All the best for the new year! I hope the new year will bring new hopes for all my loved ones, dear friends and myself :)

Skiing in Andorra

I just came back today from skiing trip to Arinsal at Andorra. You may wanna ask, where is Andorra? Its a very small country located between France and Spain.


On the way to Andorra from Toulouse. Andorra is about a 4hr coach ride away from Toulouse airport where we flew in on a chartered Thomson flight.


Approaching the snowy Pyrenees mountain





Finally we arrive at Andorra.


View of the cable car station from the hotel room.


My ski gear


Taking the cable car for the first time up to the slopes!


Raring to start our first ski lesson!








Going up the chair lift to the green slope for the first time on our own!


Xmas eve party.




Posing on the top of the blue slope!








Having Christmas dinner at the hotel.



First to get to the slopes in the morning. See, no one else is there.


That's the snow cannon blowing away. Not a snow storm :)
It did snow quite heavily throughout 26 Dec, and abit in the afternoon of 27 Dec.









A short clip of my skiing skills. But looking at it, seems like I'm still doing it slightly wrongly coz my knees are still bending inwards somehow. And yes, our instructor taught us to ski without poles.




Last photo at the slope for the week.


Last photo at the cable car station before we return the ski gear to the hire shop.

At the beginning 2 days, i was totally not confident with myself. I even took up a private one-to-one lesson with my ski instructor that cost €38 per hour. And I really fell down alot of times! I learned that the trick is just go and not be scared of falling down. Haha.. learnt the tough way I'll say :)

Hopefully I can do another week of it next year in Mar / Apr. For the 2nd time, I'll sign up for the intermediate course and try to attempt new skills or go down steeper slopes!

Dept Xmas party and visit to Manchester.. again :)

Before I left for my skiing trip to Andorra, there were quite a few events which took place. My dept skiing and xmas lunch, a trip to manchester with jianyi to watch Man United in action (a 1-0 win against Sunderland) etc.. it had been a really hectic few weeks (related to work) leading up to Christmas. and I can imagine first few months of 2009 is also going to be a mad rush for me.

Anyways, some photos to update :)


With my fellow AMs - Ivan, Swas and Humberto


Showing our presents from our Secret Santa - I got some Man Utd goodies from my Secret Santa who found out that I love Man U! haha..


The new joiners to the Dept always need to put up performances at the Xmas party.





Then there was the dinner at The Narrow - A Gordon Ramsay pub at Limehouse. We had been talking about visitng this pub for a long time, and we finally did it. Its located at a very nice place along Thames River at the Docklands.


Canary Wharf to the left,


And Central London to the right.




My steak


A glass of mulled wine by the fireplace.

Then it was visit to Old Trafford for Man Utd vs Sunderland.






Rooney and Ronaldo preparing for a freekick.




Me and Kian


Xmas market at Manchester




The Manchester Cityhall

孙燕姿 singing 一人一半

I accidentally chanced upon this clip on Youtube. Its very nice! Suddenly i realised i miss yanzi's live singing..

Skiing in Andorra

I'm going skiing in Andorra during the week of Christmas! Had been so looking forward to it. We got the package at a very good price. £482 including air tix, airport transfers, half board hotel for 7 nights and first-timer ski package. And we went to do some shopping for ski stuff this weekend.

Bought ski trousers, gloves, long socks, goggles, fleece sweater, snow shoes etc etc. it all added up to quite abit. So i need to make sure I go skiing again next year to utilise my ski gear!

Looking forward to it, and will post photos!

Norway Part 2

I'm just back from Manchester to watch Manchester United against Sunderland. Shall post about the trip to Old Trafford after I finish posting Norway photos.

On the 3rd day, we woke up early at Flam to go for some hikes in Flam. There are nothing else to do in Flam except to go for hikes. As unluckily as we were, it was raining and drizzling in the morning. So I finally had a chance to put on my poncho which mum got for me from NDP 2007 :)


It was so misty in the morning..






Nice house


Hiking up another small hill to find the row of trees.






This is the row of trees that I was talking about.




Boarding the ferry to continue our next leg of journey!


Starting the 2-hr cruise along Sognefjord.


It was sooo cold on the ferry that I had to pull my cap on coz my ears were freezing.. and I still managed to force a nice smile. :)


Another nice smile in the cold.


Don't you think the clouds seems to be floating just above me? haha..


Bye bye Flam...




A big waterfall that we went past along the fjord.

It was quite a shame coz our cruise was from 330pm to 530pm. And being the winter that it is, it gets dark from around 4plus. So we didn't get to see alot of the magnificent scenery. Maybe next summer I'll go to Norway again! I should be i think.. since jo may be going to Norway to work for a few months.

The cruise was slightly late on arrival at Gudvangen, and it resulted us to miss the train at Voss! :( Had to wait for another 1.5hr before there was a next train to catch. Finally got to Bergen at around 9pm amidst very heavy rain.. bad way of arrival indeed.


Bergen




The famous Bryggen Houses - Bryggen the old world of Bergen, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The houses seem to be leaning to one side.


Don't you think that these houses seem to be slanted and leaning to one side also? it looks quite unsafe to me..

As you can see above, the weather at Bergen was terrible during the first day that we were there. We got more decent weather on the 2nd day. So i decided to post the nicer photos which are not in order.


Blue sky!








Going up the Mount Fløyen on the funicular.




Scenery along the way up the funicular.


Bergen City. Its so nice up there. On a clear day like this, we can actually see far far out to the fjords.






Enjoying an ice-cream in the cold.


Waterfall that we saw along the way.


Taking a hike down the Mount Fløyen.




Having some cray fish at the Bergen Fish Market.


Elly was a new fren that jingyi made during the train ride from Voss to Bergen. She even met up with us for a pizza!