France Ski Trip Day 9: We were how many meters up?

After eating copious amounts of Nutella and baguette, we kept up the cleaning and packing to get out of the condo by 8:45am or so.  The check out times were 9am for some odd reason.  Jason headed out early to go down to Meribel-proper to check out while Robo and I hung out in the hotel lobby down the street.  We proceeded to play some pinball until our bus down the mountain came.  In contrast to the bus ride up, the bus ride down was packed with people.  Luckily we were the first stop on the route and got seats on the bus.

Now down in Moutiers, our train tickets didn't have us leaving until late in the afternoon.  Jason went to investigate if we could just hop on an earlier train with the same tickets.  It turns out we could and we scoped out the schedule.  Instead of leaving sometime after 3pm we decided on a train around 1:30pm.  We grabbed some sandwiches and sodas for a lunch and just burned time until making our way to the platform.

France Ski Trip Day 8: Down With the Sickness

I was truly sick so I took the day off from skiing.  The fever was still lingering and I just felt bad in general.  Jason and Robo got a late start that day and headed out around 10:30am.  The longer I just stayed in bed, the more horrible I felt so I decided to get the blood flowing and be somewhat productive.  I started to clean our small condo and found the provided vacuum was not of the highest quality.  The tube going from the motor unit to the actual head kept popping out.  It sounded like it barely had enough power to generate suction to begin with.  After a couple of passes I moved on to straightening things up and packing my own things.

Later, I made a grocery run and lounged around until Jason and Robo got back from the slopes.  They returned around 2:30pm and we proceeded to just burn time and relax until the early evening hours.  Upon returning our skis we found the bill to be 70 Euro for the 4 days we had them (they didn't charge us for our break day!).  This was quite reasonable in my book considering the normal rate for my skis was supposed to be 20+ Euro.

The lounging mentality continued into the night until we decided to eat.  This evening was a big egg scramble with rice.  After eating we continued to clean and pack.  Star Trek (the new one) was the film for the night.  Overall, the place cleaned up nicely, we didn't actually mess it up too badly.  The biggest aspect was repacking all of our clothes and gear.  Both Robo and Jason had pretty much unpacked all their stuff while I almost never do that.  I am always afraid I will lose something and with everything in my suitcase I always know where it is (most of the time).  

This post isn't all that long or interesting...mainly because the day itself was rather normal/dull.
The next couple of days are going to be the trek down the mountain and back to the USA.

~

France Ski Trip Day 7: Slide to the right

Sliding to the right today.  We visited the peak of two different mountains in this valley and took some great pictures.  It also began snowing, at least in this valley, later in the afternoon.

Photo Credit: Me

Lunch consisted of what we had packed into a backpack for the day.  We bought some very expensive sodas (3.50 Euro each) to accompany our sandwiches/chips/treats.  There was a large restaurant with an expansive deck for diners and picnic-ers alike.  Actually, many restaurants had signs outside saying "NO PICNIC" which meant no eating your own food outside on their decks.  The food you could buy was really expensive though, I don't know why you wouldn't bring your own food along if you could.
The restaurant we stopped at had a very friendly dog that was hanging out on the deck.  It got discouraged later in the afternoon when a patron stepped on its paw with a ski boot.  It screamed and whined and eventually very pathetically limped into the restaurant...poor thing.

France Ski Trip Day 6: Break!

Day 6 of the trip was our day of rest.  We slept until about 11am and it felt wonderful.  Eventually we rolled out of bed and headed to buy our lift tickets for Thursday and Friday.  Pinball also filled our very short morning.  We were getting good at the Spiderman machine and stuck with that the whole week.

We hopped on the shuttle to Meribel-proper for some souvenirs and groceries.  We ended up going back to the same souvenir shops that we had previewed earlier in the week.  Prices were...expensive but I guess that is expected since it is a tourist area full of people who want something to remember their awesome time.  Looking back at my purchases, I should have bought a more diverse array of souvenirs.  The T-shirts were way too expensive so I didn't even look at them.  It was ~20 Euro for a regular T-Shirt which is close to $30.  I did revisit the magnets.  The cheapest was 5.50 Euro while the most expensive was...8 Euro I think.  I grabbed two different magnets.  I then approached the cash register and there was a small basket full of iron-out patches and stickers.  I should have grabbed every sticker in there because they were WAY cheaper than the magnets and about half the price of a patch (which I bought).

France Ski Trip Day 5: Slide to the Left

Today we ventured over to the valley left of ours called Courchevel.  I will be referring to the other valleys as the one to our left or right.  Most trail maps have Meribel in the middle with a somewhat birds' eye view as if the bird was approaching the valley at altitude.

There was definitely a different feel to this valley.  When we arrived at the top of the right-most edge of the valley it was actually quite windy and shady...therefore cold.  I believe the picture below is from the top but I didn't really use anything to mark where one day started and another ended on my camera.

Photo Credit: Me

France Ski Trip Day 4: Hitting the Slopes

I will admit, I have never been out west here in the USA to ski.  I have, however, been to the Alps multiple times, the Austrian and the French.  The Alps are beautiful, every time we stopped on the slope to take a break or snap some pictures I was blown away.  I shall let the pictures I post here speak for themselves.  If you ever get the opportunity to go, even in the summer, do it.  And now the skiing...

View from the slope outside our condo
Photo Credit: Me

Everyone here seems to know how to ski.  I'm sure they all started ski school as soon as they could fit into the boots.  Many times we observed a teacher with at least 10-15 students playing follow the leader on even some of the more difficult terrain.  I never saw anyone going straight down the mountain trying to race their friends.  For one, it was hard to find a route straight down, there were many natural bumps made by the skiers.  The snow is some places was also quite deep, especially in the off-piste areas.  With only a few marked trails, many took advantage of the off-piste open terrain, many times with untouched or lightly touched powder.

The runs were long...it took us a considerable amount of time to get down to the bottom of the valley once we took a gondola or lift to the top.  I never timed us as that was not really my concern the whole week.  I was more concerned with enjoying the enormous amount of skiable terrain here in France.  

France Ski Trip Day 3: Orientation

Finally got to sleep in today.  According to the weather report, the skiing gods dumped 20cm of fresh powder on the slopes (~8 inches).  Unfortunately, we were not skiing today and were just getting our gear and the lift tickets.  Morning "showers" were more like a spray down of the whole bathroom.  The tub did not have any shower curtain so if you were going to spray yourself you were probably getting every wall of the bathroom wet.  I eventually honed my technique to where I would hunker down in the tub with some bath water in it, to keep warm, and give myself a quick shower to lather up.  Same goes for getting the shampoo out of my hair.  It was an experience to say the least.

Our daily grocery shop included things for lunch and dinner before heading out to see what rental prices were like.  Slope-side rental prices were actually quite reasonable and they had some great gear to offer.  I think I ended up paying about $25 per day of rentals which were just the skis and poles since own boots. While we eventually settled on the slope-side rental near our condo, we decided to check out shops down in Meribel-proper as we kept calling it.

France Ski Trip Day 2: The Arrival

The condo we had for the week, it was quite cozy

 

The great thing about this complex was it's practically ski-in/ski-out.  The main slope that was outside our deck sloped downward to the main entrance to our building.  Lockers were provided for everyone's ski gear on the ground floor in their own heated rooms.  Unfortunately by day 4 or 5 so much water had built up in the areas that it was getting hard for things to dry at night due to the humidity.

After some minor unpacking we find the local grocery, the 8-to-8.  We also scoped out what rental options we had near our condo.  A hotel complex adjacent to us had some awesome pinball machines which we ended up playing daily...sometimes multiple times.

France Ski Trip Day 2: Climb the Highest Mountain

We woke at the crack of dawn to catch the train to Moûtiers.  Luckily, the train station was just down the street from our hotel.  Chocolate croissants in our stomachs, we boarded the train.  The cars were very nice compared to some Amtrak train cars I've experienced here in the USA.  Our train was clean, it was well lit, and it looked relatively new.  It even had sets of power outlets on the walls.  There were sets of two seats facing each other as well as regularly arranged ones.  The cars were fairly empty and later we learned why...

Even seats for our bags!
Photo Credit: Me

Apparently some type of vandalism started to delay the afternoon trains.  Most of the travelers that day decided to take trains that were not at dawn (like us) and wait until a more reasonable hour.  Unfortunate for them, most travelers were delayed up to 5 or 6 hours due to the train tracks being shut down.  We saw on the news that 40,000 travelers were delayed...coincidence or fate!


I used my Kindle, iPhone, and Camera to entertain me for the 2+ hour ride.  Below is a video I shot of the French countryside:  

France Ski Trip Day 1: A Night on the Town

To give you a better idea of where we were, the purple pin on the left side is the basilica in the old part of Lyon where we would later end up.  The red 'A' pin in the bottom right of the map is where our hotel was.

Here is a link to more about the basilica:
Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière

Credit: Google Maps

We grabbed the metro down to the older/cool part of the city.   It was Friday night and everyone was out and about.  I observed that everyone loved to wear dark colors...especially black.  The men's jeans and pants were definitely on the slimmer side as well.  I knew I should have packed my skinny jeans....anyway, isn't this ferris wheel cool?

Photo Credit: Me

France Ski Trip Day 1: I'm here, You're where?

Excited to finally have made it to the rendezvous point, I confidently walk out of the gate half expecting to be greeted by some familiar face at the arrivals area....... :(  This does not happen.  No problem, I will just go to the agreed upon rally point in the public center of the airport, by the Pizza Hut Express.  This does not work out either..../fail

Lonely, I'm so lonely...
Photo Credit: Me

France Ski Trip Day 1: Flight Across the Pond

My flight does not leave until around 10pm and when do I decide to arrive at the airport? 3:45pm...

The early arrival is so my ride can avoid the horrible traffic that builds around rush hour.  Although, upon entering the departures area I am greeted with a woman screaming at the AirFrance check-in desk.  Security and her friends talked her down but this made me very uneasy about my upcoming 10 hours of travel time with this airline.  Even so, I had no trouble with AirFrance and would fly them again.

Before checking my bag I burned some time reading and found myself next to a family, the son playing Angry Birds on his Dad's iPad.  Now, I remember when I more than thrilled as a child to have a new action figure to entertain me for 7+ hours on a jet...now the kids get iPads...

Jet Set

Just another travel blog? Perhaps. Believe it or not, using only the two words in my blog's title, I was able to survive in most situations.

First stop: Les 3 Vallées, French Alps

View from the top
Photo Credit: Me