February 15
We were supposed to go to see the first two runs of monobob today at 10 AM, but neither of us slept very well so we decided that an early morning event after an evening event was more than our bodies could currently handle. Instead, we got up late. Yesterday, one of the first things we did was go shopping for breakfast stuff, but because it was afternoon, we did not find any croissants or equivalent. So, after we had yogurt, tea and some fruit, we headed out in search for a bakery. We found one about a block from the grocery store and bought several croissants filled with raspberry jam and several more filled with pistachio cream. Then we walked back to our house and ate two of them. Delicious!
Steve worked on his blog for the rest of the morning while Beth read. For lunch we had homemade sandwiches with salami, cheese and lettuce (courtesy of the local grocery). There was bright sun all day so later in the afternoon, Steve went out to take pictures of the town and the mountains. Here are some of his pictures:
Pretty great, don't you think? Here is a brief geography lesson about the Dolomites. The name Dolomite is a mineral similar to the two calcium carbonate rocks calcite and aragonite which are often produced by marine critters. The only difference is that dolomite contains some magnesium in addition to calcium giving it a different crystal structure. Where the magnesium came from is unclear, but what is clear is the about 230 million years ago, this area was under an ocean and layers of dead diatoms and shellfish piled up for millions of years. These thousands of feet of dolomite might have ended up buried forever except that about 100 million years ago, the African continent ran into the European continent and caused the huge amount of uplift that led to the formation of the Alps. At the same time, the dolomite layers were rotated around 90 degrees. You can see in at least one of the pictures that the rock looks like it has a bunch of vertical layers. Those layers used to be parallel to the bottom of the ocean where they formed!
Since we ate lunch in the house, we decided to go out for dinner. Beth needed to get something at the grocery store. Steve stood outside and traded pins with an Italian guy who used to live in California. His English was very good so Steve asked if there was a pizzeria in town that he would recommend. He said that his favorite place had been converted to an Olympic store for the length of the Games, but he did tell us that there was another place close to the Olympic flame that had good pizzas. Before we got there, we got some nice pictures of the Olympic plaza at night:
The Olympic flame looks much better at night! We also liked the fake ice sculpture of a woman with a gucci bag and a pair of skis. This seems to sum up Cortina. We've never seen so many high-end retail stores in a ski town. We find the pizzeria and are taken to a table after only a couple of minutes. We find ourselves seated next to a group of Canadian women. They are watching the Canada-France men's ice hockey on their phones while they eat. They see Steve's pins and hand us a Canadian flag pin and a key chain. We gain further points with them when we mention that although we are American, we are rooting for Canada because Macklin Celebrini plays for the Sharks. They tell us that San Jose is going to win the Stanley Cup in the next three or four years. We said that if this is true, then Edmonton should have won the Stanley Cup with Conor McDavid, who is the best men's hockey player in the world.
Our pizzas arrive quickly and we are settling down to eat when an Asian woman and her child sit down at the next table. Steve originally thought that they might be American because the two of them were speaking in English. The child is racing a toy truck and train on the table which reminds us very much of our son Sean at a similar age. Beth noticed that the woman has not closed her menu and that she was wondering why no one had come to take her order. Beth tells her that she needs to close the menu. She thanks Beth, closes the menu and immediately a server comes over to take her order. Beth tells Steve to give her child a pin. Steve asks the mother if it is okay and she says yes. When the pin turns out to be a USA rings pin, she asks us where we are from. It turns out that she is from Korea, but that her husband works for the International Olympic Committee and they live in Switzerland. When Steve hears this, he takes the 2018 PyeongChang (Korea) mascot pin from his vest and give it to the boy. Beth tells the mother about Sean being in a Chinese language immersion program and how great it is that he is learned other languages so early. She agreed but says that in Switzerland it can be a problem because her son sometimes comes home from school and speaks to her in French even though she doesn't speak French. When we get up to leave, she asks would Steve mind giving her his contact information. She puts her number into Steve's WhatsApp and tells Steve that she thinks her husband would like to give Steve some pins in exchange for the ones Steve gave to her son. This is when we learned that her name was Yoon. Whether Steve gets any pins or not, it was the kind of great Olympic experience that we often have because Steve is covered in pins.
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