Excited about the trip to Livigno but as always dreading the thought of driving there! It's Saturday and I'm sure the roads will be clogged! Fingers crossed we won't get lost and it won't be as chaotic as during the last school holiday period! We left Dana to lock up for us and we headed off at 8am to hopefully make Livigno before dark.
1/ Lost in a Blizzard!
So much for the wishful thinking!!!
Do you need snow in your resort? Well, let Andy & Graeme know and they will plan a road trip to your area. Why, why, why does it alway chuck down with snow whenever we want to go somewhere?
Penny the GPS, is seriously in our bad books. The route she planned for us, over a high mountain road turned out to be closed during the winter! But to discover this inconvenient little fact, we had to drive through another pass at 2330m in a full blizzard and white out conditions. The snowbanks on the side of the road towered over us almost engulfing the 10m snow poles. Visibility was down to about 2m as the howling wind drove snow over the road. Eventually it was all too much for Pepi and we began sliding all over the road. Poor ol' Graeme had to get out and put the chains on. After surviving all this, imagine our disgust when we then learned that our road was closed and we had to go back the way we had come. Oh the joys of European driving!
Turning Penny off, we found the only other alternative into Livigno, a one way tunnel through the mountains from the Swiss side. Of course it's Saturday isn't it? This means that it's changeover day and the road is clogged with people leaving and arriving at the resort. A little tricky when you only have a one-way tunnel!!
Of course, the first we knew about this was when we were stopped by officials on the mountain road and herded into a muddy paddock with about 500 other cars. We had no idea what was going on, but every one else seemed to be sitting patiently in their cars waiting for something to happen. So as the saying goes, "when in Rome..." When I say people were waiting patiently, I'll exclude the occupants of the numerous vans with Czech, Polish and Slovakian number plates. They didn't seem at all concerned about the wait. They were playing disco music, throwing down beers and vodka and dancing around in the mud. Quite entertaining really. Although the novelty did start to wear off after the first hour!!
To ensure that the mountain road does not become gridlocked, during periods of heavy traffic, officials herd all cars into large grass holding pens. Unfortunately, the grass doesn't survive and with all the traffic, they become large smelly quagmires! In this way they can control the number of cars through the tunnel and at the swiss border beyond.
But the really exciting time comes when the officials open the gate of the holding pen to release the set number of cars onto the road. It's a Le Mans start in the mud. 16 lanes of cars are trying to take a U corner in deep mud and narrow to 2 lanes at the same time. I have never seen anything like it, in all my life. In the end, to save the nervous breakdown, I just closed my eyes and let Graeme fight his way through the mess.
No sooner did we get through the tunnel, than we were queued again at the Swiss Border. Another E$25 cash just to get out of Switzerland! Thank you very much!! No doubt about the Swiss! They certainly know how to cash in on the tourist at every possible step.
2/ The quagmire! Gentlemen, start your engines!!
It's now dark and finally we have arrived in Livigno. To top off a rather fraught day, our mobile phone is not working. We can text out but we cannot use it to make phone calls. We have no idea why this is and no patience left to find out. Eventually, with some luck we find our apartment and meet our lovely young hostess, Genni Zini.
The apartment is very neat and tiday, although it's in the roof cavity on the 3rd floor of the apartment building. 51 stairs from the ground! I think it will suit us nicely for the week, although Graeme may develop a nasty crook in his neck!!
3/ Graeme in our height challenged apartment
Dumping our gear, we were off again to find the La Skieda Festival head-quarters at the other end of the town. We managed this with out further incident even though it was now snowing very heavily. Registered, we returned with our flat to get some sleep before the big first day of the festival!
While today was certainly a challenging one, there was some good news.....along the way through Italy we came upon what looked very much like the Australian "Twisties" snack food. A perennial favourite of ours we were excited to try them. Same packaging, same twistie rice crisp shape, but with a milder cheese flavour than the strong chedder flavour of the Australian version. Yum!
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