Hey Yall,
This weekend was easily the best weekend of 2010. I'm going to do this update in three different parts because there is so much to say about each day. So here goes part 1: Friday
Thursday night/ Friday morning at 12:50 our train was scheduled to leave the Valencia train depot. We arrived 45 minutes to an hour early, which we knew wasn't customary but we didn't want to miss our opportunity. We had reserved our seats earlier in the day but we hadn't stamped our Eurail pass to activate it. Fortunately there was a man working late that was able to stamp our pass and get us ready to go. I've been on a couple trains before around Europe but the one we took was pretty slow in my opinion. I figured it would have gone faster than it did. Tim Allen, these trains need MORE POWER!!! After an 8 hour train ride (it wasn't really that bad) and a few sketchy people on the train (gotta watch your stuff, old smelly men try to steal it) we made it to Granada. We got off the train took a taxi to Hotel Nariz, a small hotel that had prices around what a hostel would be like. We dumped off our stuff and got changed for the Sierra Nevada!
A quick taxi ride to the bus station and we purchased our round trip tickets to the mountain. The bus took around 45 minutes or so to get to the top, but the driver was gettin' after it to get there. Renting equipment was painless. Because we were students we got 10% off rentals. Lift tickets were somewhat expensive but you only live once right? The mountain itself was beautiful. The city of Granada was below and was almost too serene. Skiing was pretty good on the mountain. I'd have to say Banff was still the best skiing I've ever done, but southern Spain skiing? Check. Around 3 or 4 the clouds rolled in and started dumping serious amounts of snow on us. By 5 it was a complete white out, and pretty hard to see. It was some of the best powder I have skied in on the other hand.
The resort closed at 5 and our bus was scheduled to leave around 6:30 so we waited in the ski shop for it to arrive. We had a few snowball fights and built some snow men while we waited. At 6:30 we went down to the bus loading area to find that it had not arrived. We were told that the road was blocked because a car careened off the cliff and they closed down the one road to get into the resort.
We waited for a couple hours to see if the road would open back up, but decided to get a hotel instead (Mom, aren't you proud?). We stayed in the Mont Blanc (not sure if it has anything to do with the pen) and it was first class. They had a buffet which three of us shamelessly devoured after a full day of skiing.
We went to our rooms and talked for a couple hours and called it a night. - Sean
Here are a few pictures (including a reenactment of Dumb and Dumber "We'll take it!") Saturday and Sunday will come later (it's siesta here!)
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