A Little Alps Action

It's a strange feeling going from the warm, sunny beaches of Cannes right into the French Alps, which have feet upon feet of fresh snow.  This past Sunday I went to Isola 2000, a ski resort about 2 hours away, for the second time and it was super-mega-chouette (which is very outdated French slang for 'cool').  We caught a skibus from Cannes to the Alps for just 35 euro, ski ticket included.  It had snowed there the past few days, so the slopes were in fantastic shape.  We did a bunch of groomers, but we also tried some of the powder runs (or, according to William, "freshies").  One of the guys with us was a pro at shredding that sweet cherry pow-pow, and he attempted to show me how to board it as well.  I was about as bad at snowboarding in powder as I am at skiing in powder.  In other words, after the first 10 feet or so I attempted to turn (bad idea) and flopped over into the 4 feet of powder.  I then had to dig out both myself and my board, unstrap myself, and hike back to a place with packed snow.   I liked the challenge of it, though, and got slightly better at it throughout the day.  Okay, so 'slightly better' might actually be exaggerating.  Nonetheless, snowboarding the Alps was every bit as incredible as I'd hoped it would be: at the top of the lift, we looked back and saw rows upon rows of snow-covered mountains.  

At the end of the day we were running about 2 minutes late for the bus because I'd gotten a bit lost on the backside of the mountain.  When we arrived at the meeting place, we discovered that our bus for Cannes had already left.  The bus driver for Nice grudgingly allowed us on to his bus, which had too few seats.  One girl had to sit in a pull-out seat by the driver, and another guy had to stand.  I was lucky enough to get a seat, although it was between three loud French teenage boys who cried "ooooohhhh heh heh, bonjour ma fille" when I squeezed into the seat.  We left, expecting to have to take the train from Nice to Cannes once our bus arrived.

The Nice bus stopped unexpectedly after 20 minutes and the driver told each of us to get off.  Startled, we left the bus and realized that the driver had radioed ahead to the Cannes bus and asked it to pull over so we could get on.  As we climbed the steps onto the bus, all of the French people on board erupted into applause.