Bardonecchia

Finally, I am at the Bardonecchia Olympic Village! We drove up to Bardonecchia on Saturday night around 10pm and after 1hr 30min later we checked into our apartments. I have to share a 2-bedroom apartment with a German colleague, who will arrive only on Wednesday, 18-Jan. But for now, I am temporary staying in a single-bedroom apartment - thanks to the Italian who gave me the wrong apartment key! Sigh... What else is new? Seems what can go wrong, will always go wrong with them. Haha...

Sunday morning I had a tour of the Olympic Village (which is about 5min walk from my apartment). Most of the constructions are still under way... Bardonecchia is a small ski-resort town. It has a small town centre (5min drives from my apartment) where the street is closed for people to walk & shop - something like our Holland Village.

Had lunch at a cafe bar & after that we did some grocery shopping at one of the supermarket to stock up for the apartment. Most of the shops here are closed from 1pm - 4pm, open again from 4pm - 8pm. One thing about Italy is that they are super visitor unfriendly - by that I mean all the menu, products instruction, road signs, TV channels, etc are all in Italian. Absolutely nothing written in ENGLISH! When comes to ordering food, we have to either rely on our Italian colleagues to explain what's on the menu OR we start to anyhow order & be mentally prepared when the food come.

Went back to my apartment & had to do my laundry. This time the challenge is the washing machine has only Italian instructions. Fortunately, before I came to Italy, a colleague of mine gave me an Italian Phrasebook by Lonely Planet. And it has Italian - English dictionary! So I sat in the toilet to figure the Italian translation. Before you think otherwise, sat in the toilet because the washing machine is inside the toilet lah! =P

Managed to get my laundry done - Perfecto! But the washing machine doesn't have the dryer function. No worries, because the apartment has this portable laundry stand. So I took the laundry stand out to the balcony, since the sun was out & I thought that will help to dry my clothes a little quicker. Switched on the TV, watched "Batman" (which is in Italian), don't understand a thing they say, not long after I fell asleep... Hee! Went out with my colleague to roam the town centre again around 4.30pm because the shops should be opened again by then...

Came back to the apartment around 6pm & by then it was dark already. It was really good to be back because with the heater on, it's definitely warm & comfortable than the freezing cold -13 degrees outside! Since it was dark, I thought I should check out my clothes at the balcony & to my horror, I found all my clothes frozen! It doesn't need a genius to know that water + cold temperature = ice... So I guess my brain was frozen because it just didn't occur to me at the time when I took the wet clothes out to dry... Anyway, my clothes froze up as if I have just starched them - so hard & stiff. Joker man... Quickly brought them in (before any one on the street sees me with frozen clothes!), placed them near the heater unit. Next morning, the clothes were dry & back to normal again. Haha!