Sochi - Wome's Moguls

First event today - and the one I was most looking forward to - Women's moguls. Getting there was a bit of an adventure. The whole day started with us walking to the train station. Or rather to two train stations. Somehow it was communicated to us that only employees could use the closest train station. So we walked about 3 miles to the train station we used.

We arrived about 6 hours prior to the start of our event - plenty of time right? We were all quite hungry - but look, a restaurant right by the train station. An hour later, the table we sat at still hadn't been bused from the previous customers. The best our 'recon missions' of the area found was a craft fair that had someone selling wild game jerky. So we went with that. Ok, now we have some time to wander about, let's see what there is.

We almost didn't spot it, but out of the corner of my eye I saw some buildings up the river. We walked up there and HORRAY! we found the real mountain cluster and a restaurant...that was willing to serve us food! (although we learned later that they weren't officially open yet) We had an amazing waiter that practised his English and tolerated us practising our Russian. I also finally got the big bowl of pilmeni I was wanting.

The event start was approaching, so we decided to go find it and get there a bit early...or late...turns out there was a bus and a gondola and a bit of a hike to get there. The gondola was a 20 seater with heated seats. The manufacturer did well with all the new gondolas that went in.

We caught the second half of the last qualifying round (only missed about 10 jumps) which was amazing. Then a 3.5 hour wait for the finals. Off to find a hot beverage! Lines were epically long, but we remembered passing a few other stands on our hike in - so we went to investigate. We wound up enjoying some mulled wine while watching some type of local dance stage with all kinds of dance groups. This is one of the things we love about the Olympics - the completely random entertainment that occurs.

The finals finally started and we watched some incredible jumps. I only wish it was longer so we could have seen more!

Then came another of the wonderfully planned parts of the day - the return trip. An entire events worth of people, and one bus route and then one train back down. There was complete chaos when the first bus rolled up and everyone charged the barrier. We had been in the very front row of the barrier...and ended up on the third bus.

The return trip put us back at the ship around 1am, completely exhausted.