This time at least I'm going on holidays (although my life is sort of a holiday at the moment) which is fantastic. It also means I know how to get around the airport, where stuff is (like free internet) all of which is handy but doesn't totally make up for the fact that I'm in the airport again!
Yesterday we went skiing. The place was about an hour from Beijing, along the same highway as the one we used for our Great Wall trip. When I'd gone on that trip I saw a temple thing on top of a hill in the distance and wondered what it was. Well after some driving, a few wrong turns and some side road trips through tiny villages with a little snow around, it turns out it's actually the top of a chairlift!!
The snow at the place was entirely man made, but it was pretty good snow for all that. Usually in Australia the man-made snow gets really icy cause it gets hot during the day but it wasn't too bad.
Jane and I weren't allowed to go together because they separate the beginner skiers and snowboarders (a good thing as I was to find out later). I'm a reasonable skier though (for an Australian :) so I had a few goes on the beginner slope, a few on the intermediate then went to the top of the mountain for a bit of speed. It had been about 7 years since I went last but I was surprised to find I was actually pretty good which is nice. The only time I fell over was when I was standing in line at the chairlift (the lines got worse and worse through the day, glad we went early) when an errant snowboarder lost control coming down a slope and slammed into the line. I was the third person in and I was still knocked over! The guy he hit was seriously pissed as well, the snowboarder got up then this guy knocked him down again, I thought they were going to have a punch up but it calmed down eventually. I saw him later falling off the pommel, then again at the top falling off the chairlift. Some people just aren't meant to ski!
My only complaint about the day were the queues. By about 1:30, it was 2 minutes down the mountain, 15 minutes in the queue, 5 minutes on the chair then 2 minutes down again.
Because we used this card system, we didn't know how much it was going to cost us all up so we were pretty staggered at the end of the day to find it cost us just over $40 each for lift passes, skis (or board), jacket, pants and gloves. That was for half a day, it went up to $50 for a whole day. Not a bad way to spend a sunday really!
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