Monday, December 26, 2011

20111216 Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. - Romans 8:26

FRI - We had thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Courmayeur, Monte Bianco. We love Courmayeur ... it was quaint and charming. We love the clean fresh air. We love the snow ... a lot of snow that made Christmas even more like Christmas! But snow on departure was scary. Look, even our little snowmen were totally covered with snow. And our Mercedes Vito was half buried in the snow, with a thick layer of snow icing on top. What seemed so nice and fun had prevented me from getting into the car. I had a great 2.5-hours work out in the morning clearing the snow on both sides, underneath and behind the car so as to make a way for me to reverse the car out of the parking lot. But the floor was iced up, making it impossible me to control and move the car. With great perseverence and twist-and-turn of the steering wheel, I managed to reverse the car by a disappointing 2.5m out of the parking lot after 2.5 hours. God sent His Words to me (in the scripture above) and all of us prayed for help. By 2pm, the man from the petrol kiosk (whom Aunt Janet and Marissa had helped arranged) came but with the wrong snow chain. We had to wait another 5min for him to return with the right snow chain (€170) and helped fixed them on our rear wheels before we could finally depart at 2.30pm. But the 1km way out of Courmayeur was not easy and took us about 30min as I could not control the car properly in the snow. All the other traffic had to stay clear on both sides as I swayed from left to right, and left again. It was with God's mercy that we finally made it to the autostrada.

Then, our windscreen wiper broke, which I had to fix it at the petrol kiosk before we could move on because it would be impossible to drive in the snow without the wipers.

The drive down was trecherous due to the heavy snow. I was driving at 40-60km/hr while the rest behind were praying continuously. I was still hopeful to make it to Serravalle Outlet Mall (the largest outlet mall in Italy). We sighed a sigh of relief each time we entered a tunnel (as there was no snow and visibility was better), and hoped that there would be no more snowing at the exit. It took us almost 2 hours to reach the bottom of the mountain! Praise the Lord for His protection!

Just when we cleared the snow, something else happened. The snow chain fell apart along the autostrada! I only managed to remove the chain on the left-rear wheel but had to drag the other one until the next petrol kiosk where there was light for me to see and remove it. It was 6.30pm by then. With Serravalle Outlet Mall closing at 8pm and we were about 1.5hrs away, we totally miss our third outlet mall shopping today because of weather. Sigh!

We went directly to Malpensar and checked into Grand Hotel Malpensar near the airport. We made up our eventful day with pasta! This would be our last night in Italy.

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