Ski Trip

A few weeks ago Nadia was away in Amsterdam with a friend for the weekend so I decided to have a boy’s weekend away up in Sierra Nevada. Now the guys I was going skiing with had never skied before and one of them had not even seen the snow apart from the snow you see at the back of the freezer as they grew up in South Africa.

So we made our way up the ski resort which is about 3 hours away by car from Gibraltar. As any long road trip it was uneventful and a bit boring. When we got to the resort, apart from it being busy like any other weekend up there, it was also super cold. The car was indicating it was -3, whilst Gib was +15 degrees Celsius a few hours earlier. We settled into our nice warm apartment and it did not take us very long to start having a few drinks before dinner.

 

After dinner we went to a bar called Crescendo which is close to the slopes, as it is the best chill out bar up in the resort. We all had rum that night which was a good idea to start with but we ended up having 4 fairly large rums each, which racked up a bill of 120 euros!!!  And as we were heading back to the apartment I suggested to have one more beer before we went up which turned out to be 3 more. You can see where this is going…

The next day we all discovered that skiing with a hangover is not the best of ideas and even the weather had turned nasty for us. However we still braved it and still went up for a day on the slopes. The two other guys went for their 1^st snowboard lesson and I went to my own lesson until lunch. I spent the afternoon on the baby slopes with my mates as the weather was not very pleasant, but the guys got a lot of chance to practice their new skills, which were mainly falling and sitting on their bums, as it goes for new snowboarders.

The next day the weather had not improved much but the resort was still open. As we all still had our ski passes valid for the day we decided to hit the slopes even if it was for an hour or 2. I also learnt my lesson from the day before and was not hung-over that morning.  When we got the slopes there was very few people walking about let alone skiing as there was a thick and heavy fog, mixed with rain, which for me is the worst condition to ski in.

We only managed to ski until lunch before calling it a day. I enjoyed my weekend away with the lads, and they have picked up a new sport, which they want to continue practicing.

Happy Bunnies

It is around this time last year that we got our little furry bundle of joy called Pretzel, and since then he has grown a lot in size and hair. In the beginning him and his older brother Buttons were to sleep in different cages as they did not like sharing their cages.  

 

But we wanted them to be together and cuddle and be cute. So I did some research on how to make a bunny bond with another, and it not as easy as one thinks. To start off, you need to make sure they can see each other and smell each other through the cages but they need to be far enough for them not to bite each other through the bars. It gets better with outside time but apart from being supervised so they don’t eat the house, you need to be extra careful that they don’t fight each other.

Fighting did happen a lot during these past few tense months as they both needed to decide who is the boss: Buttons is the larger of the 2 but was not always the boss as Pretzel is a feisty little one. After many weeks and quite a few bunny fights later they have finally become the best of friends.

Both bunnies now cuddle together, sleep in the same cage and even share the same bowl of food, which is great as we have a little more space around the house using just the one cage. And we finally have something closer to the ibis bunny ad*.

Wet Wet Wet

No, I am not going to talk about the group but about the strong weather we had over last weekend. In the UK news they have been going on about the weather and the floods for a few weeks now and even though that I feel sorry for these people in the flood hit areas, Gibraltar has also had its fair share of stormy weather last weekend.

Luckily I was away skiing in Sierra Nevada and missed out on the most of it, but I still had to go through the worst of it on Sunday night. Driving back down from Sierra Nevada was nerve wracking to say the least, as the wind and rain started beating the windscreen of my car.

Some us know that Gibraltar has good weather all year round and it only rains a few days a year but unfortunately those few days of rain make up for the all the sunny days, and last Sunday was one of them. To add to the darkness of the day during a big storm, the power to most of Gibraltar kept going on and off which just adds that extra bit of gloom to the day.

Let’s hope spring comes soon to cheer us up.