: Holy Cow!
So we went up to the top, and Norman showed us how to do the ‘snow plough’, which is what you use to slow down and stop. He put clamps on the front of our skis so we wouldn’t cross them over but to teach us to keep them facing inwards. He took me half way down the hill, and then went and got Lija from the top, and we went up and down like that for a while, until we were able to take the clamps off and ski side by side.
We had a full hour and I felt like a natural, not quite able to ski parallel, but also not having the fear which allowed me to widen my skis and propel myself forward a bit faster for a thrill.
On our last ski downward I turned around and saw Lija bump into Norman, who was skiing in front of her, he stopped – she couldn’t! When they got to the bottom Norman goes to me, pointing to Lija “She grabbed me here” holding his buttocks! Hahaha I love how Europeans always think they can take the piss with Aussies cos we know how to have a laugh.
After that Norman left us to our devices on the hill, and we went pretty well. The chair lift guys were all nice, only knew how to say ‘where you from girls?’, then one would change shift and the next guy would ask too where we’re from. Going up the chairlift we would watch all the little kids, and groups of about five at a time in their pre-teens, learning how to ski, and five year olds doing this ski jump off to the side, and snow boarders carving up the snow, the learners get taught how to fall properly, and there was quite a bit of that going on.
We would just go up, and ski down, go up the lift, and ski down the hill. Italians don’t know how to line up, so you’d get rows of about five or six trying to merge into the three barriers to get up the lift, and it’s not like Bulla where every seat is used and you all get prodded in to fill up seats, lifts would go empty, or just one person at a time if they were skiing on their own. It was a pain when each new lot of school kids went up, there would just be a mass of people waiting to buzz through.
We stopped for lunch, dumped the skis and found a nice little Italian restaurant, where, you guessed it, the waitress didn’t speak English so she got the cook out to take our order. We already knew what we wanted – Lija wanted a risotto and I had ravioli in an Italian tomato-based sauce. With a combination of good food, and the bright 13 degree sunshine out on the slopes, it became more difficult to ski on the slopes, all the snow had either melted or been pushed to the bottom by the snowboarders, and the carbs from the pasta made me a bit top heavy.
But that freedom on the slopes and the need to ski a bit faster, and learn a bit faster, and be skiing parallel was too much for me, and I ended up loosing complete control several times – I would not be able to stop and I’d be skiing diagonally down the mountain and ending either out of breath but still standing on the other side of the slope, or flat on my tummy in the snow. Either way, most of the time Lija was standing there pissing herself laughing at me, but hey, I got to laugh back several times too!
It was just when I did the almighty crash bang smash and somersaulted forwards down the hill twice 360 degrees, lost my sunnies off my head and landed with a face full of snow that she couldn’t control herself that people were more concerned watching her doubled up in laughter than me and my twirl. Naturally I had this twelve year old popkin pick up my sunnies and come and give them to me, he was nice – he didn’t laugh at me, but one of the ski instructors came up at the same time and said “Maybe you should try stopping?” I just said “Yes, that was the plan!”
We stopped at about 4 o’clock and took back our skis and had a hot chocolate before waiting outside for our ride back. There we met an Aussie girl with her friend a British guy and had a good chat. They were quite good at skiing, they went all the way to the top and back down again. We were absolutely stuffed and buggered. I think I fell asleep on the bus on the way back down the hill. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, it was very nice, it was entrée, main and dessert which had been included in our package.
We watched a bit of The Closer in Italian, always fun, then headed out with Roberto to a martini bar called – wait for it – Martini Bar! Haha. It was great though, it really did have every cocktail/long/short/mix/shot you could possibly think of. We met a couple of his friends there, one of them spoke better English than Roberto, and one was worse. Italian guys really have no esteem problems, they think it is quite normal to for guys to wear pink polo shirts without being gay, or making it look like a fashion statement. It’s quite funny; they also are quite blunt and speak exactly what is on their mind.
We slept in a bit the next morning, on Sunday, long enough to still make breakfast, and then had a wander through town. It didn’t take us long, not much was open because it was a Sunday, but we managed to find a shopping centre, oh yes Lija can always sniff them out! We got a few things from the supermarket, and then found a glasses shop. We were mucking around trying them on when Lija handed me a pair of red and yellow frames, each end slightly turned up. I sat them on face and the difference in the mirror was astounding, so I splashed out on a new pair of reading glasses, they are Vogue and cost me ₤50 – along with Gucci and Louie Vitton, Vogue glasses are usually at the ₤300 mark or more, so I managed to get a great bargain. But that’s me, I don’t buy anything unless I know it is good value. I also think they look nice on me, and Lija said they really suited as well.
I also found this cute little espresso set of mini mugs and sauces, very gorgeous. Lija bought a mini makeup kit for her bag, but the girl didn’t speak any English, so I had to try and ask how much, pointing at it and shrugging my shoulders in question. I was sure she said 9.99, but Lija and I were searching for the Italian ‘ten’ and the shopgirl goes ‘ah, dieci’ and I said ‘si, dieci’, ‘si’. So I was right, but it was funny working it out!
We wandered all over town, which was basically up one street and down the one parallel to it, and then went back to the hotel for lunch. Because our dinners and breakfasts were included, but we did the hike and dinner on Friday night, our lovely host invited us back to the hotel for lunch, so we had a nice soup and then cold meats and cheese with vegetables. The afternoon we spent relaxing on the veranda of the hotel, reading our books, sipping espressos, watching the world go by, wrapped up in our thermals, scarves and hats to keep warm. We went for another wander to the supermarket, in need of something refreshing, and came back with a punnet of raspberries and a tray of golden kiwi fruit that we sat and munched on. It was actually just really nice to relax and do nothing, which neither of us have done in a while.
We had an airport transfer organised, so we headed off, and it took over an hour to get to the airport. We went to check in, and again were told to put our bags in the fragile hold, so annoying, and then we were told that there was only one bag booked for the flight, even though I booked one each and the guy let us through in Stansted. So they made Lija pay ₤12, and wouldn’t give her boarding pass until she did. Naturally being an evening Ryanair flight, it was delayed for half an hour, and when we did go to line up, because there is no seating allocation everyone pushes in the line, and the stupid buses drove us in one big circle stopping in front of the plane, no more than 200 metres from the lounge.
We used our last euros to buy a snack on the plane because we hadn’t had dinner, and got the bus back to Stratford, and the normal bus to Bow Church, and we walked in the door and were fast asleep by 2am.
What an amazing, wonderful, fun-filled exciting adventure of a weekend 😀
Tags: Travel
marzipan_mad
Leave a Reply