About town

Early upon our arrival to our hotel, we took to exploring the vast expanse of the town where we are staying.  It's actually more of a small ski resort, named Rosa Khutor.  Small on the scale of ski resorts, as in Breck, Vail, Steamboat, etc.  It's probably four or five blocks long, situated on both sides of the river.  The river is not the Laura of the nordic venue fame.  That river is off up a side valley.

The river though has been fun to watch while here.  It went from medium flow to high and back to medium as we've gotten warm days and then a couple days of rain and snow.  Each day it just seemed to get a bit higher when I looked out in the morning.  Almost inevitably, I also see an odd piece of construction detritus bouncing along in the waves.  It became so common, that each time I looked I saw something, that I actually became a little amused, like a little treasure hunt each morning.  It actually looks like it'd be a very fun river to paddle, not too technical but lots of fun waves and small to medium sized holes to play in.  Probably pretty cold, but it did look like fun.  The town itself is mostly first floor stores with hotels above.  My understanding is that some of these hotels existed before the Olympics, but many were built after the bid was awarded.  Already there are signs that shops have been vacated, with empty front windows, and a number of the stores seem to be having clearance sales.  Which has been good for us. :)  I fear tho this could become a significant ghost town once all the games are over. I know the plan is for the area to remain and become a destination ski resort.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

The climate so far has reminded me of the northwest.  The major difference is that the forest is dominated by deciduous trees.  But even with that, the understory contains much moss as well as on the tree trunks, and the temperature, moisture, and precipitation as well as the snow are very reminiscent of the Western Cascades.  The mountains are quite impressive, a ton of relief from the base of the valleys up to the peaks and very steep.  From town when we first arrived, not much snow was visible tho.  It took some doing to get up to the snow.

The Austria House.  Apparently it was built originally at a different Olympic venue, taken apart and reassembled here.  I don't know if that is how it is always done, but apparently it may be taken down again after these Games and shipped elsewhere again.  Another classifier who is working with one of the teams for the Games (i.e. not being a classifier for this event), came down for a shindig here the other evening.  He said it was pretty nice on the inside.  

The medal plaza.  Each evening the medals from the previous days afternoon events and that mornings events are awarded here in a big ceremony.  It's impressive to watch. And then they have a big show, followed by fireworks.  

Because JK was being inducted into the Paralympic Hall of Fame (more on that later), his wife, Claudia, was invited over to join us for a few days with Visa footing the bill including first class flights both to and from the event.  Nice way to travel!