Skiing at Luz Ardiden, in the French Pyrenees

Wow. What a GREAT weekend. So great, in fact, that it's taken me a few days to recuperate from the greatness and get back to normal Bilbao life and school and blogging. On Friday night, a group of six friends - myself and Cade (the Texans), Stephanie (another Texan who goes to UT), Dane (from Boston), Francois (the Belgian), and Lina (from Sweden), all set out with our ski jackets and bags for the French Pyreness. It was about a 4 hour bus ride from Bilbao, but it couldn't have been a more perfect weekend. And I actually went skiing without falling on my ass (well, not too many times...)

We took a tour-bus-type thing with a bunch of Spaniards up and back. When we got there late Friday night, we checked into our cute little 6-person apartment. It was so tiny, but it was so cozy! Cade and I slept in the bedroom, Dane and Francois slept on the futon in the living room and Lina and Stephanie slept in the other bedroom. We had our own kitchen, our own bathroom and our own balcony which overlooked a breathtaking view of the snow-capped French Pyrenees mountains. It was so picturesque!

The next morning, we woke up early and headed out to ski! The only thing was, as expected, the three Texans were the only ones who didn't bring ski pants. I thought they'd rent them like in the States, but apparently not. So we had to go buy ski pants that morning (59 euro!) and then we all went to rent our ski equipment. After that, we left for the slopes.

I've never seen a better ski resort than this one. The mountains were gorgeous, and even though I'm not advanced enough to do any deathly slopes, the routes I went down were incredible. The six of us skied pretty much all day (at times the girls separating from the ambitious boys who wanted to go do the blacks - my boyfriend included...). We had packed food for sandwiches the night before so we didn't have to spend money there for food, so that was definitely an added plus. When the ski resort closed at 5, we took our bus back to the apartment, where we nurtured our achey sunburned faces the best we could. None of us thought to bring sunscreen, and by the time we got back to the apartment after a day's worth of skiing in a beautiful-no-cloud-in-the-sky-day, our poor faces were scorched. But we had so much fun that night - we all walked the French grocery store, bought dinner (spaghetti, meat sauce and cucumbers) and breakfast (cereal bars, fruit and croissants), and walked back home to make our delicious supper.
However, I think Cade had too much sun that day, because when we were out buying groceries, he had this migraine and kept saying his head was pounding. He wasn't saying his sentences clearly, and didn't seem to understand what was going on around him. He seemed drunk without drinking anything. It scared me to death because I've never seen him like that before, but he just went to sleep and stayed asleep when we got home. The next morning, he seemed fine.

That next morning, we went skiing for our second day, and had a blast. We took PLENTY of pictures, but just know that some of the pictures on the website aren't mine and I took them from Lina and Stephanie off Facebook because they had some great group shots. Also, the crazy-awesome group shot of all six of us on the slopes was done by Dane, whose self-timing skills on the camera still amaze me. He actually set the timer and made it back in the picture before it shot it - all on his skis! That's probably why it seems that everybody in the picture is laughing so hard - we were laughing because Dane had just made it into the group when the camera flashed. Great stuff!

But anyway, as the guys went on to the blacks (the hardest slopes), the girls stayed together and did the greens and blues. We left at 3pm, returned all our equipment and headed back home to Bilbao. We got back around 8, and were so exhausted and sore that all we could do was sleep once we got back to our apartment.

We had SO MUCH FUN this weekend! I hope y'all did too. :)

-Bana

P.S. We just wanted to say THANK YOU for everyone who has been posting on this blog. We absolutely love to see your comments, and it's so nice to hear from all of you back home. Please keep it up. :)