29 Dec 2010

For Helena's birthday we went to the city of Paris. What an amazing experience this was. We first went to Norte Dame Cathedral:

We then went to Arc de Triomphe - people really need to know how to drive to get around this circle of chaos (not really - people are actually very well behaved considering the conditions):

Parking must be a problem in Paris. These people really know how to optimise the space:

The Eiffel Tower is as amazing as it looks. Here Helena holds it by the tip:

Shopping close to the tower at the market:

Paris at night - an amazing place to be:

31 Dec 2010

The last day of 2010 we spent the day at Disney Studios. We went to a couple of rides 1st:

More phodies showing the amazing Disney decor:

The team queueing for our last ride in 0 degrees celcius:

We had a grt lunch with the Disney stars to end off our visit to Disney:

28 Dec 2010

We visited Disney Studios. It was raining and I thought very few people would attend. Not the Europeans - they were here in their masses:

Disney Studios is just as amazing as Disneyland. Everything is so organised and very well designed. We attended shows (and for me the highlight of the day was the stunt show):

For the girls the highlight of the day was The Hollywood Terror Hotel - even Helena with her fright of heights did not make a peep on this ride (and all the other rides she has been on - impressive!!!):

We also went on a roller-coaster listening to the beat of Aerosmith:

 All the decor really has so much detail in it - what an amazing day:

26 & 27 Dec 2010

On the 26th we travelled 1000km from Salzburg to Paris.

On the the 27th we went to Euro Disney. Our first stop was Disneyland:

The kids only wanted to know where the next ride was. We visited most of the exhibits and stood in long queues to get access to the rides:

We also had a grt ride where star wars was used as the theme. I just had to have this photo of the X-Wing:

We also took videos of the parades. We saw how Disneyland transformed at night:

Did I mention that it was cold - yet this place was packed!

25 Dec 2010

This is our last day in Austria. We went back to Antenau to try and ski a more challenging slope than the one we used for the last 5 days to train on. We were looking for a blue slope which is supposed to be the easiest after training. Below Theo took a photo of us where we were real high in the mountain skiing the blue slope.

It is really cold so high up in the mountains. We stopped at this ski-hut to drink a hot chocolate. The owner must have misunderstood us a bit (or we did him) and were also offered 3 rums (that tasted like Stroh yam yam). Grt place and grt people living here!

Here we are skiing down the slope again - what an amazing experience this is - the girls were doing real good and had no problems to follow our fast pace down the mountain (blue slope):

We lost our way a bit and came down the red slope - this was really very difficult. Behind Theo is the cable car that take you into the mountains. Its not easy to show how steep this slope really is.

Below a map of all the routes down the mountain. What an amazing way to conclude our ski holiday in Austria. Tomorrow we are on our way to France - so there might be a day or 3 where we won't be updating the blog.

23 Dec 2010

We have had such grt weather up to now. Tomorrow it might rain or snow again. For us to be able to go skiing again - it will have to snow tonight. We have been skiing the last 4 days at the slope operated by the ski-school  in a little town called Abtenau (with the ski-school having the same name).

In the mean time I found an app that will compress the home movies of us skiing. So below is the video I took while skiing behind everyone (10MB):

Below is the same video Helena took from the bottom (11MB):

21 & 22 Dec 2010

We have been very busy with our ski training. There has been no opportunities to take photos until yesterday afternoon when we were confident enough to go down the ski slopes by ourselfs.

Below a phodie of the beautiful mountains surrounding our hotel:

Below we taking a well deserved break after 3 hours of training in the morning:

The 1st ski lift that leads up the training slope:

Below phodies of us at the top of the 2nd ski lift that took us to a real steep slope that takes a lot of concentration going down!

I will try and upload the movies tonight again

20 Dec 2010

Today we were early at the ski rental shop to fit and rent our ski gear. We really received grt service from Sport 2000. We arrived just in time for our 3 hour lesson. Within no time the instructure could see that Elaine and Theo had previous experience and they left the baby slope and joined the other beginners on the slope using the ski lift. Below are some action shots from today: