Porté Puymorens

In Spain, the week before Easter and the Monday after are holidays, so during Semana Santa we stayed in a town in France with Oli’s parents, skiing in the Pyrenees there and in Andorra.

Lily spent her first time in daycare/nursery when we skiied in Andorra, and overall it was successful. She only spent two two-hour periods there, but it was a big deal for her parents to know she ultimately liked it. At the end of the day we made the mistake of skiing to the bottom of the mountain to return our gear, thinking we’d take the Telecabina back to the top and collect Lily without the heavy stuff. Unfortunately you couldn’t take the lift back up at this point in the day, so after being reassured that this happened all the time, the attendant called up to the nursery and had a teacher bring her down. She returned to us a bit teary eyed because she hadn’t wanted to leave.

Otherwise, we had a mixture of good and bad ski conditions. On the day we went to Andorra, the sun was shining but the snow was in patches of slush and ice, making things very tricky. Oli and I had an encounter with a red run made of ice that left us both on our bottoms covered in a shower of snow rained upon us from the scrape of our skis or snowboard as we cascaded down what felt like a vertical drop. After finishing the much easier second half of the run, we re-ascended in the lift, watching other skiers on that piste approach the edge, stop, look around, then descend and fall on their asses.

Nana Lisa and Papa Ray got in a lot of good playtime with Lily. Papa Ray shared all the photos on his camera with her and Nana Lisa took her on walks with baby doll and pram. On the day we returned to Barcelona we had a nice meal at a restaurant near our apartment. The staff were warm, the food very good, and the patrons relaxed about Lily wandering around, wrapping her baby in a cloth napkin and sticking her tongue out at herself in a mirror. The relaxed afternoon was made even more ideal when the chef turned the TV to Formula One coverage for us.