Verbier!

After a long trip from Val Thorens with a stopover in Moutiers (France), we finally arrived in Verbier last night.  In the middle of a blizzard.  With all our bags.  Whereupon we hailed a taxi whose driver seemed to have no idea where our chalet was (despite having both the street address and a Google Maps printout with the location marked.)  After a couple laps around the town square we finally arrived.  This morning we woke up to:

SNOW!!!!

Unfortunately, the visibility quickly turned into something like this:

and kept getting worse.  We saw lots of people coming *down* off the mountain, so we decided that maybe we’d just go for breakfast at the Offshore Cafe:

The next problem was that my trusty ski jacket decided this was the right time to have a catastrophic main zipper failure.  Ugh.  Maybe fixable, but not in the middle of a week in Verbier.  So now Lili’s happy because we get to go SHOPPING!!!  For a ski jacket.  In one of the most expensive ski resorts in the world.  In peak season.  Yay.

The first problem was finding anything that would fit me.  Europeans, it seems, don’t believe in ‘big and tall’ sizing.  It looked grim at first, but we did find a few shops with some jackets that would fit me.  The second problem was that ski jackets in Verbier cost only marginally less than a used car.  But after visiting pretty much every sport shop in town we did eventually manage to find a workable new Salomon ski jacket for me that will not require a second mortgage.  Look for it in this week’s pictures!

Then, about 2:30 PM, the skies began to clear and the visibility dramatically improved.  But at that point it was too late for us to try to ski today — by the time we got back to our chalet, changed into our boots, and got onto the lifts it would have been at least 3, if not 3:30.  So we just enjoyed the view:

And we’ll be out to hit what’s left of the powder tomorrow.  Looks like clear weather for a day, then another storm system rolling in.  Hopefully we’re not snowbound the rest of the week!