Knight and Princess: Ski in Stoten

Embarked on a 10hr pilgrimage to Salen, and the trusty GPS device was such a great help. It was the first time I’ve ever used a GPS (Global Positioning System, helps to track where u are and guides u thru the driving routes) so it was really fascinating for me at how accurate it was. There was a voice prompt as well, and it was so accurate that just a little turn off the route and they will “recalculating” and prompt u to “ make a u turn in 500m”. They can even prompt the estimated time you will be reaching, the upcoming speed meters, and the nearest food near you.

Stopped over at Formulae 1 hotel for the night, before ploughing on…

There, finally reached at our resort on Thurs afternoon, a cosy little hut with cooking facilities..

I managed to learn to ski by Fri morning! But by the end of the ski trip, I only dared to ski on the green (easiest) slopes coz I thought the ski speed down was already too fast and I think the steeper slopes will freak me out. Plus, I cant stand the ski lift which will bring u up the slopes. It was just a rubber pad the size of ur bum, u grabbed the hoist as it is coming, quickly insert the hoist+pad between ur legs, and let the small rubber pad jerk and drag ur bum up. I fell off the ski lift a few times, once embarrassingly in the middle of the journey up. So had to wait until the whole row of ppl pass me (mostly kids with “how come u so clumsy look”) before I can clamber to safety.

Here's pix of the ski slopes.. many many ski slopes within the same resort:

The pix dosent do the slopes justice.. trust me if u are there, the slopes look more menacing and steeper than in the pix! Here's from the top..

Cant stand the gearing up too, even worst than diving.. the boots are super heavy..

One thing abt the kids, I see kids like less than 4 years old skiing like a pro, and most of them even venture up to the black slopes (most difficult and steepest), doing stunts.. ah,cant stand it, feel really clumsy and stupid especially when I was like falling like nobody’s business on the gentle slopes at first.

It started snowing on Sat and heavily on Sun morning, wow..first time I see heavy snow!

We wanted to detour to Norway (we were like at the fringe) on the way back but had to abandon the plans due to the bad weather. Anyway, here’s some pix along the way, literally felt I was going thru winter to spring view in the span of 12 hours as we were driving from North to South.

Passed by a frozen lake…

We also stopped by Gota Canal, a famous canal that links up the east and west side of Sweden. Saw a documentary on this before, what’s special is that the canal is man-made, and a lot of engineering work involved as the rivers are at different water levels. So that they had to build gates, whenever the boats reach a different water level, they will open the gates and let water at each side of the gates slowly move to same level, so that the ship can ‘climb’ up or down the river..