Off to the Snowy White North

Greetings from Oslo. Arrived via Reykjavik yesterday.

On the way to Lonyearbten in Svalbard today, on the next leg of getting to the North Pole for the marathon on Wednesday.

Oslo is an interesting city and host of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was odd to travel thousands of miles to an exhibition dedicated to Barack Obama. The room dedicated to peace laureates is humbling.

Note to self: Don't arrive anywhere in Europe on Easter Sunday. Almost everything is closed. The National Gallery was open,which has an incredible collection of Edvard Munch, including the pilfered Scream.

See me in like pose in a day or two when my body hits arctic temperatures. The forecast for Longyearbyen today is a balmy-12C (10F).

Camille, Kathy and Dyan visit

The highight of Fina's year in France so far was Camille's visit. Here she is at Gare du Nord in Paris meeting the Eurostar (the train from London to Paris). Camille, Kathy and Dylan came through the channel tunnel from London. We started the week in Paris and ended in Nice.

Where's Waldo? Emer's waving at the camera.

While Rob and Kathy took the kids up the Eifel tower, Emer ran the Paris marathon with 34,999 of her new closest friends.

We hopped on a plane to Nice the next day and spent the week hiking, swimming, going to

see the new lion cubs at the zoo in Cap Ferat, walking on the prom and drinking the odd glass of wine.

It was a over too soon as the expressions here show. But as Camille headed back to school we still had 10 days holidays left, so the original Legoland in Denmark was next...

March and April ...not quite a blog

It's March in Nice and the pool is cold, so Rob decides he's going to install a heat pump. It's a brilliant idea. We'll be able to use the pool from April instead of June or July.

So he orders a heat pump off the web and all 300lbs of it arrive when he's in Ireland. The UPS guy asks Emer to help him haul it off the truck up the hill to the house. ...

After building a cement foundation Rob learnt a few things:
Either

a) Rent a cement mixer

OR

b) Hire someone who knows what they're doing.

OR

c) Hire someone.....anyone

However, Rob's not an engineer (on sabbatical or not) for nothing. The pool is now a balmy 24C and rising. We're swimming in April!!!

Also in April Dad and Gerry came to visit. We went to old Nice drank Wine, listened to music, toured some hill towns and celebrated Gerry's birthday.

Dad and Gerry at Eze, at the Rotschild mansion and where they treated us to dinner at "Canaille Hit", overlooking the port in Nice.

Val d'Isere

As ski areas go, Val d’Isere is incredible.
We were lucky. It snowed the entire week before we got there, and was sunny most of the time, (apart from when it snowed ) while we were there.

The ski area is enormous. The terrain is

spectacular and the runs are huge. It’s also

a fantastic kids’ place. They've dug a snow cave

200m into the mountain, complete with sculptures of a dinosaur and wooly mammoth.

There are funiculars (trains)

that run like elevators up through tunnels in the mountains (instead of ski lifts) in places. We had a fantastic time. Nobody could have predicted how great the snow would be, given that it's the warmest winter in the Alps in 1500 years!

The French ski school system is a little more rigorous than we’re used to. Fina had worked her way up to “Gold star” level and was really nervous about the latest test. She trained all week, morning and afternoon, with the ski school, and missed her slalom time on the test by 1.5 seconds. Nessa was trying for her 3rd star (she got 1 and 2 already this year) but didn't make it. That didn't stop her (or Fina) from screaming down the Olympic downhill, a serious black run.

It’s a blast to be in a place like this and be able to ski the whole area with both kids. Unfortunately Rob did his knee in on the last day. With x-rays in hand he’s now looking for some good English-speaking medical help.

What we did on our Winter holidays

Living in France has some advantages. Fina and Nessa had two weeks off for Winter break, so we went to Ireland for the first week and skied in Val d'Isere the week after.

Ireland was fantastic. We arrived just in time to see Ireland demolish England at Croke park, on TV at Conor's. We saw Aine run and get third place with her relay in the Munster championships. We missed Aoife who also got a bronze medal the previous day!

The junior Dooleys weren't the only athletes of the weekend. We stopped by Castleconnel on our way to the athletics event and caught dad, with crew on the river. I love the name on the boat!.

Never slow to encourage the next generation (plus one), he gave Fina, Nessa and Aoife

some tips on the ergometers.

We spent a few days in Garrykennedy. The weather was "soft" to put it mildly. It was blowing a force 8 and pouring rain, but Fina and Nessa are horse crazy right now. They insisted on going riding in the storm. I found a place, half way up the side of a mountain in Borrisalee. The wild woman who ran the place assured me they went out in all conditions. And they did....

The girls were in the arena on their ponies, sporting ear-to-ear grins

when the gale knocked two trees over, missing them by a few feet.

The ponies were spooked and bolted. Fina managed to pull hers up; Nessa was thrown.

The wild woman who was running the show finally called a halt to the

madness, and gave each of them a rosette for being the

"bravest children she'd ever had out in such conditions". They were thrilled!

What a difference a day makes......

Searching for more of this weather, Rob went to Cambridge to do something useful, and gave the keynote at a computer conference. We came back to Nice where it was 26 C the following day.

On Saturday we left for Val d'Isere.