Big Adventures, Little World

For once I was leaving for a holiday and it wasn’t some ridiculous hour in the morning that I had to be up to get to the airport. What a luxury it was too. We had the chance to finish packing, making sure we had everything we needed, have some breakfast, and even just sit around and relax a bit. Then it was away in the taxi, and off to Gatwick Airport to board our plane.

We were headed to Toulouse in France, where we would then have a 3 hour coach ride to the apartment in Soldeu, Andorra. There wasn’t much to the flight, like all flights really around Europe and only took about an hour or so. We even got fed on the plane which was great, but other than that it was completely uneventful.

Once we arrived at Toulouse it was still being built and as we walked for ages we didn’t see anyone other than the other people getting off the plane and we talking loudly, laughing and joking, until we came around a corner and there was men with machine guns standing there. Pretty standard stuff in European airports really, but it was a bit of a shock when we hadn’t see anyone until then and they were the first people we came across. On we went though and made our way through customs, and then it was out the airport and onto our coach for the lovely drive ahead of us.

The bus was much the same as the plane ride, uneventful. It got dark not long after we left and we didn’t even notice that we slowly climbing through the mountains. It wasn’t until we were high up and coming close to Soldeu that I noticed out the window that the sides of the roads were covered in snow and all up the mountains as well. It all become very real that we were in the heart of the mountains and that we were really going be surrounded by snow for the next week, touching it, playing in it, walking through it and eating it. It was going to be a great week.

Once we arrived into Soldeu we were greeted by a van to take our luggage up to our apartment, seeing as there was a big hill to walk up. It wasn’t that bad as we were used to walking up hill to get to our house anyway, but it was sure to get annoying by the end of the week, or maybe it would get easier. We could hope. So off our luggage went as we had to walk to the top. It was about 10 PM and after getting into our apartment and putting our luggage in, it was then back down to the bottom of the hill to get some pizza, as that was about the only place that was open, then it was back up the hill again. Maybe it was going to be a long week! At least then it was just eat and sleep so we could be up nice and early for school, snowboard school that is.