What a Difference a Day Makes!

We estimate that yesterday 3" of rain fell in Garmisch. If there was a drought before, there is no longer. Too bad it wasn't colder, or there would be 3 new feet of snow in Garmisch.

Last evening before we went to bed, the rain finally subsided. I heard it start up again around 5:00 a.m. Then around 8:00 a.m., the rain began to transition into wet snow. All of the lifts in Garmisch were closed today, so it is a good thing that we hadn't planned to ski.

We loved almost everything about the Zugspitze Hotel. Our room was spacious and comfortable, we could control the temperature, service was great, the ski room was immaculate, the meals were incredible. The only things we thought were less than stellar about the hotel were the internet service and the massages. Neither one of us was very impressed by the masseuse, a 30-year-old young man named Chris, because he didn't put much muscle into his massages. If Martha, Brock's mother, had been a client of Chris's, she would have complained, "He barely touched me. He must think I'm an old woman!" Well, when we were loading our car up to check out, Chris drove into the garage in a big souped-up $130,000 Mercedes! I don't know where Chris got the money to buy that car, but it was not from massage tips!

The beautiful drive to our next destination, St. Anton am Arlberg, Austria, took us only about 1-1/2 hours. We drove in snow the whole way and held our breath that "Slippy", our front-wheel-drive car, would not get stuck on the slick roads. The roads were pretty clear until we got close to St. Anton. Our hotel, the Valluga Hotel, is lovely and nicely updated, and we were relieved that our room was ready for us when we arrived. The hotel is so close to skiing that we could watch the lifts running from the glass elevator.

We heard that St. Anton had also had rain the past several days and that the skiing had not been very good. But now St. Anton was having a full-on blizzard, complete with wind.

Brock considered skiing today but decided it might be a more pleasant day to ski tomorrow. So we went out to find a bite of lunch.

As we often do, we found a nearby Italian restaurant, "Dolce Vita", for a nice pasta lunch. The star of the lunch was "Broccoli Al Forno", broccoli in a creamy sauce with tomatoes and mozzarella cheese on top - yum!

We walked around enough to see that there is a nice pedestrian area with hotels, shops, and restaurants, similar to Garmisch. But with the wind blowing snow into our eyes, it was not the best day to walk around and check the area out in detail.

Brock noted that we are close to the Police Department (Poliziei) in case of any infractions such as spear-touching:

Slippy is tucked away into the parking lot along with all the other snow-covered vehicles:

We were happy to retreat to our hotel to unpack, rest, and prepare for a full day of skiing tomorrow.