bottle it up

"I wish I could bottle up all the happy the beauty of this place gives me and give it to people who aren't happy"

what one can bottle up here is the water. Dotted around are quite elaborate drinking places where one can try out the healing powers of the water round here. It's not to everyone's taste. I think it tastes of old pipes and eggy farts, Flea says it's "too cold" but the old ladies who we saw taking a tour of all the springs declared that it was fabulous. They were probably needing to be healed of bad taste.

today we went on an icicle hunt but we only found some very feeble specimens. The thaw last week obviously melted them. There are some new ones forming though and we will go out to look at them again at the end of the week. It snowed a lot during the night and this morning. The locals have mainly been clearing up snow today while the tourists have kept in the way (yes, stand right there where the snowplough is trying to get through) and also seemed to have bought a lot of food (shops were empty) and eaten a lot of cake (cafes were full). We wanted to go sledging this afternoon but the nice man at the skilift advised us not to as the conditions were terrible. This was just after he'd sold tickets for sledging to a big group of young people - his reasoning was "they'll have fun anyway but it's no fun like this with children". So we went for a wander 'round again, sledged down some roads and other odd and inappropriate places, ate some icecream, got a headache (Flea) and now we're having some quiet and rest.
If I'd known that this afternoon's plan wouldn't work out and if I'd read the "what's on" before it was too late I could've spent the afternoon making ice-sculptures with a local artist. We once spent a week together in Nauders making an enormous snow sculpture and we got on really well. I would've enjoyed meeting him again and, also, the chance to get a hammer and chisel out again. Serves me right for being disorganised!
Tomorrow we'll all be on the piste.....