Well yes, today I went skiing. Well I had to. It was snowing. Well, not really snowing. More of a constipated splattering but it was white and falling from the sky. I only survived long enough for 4 runs though! Still, in our Arabba world of huge vertical that equates to over 3200m vertical which is not too bad a start for the jellied legged weakling I’ve become.
Weird weather. We saw a number on Gina our GPS’ display this morning that we’ve never seen before…
We double checked Gina against the town temperature gauge…and yes….+4C? And it’s snowing. Go figure?
Home at lunch time for a “nanna nap” for me and some computer work for Graeme. My food intake is almost back to normal, although cheese, meat and wine are still off my list. I may never look kindly upon chicken curry or a French sauscisson again. I now have another answer as to why that great big Lyonnaise sauscisson was called an “Oh Jesus!”.
Okay! So we’re going to get serious with “la neve”. We are now into our 3rd and last month in Arabba and so far only 16cm of snow has fallen since we’ve been here. Murphy’s Law will ensure that if we leave Arabba for a few days it will snow. And yes….a quick check this afternoon of the weather forecasts…..
Our original plan is to head to Venice on Friday for a long weekend. I will confess that I just love saying that! “Oh just ducking off to Venice for a long weekend!” I have been practising to say it in my most nonchalant tone…as if it’s something we’d do often, when in reality I don’t expect that I will ever have another opportunity to say this sentence again in my life-time.
So many of my friends have lived in London and I used to love hearing their tales of going to Paris or Berlin for the weekend. This ability to just “jet-off” somewhere exotic for a couple of days must truly be one of the most wonderful advantages of living in Europe. In just a couple of hours you are in a completely different country and culture. For us ANZAC’s it’s always a long plane flight costing serious mega-bucks and usually involving jet-lag!
So Venice here we come, whether you’re ready or not! By this I mean, regardless of water levels. It appears that Venice is starting to oscillate between either not enough or too much water in her canals. We will be going before the Carnivale festival starts at the end of February which, I hope, will mean slightly less tourists around than later in the month.
This “Carnavale” festival has had me a bit confused. Graeme came back to the apartment yesterday saying that the slopes were super crowded because our coffee man had told him it was a carnavale holiday? But when I googled “Carnavale in Italy”, I learned that any parties or festivals are usually only held about 2 weeks before the start of Lent which occurs 40 days before Easter. In 2017, the earliest any festivals would start is from the 14th of February, with the 28th being the last possible day. Given this information, I’m not entirely sure Graeme’s coffee man knows what he’s talking about. I did my own research and learned that Venice now has the most well known Carnavale festival but that festivals are also held in many other cities in Italy. I also learnt that other than timing, it’s got nothing to do with religion, but rather it’s all about being naughty and subversive before you have to be good and pious for the 40 days of Lent leading up to Easter. Back in the day when Venice ran it’s own show in the 1700’s, it was all the rage, but then the dour Austrians took over and banned the festival, particularly the wearing of masks. It seems the festival was forgotten about and it wasn’t until nearly 200 years later in 1979 that the first Carnavale festival was again held in Venice.
Armed with all this exciting new information we are quite enthused about our upcoming road trip. With the weather forecast looking decidedly average tomorrow we’ve decided to leave for our Venice trip a day early and spend an extra night on the way in a little walled city of Treviso.
Oxleys in Arabba 