The Winter Games

I had a Ball!
A few of us decided that we deserved a bit of a break after mid-terms, and so we planned a trip to Turin... and by 'we' I mean David.
We got onto a train at midnight via Pisa; I could have flown home in the amount of time I spent on this train, but we all curled up like a litter of pups in a small sleeper, and when we woke up an eternity later, we were in Turin.
I was impressed with how organized everything was (you know me well enough to know I would say that). Everything was seamless. There were no lines, and people everywhere to help you and tell you how to get to where you needed to go in fifty different languages.
We got to Pinerolo Palaghiaccio just after mid-day, and watched curling. Now, I have lived in Canada for the last five years and I have never been able to get into curling, but it was so exciting being there! It's a bit like cricket that way.
The USA vs. UK, and Italy vs. Germany games were particularly interesting to watch.
After curling, we hopped on a train and a couple of busses up to Sauze d'Oulx to see the freestyle skiing, stopping off at Prangelato for lunch where we saw a few athletes warming up. It was so beautiful in the mountains; it reminded me of Switzerland. There was a thick blanket of snow over everything. It had been snowing all day.
We reached the top of the mountain around seven to find out that the skiing had been cancelled. Admittedly, the snowfall was still heavy and visibility was low,.. okay we were in a full on blizzard. Also, the buses that had brought us up were now stuck in all the ice and snow, so our group: team OCAD, and the rest of the crowd there to see the event were stranded outside. It was actually quite funny, particularly because the snow just wouldn't let up.
After hanging around and having fun and being rowdy with a few American and Canadian tourists, I found some warmth in a ticket outlet nearby (frostbite a few Birthdays ago and fear of getting it again has haunted me for life).
An hour or so later, we decided join the crowds and make the treck down the mountain. By that time the snow had stopped and it ended up being a really pretty walk/slide down. We slept the rest of the night in a train station with at least sixty others to catch our 6am train back to Florence.
All in all it was quite an adventure.
I'm going back next weekend for sure !