January 2016

This was a rather quiet month for us. After the Christmas and New Year rush we took some time to relax and have some down time. We had a few big groups in for two weekends so that kept us busy. We also picked up another cleaning job in the village for six weeks over the February/March period. We are so pleased as we now have some money to get home and set up for our next adventure back in Newcastle!

The weather finally turned wintry and it snowed for the first two weeks of the month. It was lovely to see some snow, finally, but we were a little stuck as our car is not really ‘winterized’. On our first attempt to drive to the spa it was the coldest day at -18. The car did start but getting up the drive was impossible. Then Til found us some chains for our tires so we decided to try again the next day….but then the car wouldn’t start!! We thought we had done something to it trying to get it up the hill the previous day but it was just a low battery due to the cold weather. Luckily Til had a battery charger and he fixed us up.

Natalie celebrated her birthday but we didn’t do too much as we are trying to save as much money for the journey home and we were house sitting as Doro and Til were away for the weekend. We went to Austria the day before her birthday to get coolant for the car and to give the car a nice workout. We stopped at a Chinese buffet for lunch. The following day was the big day – we did some B&B things and had dippy egg sandwiches & fries for dinner with brownies and ice cream for desert. The food celebrations continued the next day when we had our first fondue. We used the end bits of all of the local cheese that we serve for breakfast and served bread, grapes, apples and steamed broccoli. It was lots of fun and very filling!! Now we have to try raclette.

We went skating a few times on the local rinks and one time we went to a very special track in Sur En (at the bottom of the valley) that is 3km long. They prepare it like a hiking or cross country skiing trail but it’s for skating. We went during he last week of January where we were teased with warm, spring-like weather. Needless to say, the skating track was a bit bumpy in spots where the trees were dripping their snow. But it was great fun – a little scary where the track went down hill and good exercise when it went back up. We will try it again in February along with tobogganing…stay tuned 🙂