"When Hell freezes over, we'll ski there too."

Some of you may be wondering, "What's so great about that breakfast?" Well, there is a nice selection of cereals, but on top of the cereals you can have bits of dried fruit (like bananas, papayas, pineapple, and papaya covered in white chocolate.) There are paper-thin slices of dry hams and various cheeses to have on all sorts of bread, a toaster, and croissants. There are slices of fruit like watermelon, melon, or pineapple, fruit salad, and there's a corner where you can cut fresh vegetables or fruit for yourself. There are sixteen different kinds of tea - with three forms of sugar, and four kinds of juice. There is bacon, tiny sausages, and there's a woman who will professionally fry you up an omelette folded over the toppings you choose: I have onion, bell pepper, and bacon, and Leia tends to prefer bacon and cheese. Today I waited an unusually long time in line for that egg, and Leia was more than halfway through her breakfast when I started mine.

For our last ski day we decided to visit every blue run on the mountain (that we were able to get to) so Leia planned us a route that went for a few warm-up runs on 26 (the beginner slope), then runs on 3, 7, a short break, 1, another break, 29, 2, and 12 to the bottom. It was freezing cold today, -20 degrees at the top with winds that made it feel chilly, so for the first part of the day we stopped after nearly every run to warm up our hands inside. We had lunch at Glocknerhaus on run 1 (above Glocknerbahn.) I had a hamburger and chips, not with snowboarder meat this time; Leia had only hot chocolate. She skied great everywhere, and really seemed to enjoy herself when she wasn't freezing too much. It was snowing last night and in the morning, so we had some new snow but run 12 leading down to the city center was a series of slick hardpack chutes Leia did not enjoy as much. After we almost got run over by some racers practicing on run 17, she gracefully skied down the last bit of 11 for her very first black run. I let her think it was blue and she thought it was easy. We reached the bottom at 1500 and Leia wanted to keep skiing, so we rode the lifts all the way up to Panorama restaurant, where I wanted to rest a while. We had time after that only to ski 3 and 7 again to wrap up our week before they began closing the lifts behind us.

We returned Leia's rental gear and bought me new poles, and her a new pair of ski pants - proving that she's committed to keep on skiing at every opportunity. Then we went back to rest in the sauna. Dinner was a "buffet meal" including all sorts of meat, which I piled high on my plate and went back for more. My poor, patient girlfriend practically fell asleep while I was packing away veal. After dinner we were too tired to go out, and barely had the energy to begin packing most of our things.