I don't have the heart to rewrite it, so here are the highlights.
Second hike in the Val Veny turned out more difficult than we thought it would be, with far too much uphill, and very tired and whiny children, and I had to scramble on all fours with the baby on my back, so we quit after two hours (probably just before the good part) and went back to the rifugio where we had parked the car, and we had cappucino and ice cream.
Drove back down scary mountain road to Courmayeur, where we saw flags and banners and stopped to check it out.
Turns out they were awaiting the third place runner at the finish in an insane endurance trail race called the Tor des Géants. (330 km, 24,000 m vertical gain). We sent the kids to get ice cream and looked around.
After having scavenged a few scraps of vocabulary from the race brochure we grabbed from a table I managed to ask an Italian grandmother who was cooing at my baby, "One athlete has finished?" Un atleto ha finito?
She told me "Due," and the young woman sitting on her other side leaned over and added "Due matte," using a noun I did not previously know but which from the context I correctly guessed meant "crazies."
The grandmother showed me on the brochure map where the third place runner was, and I asked "È luntana?" which is the wrong gender but otherwise means "Is it far?" and she told me that they were one or two hours away and that the first and second place runners had come in about 9:40 that morning. I think that is what she said anyway.
I also, later, got a chance to practice telling people "I need a bathroom for the little guy."
We shopped at the grocery store in Courmayeur before coming back through the Mont Blanc tunnel. On the table for dinner I put sliced tomatoes, three fat balls of fresh mozzarella, oil and vinegar, seedy baguettes, a tube of paste labeled tonno e ketchup, boiled potatoes, more tuna canned in caponata sauce, some fruit that seemed to be a cross between a nectarine and a plum, proscuitto, and a cheap local white wine.
After dinner Mark and I polished off the wine and reworked our calendar of events to make sure we didn't overtax the smaller children. We won't do everything exactly how we planned, but we think we have made better plans now. Flexibility!
And a little bit of down time when we need it.
Posted with Blogsy
The fruit might be a pluot which is a cross between an apricot and a plum. They are outstanding if you get them in season.
Posted by: Jenny | 11 September 2014 at 07:47 PM