Christmas in Paradiski

Well well well. Welly welly welly. Wellity wellity wellity. What a week.

It's been somewhere between brilliant and an absolute living nightmare. Which is particularly apt, because of the general lack of sleep. However, we think (and hope) we may have turned the metaphorical corner.

If you've never made a full Christmas dinner before (turkey, pigs in blankets, cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, sprouts with lardons, vichy carrots, turkey gravy, stuffing - all from scratch) then starting with 16 paying guests can be a tricky start. Especially when combined with an oven that's approximately 1/3 of the size you require, and a general need to serve wine, cook, clean and direct people. However, all went well (wild glossing over of general stress and things not going to plan) and people were happy and full of food (true).

The last week has had its highs and lows. Doing a 35 hour week in two days a possible low point, receiving general approbation from our guests for the service provided in the first week a probable high point. Also, a good few hours of snowboarding fun kept spirits sufficiently high, and made everything feel worthwhile.

The Vanoise Express, which spans the valley between the Les Arcs and La Plagne skiing areas opened on Saturday, and it travels infrequently across the balcony vista. It's an impressive double-decker supportless cable car with flashy lights on to deter planes. We will use our full Paradiski pass to get across to La Plagne soon hopefully. This is a picture of the cables disappearing into the mist, which itself comes and goes ('cause it's literally clouds), and one of the "cars" themselves.

In general, uninteresting news, my back mostly hurts on the right side through constant "wash on, wash off" cleaning motions, and my hands are all kinds of dry and useless. It's also super easy to gain a series of burns on your forearms from the oven/wood fire. I am a excellent firestarter now however, arguably twisted. Despite having a constant and seemingly unending supply of booze, the lack of time (or inclination) to drink any has made my capacity for consuming alcohol shockingly low - the smallest dram of anything and I'm ready for bed.

As per usual I had lots of exciting information to put across, but have failed to remember any of it after a pizza and two (count them) beers.

A little about snowboarding: the snow has dissipated a little over the last few days and, after last Wednesday's powder fest, this day off was considerable slower, more icy and mogul-y. The view from the lift this early afternoon, as there's no chance we're getting up early on our only day off, was thus:

There was still plenty of high-speed hijinks, with lots of hilarious mogul work. Unfortunately there were far too many people about, and they're all idiots. There were actual queues for the lifts, where the only rule is to be as inconsiderate and clumsy as possible.

I can't really think of much else to say at this stage. The amount of work we do every day is a bit frightening, especially considering the number of actual tasks we complete. It's a bit overwhelming thinking about it. You take one task at a time and try to get things done as quickly as possible so you can get some sleep and do it all again. However, currently promising ourselves a less worky Summer. The place is still gorgeous, and we're trying to speak more French. We took the lady in the bread shop some brownies on Christmas day: she was very happy!

Still glad we're here. We've not done as much reading, relaxing, sending postcards or seeing the local area as we'd initially hoped but it is beautiful, and rest is for the weak. Here's a picture of the evening view as we went out for dinner and a drink.