So begins our last week in St Anton

I woke up this morning to find the weather forecasters were spot on again!  They had predicted snow and when I opened the curtains that’s all I could see.  Everything was covered in a layer of brand new snow and it was coming down hard!

Nathan and I had learned that the weather forecasters are pretty good here, so he already knew that with such heavy snowfall visibility would be very low and skiing wouldn’t be as good so we had planned a day of non skiing activities!

We had spoken to Marco about hiring toboggans and he told us he had a couple of brand new ones that we were welcome to use for free, he also showed us where the tools were for us to be able to make a snowman :)

So that was the plan for today!

Like all plans it didn’t really work out that way….

While I was waiting for Nathan to wake up I checked Facebook (of course) and my emails.

There was an email from Dane (our Lawyer in Port Vila) with our draft contract to buy La Casa, the restaurant in Port Vila that we had put the offer on.  A couple of changes needed to be made so I sent it back to him to have the amendments made.

Next was an email from our Solicitor in Brisbane for the Newnham sale….the buyer has been a pain in the arse from day one and today was no different!  Missing contract dates, asking for extensions…this guy just seemed to be determined to drive us to terminating the contract!  Just to piss him off I refused and after a few stressful hours of back and forth with the solicitors he finally (3 days late!!!) gave the last approval and we went unconditional….hoofreakingray!

To celebrate Nathan and I decided we needed to have desserts and Heisse Punsch (a hot Rum, Sangria and Juice Punch) at Fuhrmannstube.

First we went shopping and we bought Nathan his first GoreTex ski jacket!  It doesn’t look flash but it’s top of the range ski gear, super light and super thin.  We then bought a nice new fleece to go underneath just in case the temperature dipped again.

Then off to find lunch!  I had been craving pizza, so we went to Dolce Vita.  Great value food there, I got a huge pizza and Nathan got Spaghetti Alla Matriciana, both were very tasty :)

Another plus is they are right across the road from Fuhrmannstube so we wandered over and ordered our Heisse Punsch and desserts.

I couldn’t resist the Palatschinken mit Marillenmarmalade und Shlagobers (Pancakes with apricot jam and cream, dear Lord I am addicted to them!) but Nathan tried Chocolate Souffle with Vanilla Ice Cream and Cream (I can’t remember the German name for this) and enjoyed it very much.  We will have to make time for one more visit before we leave so we can both have the Apfelstrudel mit Vanillesauce one more time….

Feeling extremely full and quite relaxed and warm inside from the Punsch, we strolled home where I decided a nap would be better than toboganning….when I woke 3 hours later it was too late to think about toboganning, we had a snowman to build!

Gathering together our accessories and a shovel we went out into the back yard and created a masterpiece!  I think this is the biggest snowman we have ever made!  The conditions were perfect, tonnes of light fluffy show had fallen and continued to fall as we were building :)

Pictures are on Facebook (of course)!

To top off the day we returned home where I cooked us a simple dinner of marinated turkey breasts, potatoes in garlic and mustard cream and rotkraut.

We bumped into Marco on the way back in and he invited us to go to his local pub tomorrow night for some drinks and traditional Tyrolean music, should make for an interesting blog tomorrow ;)