kathryn|kurioso

For almost a month, Kevin and I had been thinking about where to go during our Christmas Holiday. We tried to be more organized by planning ahead but we ended up doing a last minute booking for to the French Alps which wasn’t even one of the locations we were thinking about going to! It was kind of my fault, since we didn’t expect me to find a job before Christmas. Originally, we thought we would have almost the entire December to early January for the holidays but instead, we ended up with the just public holidays.

Credit has to go to Kevin for doing all the research while I was at work. He concluded that we should do a ski trip in Europe as it may be our only winter here and he had an urge to be on the slopes. We gave up on creating our own package, which required lots of research and co-ordination so we focused our time on a popular web site. There was only one choice from the site that fit our time and budget so we took it: A 5 day trip to the French Alps with 3 on the slopes and two on a coach bus.

My biggest concern of the trip was taking a coach bus from London to the French Alps, but then it made the cost of our trip less expensive. The ride was long – 16 hours. I had my first time experience of taking long bus ride, plus being transported by train on the bus when we crossed the English Channel (through the “Chunnel”). Kevin and I were glad that we paid more to upgrade our seats for the extra leg room. Yet, it wasn’t the most comfortable seat on earth when I have to stay there for 16 hours. Due to some signal interference from mobile phone text messaging, the bus’s computer system that controlled the temperature failed at the first half of the ride. It was only after they fixed it by turning up the heat manually that I could fall asleep and get some rest.

We arrived at the hotel around ten in the morning. After we checked in and got our ski / snowboard rentals which they had it at the hotel, we hurried and ordered a hot breakfast to start our first day.

The town that we stayed at, Brides Les Bains, was a little remote from the 3 Valleys but thanks to the Winter Olympic they had in 1992, they built a gondola ride just to transport people from a few towns to the main resort – Meribel. Our town is the first stop of the route, and the whole gondola ride takes around 30 minutes. With another 5 minutes walk, we were finally at the heart of the resort with many other gondola rides which would take us to different summits.

The skiing resorts of the 3 Valleys are huge. Kevin and I went to the West side resort, Courcheval, hoping that we could stay with the sun. In Europe, it seems that skiing is much more popular than snowboarding. There were many kids following their group and instructors learning how to ski. They were very cute, and very good. Meanwhile, I was trying to get myself used to the board as it was my first run of the season. I was terrible! It ended up a good work out day for me by doing many sit-ups and push-ups. Poor Kevin had to stop and wait for me. I knew it wasn’t fun for him at all.

My snowboarding experience had been mostly in the Ontario, Canada and a few times skiing in British Columbia, Canada, which is almost 10 years ago. I couldn’t quite remember my experience in B.C., but for sure, the Alps is many times better and more scenic comparing to ”hills” in Ontario. The only benefit of skiing/snowboarding in most resorts in Ontario is that they are happened to be small, and close to the city, so they have lights for night skiing, and machine to groom the snow to make it less icy. On the other hand, Kevin is a more experience skier comparing to me. He has been to different ski resorts that he has better insight to value the 3 Valleys to the North American West coast skiing resorts, which he has a little report for that. For the whole trip, Kevin read the map and leaded me the way around the 3 Valleys. We were very lucky that we had fresh snow just the night before we arrived, and the three days on the Alps the weather had been clear and sunny. We talked to another British skier while we were on the gondola and we talked about our skiing experience. She told us that she had been to Austrian and Swiss, and she found the 3 Valleys had more runs, better layout and setup comparing to the other skiing resorts she had been to in Europe.

We ended our Christmas Eve by missing our last gondola ride back to our town, as we had too much fun exploring the slopes and forgot how big the place was! Luckily, we ran into two Belgians who spoke fluent French who were also trying to find their way to the same town by public transportation. Although the time wasn’t that late, there were no more buses running between the two towns. We ended up sharing a taxi with the Belgians. We then realized how convenient the gondolas were, as the taxi ride took about 30 minutes as well driving through the windy roads to get us back to our little town.

On the next two days of our skiing trip on the slopes, we stayed pretty much on the East side of Meribel and Val Thorens. There were less people, and the sun was there most of the time keeping us very warm. My snowboarding was much better after the first day of embarrassment. Although I still couldn’t quite keep up with Kevin, at least he didn’t feel that I was as much of a burden … or at least I felt that way. We had our fun times working as a team when we were on the flat area. Being on a snowboard, I found it was more difficult to be on the near flat surface than on the steep hill. If I lost my momentum on the flat areas, I would most likely have to demount from my board and start walking. On the other hand, skiing has less of that problem. On our last day, we ended up having to have to pass through a green area which was almost flat, in order to get back to Meribel. Kevin would often give me a push from behind when I almost reached a complete stop. It was kind of fun … only at one time that he was going a little too fast so instead of giving me a “little” push, he just pushed me down on the floor. Ouch!

Christmas was very different being on the slopes. I didn’t feel Christmas at all. I guess it would not be so easy to decorate the slopes with Christmas lights. There were more activities in the Meribel town. On Christmas Eve, when we were at the tourist centre asking for directions, there was a Santa giving out candies (“Joyeux Noel!”), who then got on a horse drawn carriage. Unfortunately, we weren’t quite in the mood to experience the Santa action. At least I managed to get two candies from Santa. On Christmas day, our hotel arranged a Christmas dinner for everyone who was staying in the hotel to enjoy. We talked to some Aussies sitting next to us who had worked in Whistler the year before. It was quite fascinating to learn their culture and how they celebrate their Christmas in the summer.

Our return ride was worst than the journey in: no heat for almost half the journey and we were delayed due to our original scheduled driver missing his flight into Brides Les Bains. We were at least 3 hours late returning to London. This long journey bus ride really made me appreciate paying the extra to go with the plane.

Click here for pictures. Login: kevinguest / Pwd: guest