We were woken up this morning at 7 am by some machinery outside our window (in the carpark below). We thought maybe it was bin day here, but it turned out to be a ruddy great tractor attempting (for well over an hour) to clear the snow from the carpark (a necessary evil during winter one assumes), as there had been an enormous amount of snowfall during the night.
As we didn’t have any lessons or anything planned this morning, today was going to be our sleep in day too... (sigh). And to make matters worse, I slept very badly again last night, and awoke feeling like I’d once again been hit by a truck, which made being unceremoniously woken up even harder to take.
I won’t lie to you, but as much as I love this area, and as lovely and helpful as the staff of the Stelle Belle are, I wouldn’t come back to this hotel again because of the really uncomfortable beds and pillows. Between the lumpy, hard ‘mattresses’ (and I use the word loosely!) and the pillows that seem to be full of very small beads (or rocks!), all of which make getting a good night’s sleep here nigh on impossible.
After getting up (in slow motion due to my throbbing head) we went downstairs and had breakfast, then back to the room where I had a shower and Alex climbed back into bed to delete photos from her phone (which had already reached capacity!).
Then, before heading out for the day I went downstairs to the lobby to send off a couple of quotes to prospective clients who had requested them over the last couple of days, while Alex faffed around on her iphone). Unfortunately my work took a good couple of hours to finish. By the time I’d finished, it was after 11 am.
Alex wasn’t feeling that great either due to lack of sleep, so when we got back to the room we decided have a nap. Hey, what are holiday's for, right? About an hour and a half later we got up once more but were both still feeling groggy. During this time we had a lively debate on whether or not we should go skiing again or (because we were both so shagged) just drop the ski gear off at Japan Powder and collapse into bed again.
Skiing won (just barely) so we piled on a hundred layers of warm clothes again (so much work!) and trudged up the hill carrying our skis (which now seemed to weigh a ton) from the hotel to Escal Plaza. But even that short 5 minute walk took 10 minutes and was too much for us both and when we staggered into Escal Plaza we collapsed for a while in the food area and grabbed some yummy frozen yogurt (which tasted like ice cream) to give us a bit of energy for a ski. At least that was the plan. By the time we'd finished the frozen yogurt Alex had decided she wasn't going to ski after all. I couldn't really argue the point by this stage either as I was just as knackered as she was. So, instead we took Frosty (one of da 'boys'!) out for a quick 2 minute skiing photo op.
By this stage Alex was really struggling and had a big headache due to a pinched nerve in her neck and I was dutifully whinging about a Mount Vesuvius sized blister on my right big toe (ski boots are nowhere near as comfortable as snow boarding boots). But it was still late afternoon (too early to call it a day) so we took the skis and the ski clothes back then went to the hotel to get the other boys and some warm clothes so we could traipse, yet again, back up to Escal plaza. Once there we grabbed a Japanese Subway (with an, err...interesting, 'pizza sauce') and took da boys for a gondola ride to the top of the mountain. After which we had a good laugh making a snowman with Frosty. Then Alex grabbed a crepe and it was back to hotel.
Once there we went down to reception to use the internet (I had to send out some more quotes, etc while Alex did some research for Tokyo).
We were starting to feel a (tiny) bit more human by this stage, so it was back to the room where we ordered some pizza and started to pack. I also went downstairs and put on a big load of washing (which took an age to dry, due partly to the size of the load but mainly to do with the fact that the hotel had a washing machine and dryer all in one. Which neither of us had ever heard of let alone seen. Like, how the hell does that thing work?!).
When pizza came we chowed down and watched an episode of the Black List and some of the new series of Big Bang Theory on the laptop.
About midnight we collapsed into a stupor, glad - oh so glad - that the day was over.