Day 13 - 4th November 2016

Slept in until 7am. We didn’t bother with showering (there was no time with Tim on a mission to check out), and we were packed up and on the road to Ortisei.

WOW, talk about windy roads!! We went up and up and up and then we came, down, down and down! The valleys are nothing short of spectacular! I can only imagine how pretty everything is when it is covered in snow. I would love to see this place in winter. Not to ski, but just to photograph some huts with the snow on the roof.

Some sneaky person went and stuck an OOAK sticker on the door of the souvenir shop up the top of the pass..... I wonder who that would be (hey Tim - any ideas on who??) lol

We arrived in Colfosco and headed up the pass towards Ortisei, when I asked Luca to stop the car so I could take a photo of a mountain, so he pulled over only for us to realise the road was closed!!!  WTF?

It meant we could not drive through to Ortisei! OMG!! Hilarious really when you think about it – the Italians are working and doing maintenance during November before the ski season starts on 8^th December. There are no tourists around, the whole area is like a ghost town and it is ok for them to close the roads with no notice to anyone.

We made the most of the opportunity and photographed a little church that was on a small hill next to the road. From there we coasted back down the big hill into Calfosch and had breakfast. Toasted cheese & ham panini’s with freshly squeezed orange juice & hot chocolates – yum!

So now we have to go all the way back from whence we came – not quite, but close to Cortina and go a different way via a different pass. This has totally buggered up Tim and Scotts plans to walk to Odle today. I think Scott is secretly happy he doesn’t have to walk, which may give Luca more time to try and find someone to let us up the mountain by car.

We stopped not far out of Ortisei at this mountain which looked pretty good and we all ran around taking a look for compositions.  We decided that this would be our sunset place!    We could even see Odle Mountain way off in the distance too which excited us a little bit!   At least we have seen it!

 We should have arrived in Ortisei by 9.30am and we have arrived at our new Apartment at 12.30pm.

Hotel Magdelena. We were greeted by our host who is just lovely. Just like Funess, Ortisei is mostly german speaking, but her english was very good as was her Italian and she and Luca had a great conversation.

Finally when they finished speaking, Luca informed us that she has a friend with a hut up the top of Odle and he should be able to us up there by car! OMG – really?? OMG how exciting!

Luca made the call. First we arranged for tomorrow morning at 6.30am, but the weather is due to turn tomorrow lunchtime if not sooner, and not to risk it, since the weather is reasonable today, Luca rang him back and he is going to take us up there at 4pm today. He is going to drive us right to the location. We will get out of the car – walk 20m maybe, take the photo, walk back to the car 20m and drive back to the hotel!!

OMFG – honestly, I couldn’t be more fricken excited right at this moment! I hugged our hostess…. I think I freaked her out a little! Ha ha ha

Even Luca is excited! He has never been up to the top before due to the huge hike, so he is now keen to see it too.

The whole mood has changed with our group. Honestly, it was the image I wanted from the trip. When I saw the Odle mountain in photos over the years, it looked like a dream and something I really wanted to see. Due to the extreme cold winds and my asthma I had accepted that I wouldn’t get the photo – our health is more important. But now, that we are going to get the shot – OMFG – SOOOOOOO EXCITED !!! Whooohoooooo!!

Ok…. Back to our rooms. It was similar to Funess with lots of pine everywhere, but this apartment was more modern in its styling. Steve and I have a seperate apartment all to ourselves with a big bedroom and a nice bathroom, lounge-room with kitchen! YAY! The views from our bedroom window is so beautiful looking down the valley. Ortisei town is outside our lounge-room window, and that is gorgeous too. Its a big town. Most of the centre is walking only, and we are on the border of the drive up and walk part, so that is good!

We love how the shower door opens up and it seals perfectly!

The weather is really due to turn ugly now. Today is Friday, and the weather is ok. The temperature is 4 degrees in Ortisei, but on the mountain it is anywhere from -4 to 0 degrees. Saturday, we should have a good sunrise shoot, but by lunchtime the weather turns and the snow is arriving. Saturday night the temperature falls to -15 – yes, - minus 15 !!!

Saturday night, Sunday and by Monday there should be approx 80cm of snow that has fallen! YEAH BABY – SNOW!!! That would just cap off the most amazing trip, if we had this perfect weather the whole trip and then we get to capture some snow covered stuff right at the end, how lucky would we be! WOW – just perfect!!

Luca thinks we should ditch Croatia seeing the waterfalls and just stay here for another couple of days. With the weather turning and the snow falling, Luca said the whole place turns magical and the photos we could capture with the snow on the huts etc would be 100 times better than any waterfall Croatia could offer! (Plus Luca has been to this waterfall and he thought it was ‘scrappy’ - and we might have missed the autumn colour)….but Luca doesn’t really like waterfalls, so we can only make the decision ourselves.

Check out the view's from our bedroom window!!

I guess we will wait for the next few days to see what snow falls and make our decision then. We have already made the decision not to go to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn. Whilst we really want to see it, we would need a good 4 days there, and we just don’t have that time to dedicate as we want to see the other places more. We will come back and do Switzerland all on its own another time – you can honestly easily spend 4 weeks doing Switzerland properly as a trip on its own. Maybe Tim will be doing an OOAK tour there next year and we can do that one with him! Ha ha ha

I am praying we don’t eat lunch today. I have to stop eating so much food. Full meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I haven’t eaten so much food in a year and a half!

Since we had plenty of time, Steve and I had showers. Hilarious towels – they are just like huge tea-towels. No, I’m not kidding! The waffle tea-towel of cotton. Anyway they worked a treat, even if they were a little coarse against our skin!

I was more excited than seeing Odle…. They had an awesome hair-dyer!!  Not one of these tiny little things that do nothing. This was a huge one with heaps of power – I was in 7^th heaven (for the past few days since I blew up the power adaptor, I’ve not been able to wash or blow dry my hair, so I’ve been looking quite unsightly!). So I blow dried my hair. Nothing beats having good hair and I instantly felt fantastic. Let’s go back to Tre Cime – I’ll bloody run it now I have good hair! Ha ha ha (well, maybe not, but I was feeling great!)

We spent some time relaxing for a few hours before our wonderful chauffeur comes to pick us up at 4pm. OMG – so excited. Is it 4pm yet? No – it’s only 1pm.

Steve left the apartment at 3pm and walked to a shop that sold fuses.  Luckily they had them, so Steve can now use the power adaptor.  I am officially banned from putting any hair dryer near it!   I hope that the next lot of accommodation has a good hair dryer that I can use.  Frustrating that I bought an international one with me all this bloody way and I can't use it!  arghhh!!

The guy who was chauffeuring us up the mountain, rang Luca and asked us all to be outside at 3.30pm – so 30mins earlier – yeah baby! We all grabbed our gear and raced outside, only to find Luca sitting down not looking happy.

“We aren’t going anymore” - and he handed me the monies we’d paid to Tim earlier. WHAT?? “What the F*** do you mean we aren’t going?” was pretty much what everyone was yelling at Luca. We thought he was joking at first, but no, he wasn’t. Poor Luca, it wasn’t his fault.

Apparently, the man who was coming to get us, had his son up the mountain and the son had rung him and said that he can’t make it, due to the snow making machines, putting the snow over the roads up the top. He could have driven us part of the way, but it would have meant a 1hour very solid steep hike – for the same money. So we didn’t go.

So disappointed. Poor Scott – he was really guttered. To think we were “this close” to getting the shot and then it was taken away from us. Never mind, these things happen.

So we jumped into the Volvo and headed back up to the mountain we stopped off at earlier in the day for sunset.

The fog had set in (or cloud) – it was thick. On the drive up, we could just see the tips of the mountains, so we were hopeful that the fog was lower and we’d get the sunset on the top.

We pulled up and we were shrouded in cloud. It was cold -1 degree and there was a slight breeze moving the clouds past us. We hiked up a hill and all set our tripods up. We were there with 2 other photographers. One was Kevin Grace from Ireland, who was just lovely. He’d been in the area for the past week, so he’d taken sunset and sunrise most days here. He had not seen it shrouded in cloud like this during that time. But then again, the weather is about to turn bad, so we can’t have it all.

We stayed up there for over an hour and a half, with nothing. Just cloud. Couldn’t see the mountain if we tried and it was so close we could have reached out and touched the damn thing.

Oh well, looks like the whole night was a big disappointment. But considering the amazing weather we have had until now, the worst we’ve had is no clouds in the sky, so we can’t really complain.

We also think it was a blessing that Odle didn’t happen. I think maybe the reason we didn’t get to go was lost in the translation. Maybe there was no snow up there at all and that the fog had set in and it was dangerous to drive, and you couldn’t see Odle at all. Doesn’t matter what the truth or reason is now – we saved our money from seeing nothing but fog.

Back at the apartment to warm up and dump our gear and we’ll head out for dinner. I think Scott and Tim will be drowning their sorrows tonight.

They want us to get up for sunrise tomorrow to go back to where we were. I dunno. After a night of next to no sleep because of Steve snoring badly and coughing most of the night, I am exhausted and another sunrise is not exciting me right now. Maybe I’ll feel better after dinner. I am hoping that tonights bed is comfortable. The European beds are like planks of wood – so hard. Our mattress at home is very soft, so we do notice the difference. Looking forward to bed regardless, I have to say.

With any luck I’ll wake up in the morning and the front that was due to hit at lunchtime, comes overnight and dumps some snow – then I’ll be excited!! OMG – I want to see this place with snow, it would be like a fairytale!

Luca came and got us and we went for a walk around town.

OMG – I am in love with Ortisei !! Its just like the postcards you see. “Gingerbread” style buildings, with fresco’s and pastel colours. I was running around like it was Christmas morning – Luca was laughing at me.

One hotel had some snow bought in to the front of the building and they were holding ski lessons for the young children! Steve almost had to hold me back from wanting to try it out!

We found a small supermarket and we went to town! Gosh I love shopping in foreign countries! Steve bought coffee. And we bought more ‘snacks’ and chocolates to try! I could have easily bought the entire shop and bought it home. So many delicious things to try!

From there we continued walking along the fairy-tail street, looking at all the gorgeous shops! We came to one that was on the piazza that had some of the most amazing beanies! I wanted one….well, three or four actually!! So gorgeous – sparkles on them. Their pom poms were to die for!

I raced inside “Buono Serra” (I am starting to sound like a local)… I raced over to the beanies, only to see that they were either 189 Euro, or 175 Euro!! WTF? For a beanie?!! The lady in the shop must have seen the horror on my face, when she explained that the “pom pom” was actual fur, and the diamonties were all Swarovski Crystals. Ahhhh ok, now it makes sense! But I am still not paying 189 fricken Euro for one! Plus I don’t have the room in my suitcase to anything – but I could have worn it on the plane.

Damn…. They were really nice! Ha ha ha

We walked further and Luca was pointing out different things to Steve and I. We stopped infront of a SPEK shop – smoked bacon & salami’s. Luca wanted us to buy some to bring home, but we were trying to explain our quarantine laws and chances are that we couldn’t get them through customs. Luca was horrified at the thought of us living all the way over there and not being able to import foods to try! “F*** Australia” he said (ha ha ha – he was almost convinced to come out to Australia to live for a while….but not if he can’t get his favourite foods it seems)!

Oh we love Luca! His broken English is hilarious. We are all starting to talk like Luca now. Not using as many words, breaking everything down to “yes or no” answers, or even “it is possible”, or “yes, maybe”. I want him to stay with us for the rest of our time here, but alas he is off to Iceland the following day to hold his own photographic workshop. If I could sneak the extra time off, Steve and I would have been very tempted to have joined Luca! Maybe next year.

We finally walked around killing time till 7pm when the restaurant was open (gosh things start late here) – Cascade was the name of the restaurant on the main road into town. They had a mix of traditional foods and western style (of sorts).

Luca would NOT let Steve have any style of cabronara again! He was quite serious about it too! We were laughing at Luca. He was horrified and really doesn’t understand why Steve doesn’t like food, or wants to try different things! “Always the same” and shaking his head in disgust! Ahhh poor Luca! Steve actually caved in to Luca’s request and ordered a SPEK Pizza instead! Ha ha – it still wasn’t to Luca’s acceptance, but it was better than the pasta apparently.

Tim and Scott found us eventually and we all ate dinner. Tim bought a bottle of dessert wine for dessert and it was delicious! We all had desserts. Tiramisu with Gelati for the boys. Luca nothing (he doesn’t eat sweet foods at night time). Steve had “White Truffle” which was a Tartufo of sorts - like a big white chocolate ball with ice-cream inside.

I tried a local dessert, which was Ricotta Ball Dumplings filled with Nougat – which was in fact liquid chocolate, served with a bourbon custard & cream. YUMMY !!

We drove back to the apartment and I was in bed by 8.30am. Tim had convinced us all to get up for sunrise. But not Luca – “NO – Rain”! Yes, the rain was forecast in the morning and snow on the mountains. Luca was going to spend tomorrow at the local pool & sauna doing “nothing”!!

Fingers crossed for a decent sunrise!

Buone Notte Ortesei
xxx