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| Our hotel in Les Bossons |
From the beginning, this was ‘the trip that shouldn’t be.' It started with expensive plane
tickets (school holidays) and hotel mistakes.
Then, two weeks before the trip (and while Chris was in the States
visiting his family) I pulled a muscle in my back so seriously that I could
barely move for a week. Finally, Chris
sprained the heck out of his ankle playing basketball four days before we
left. We debated
whether to just cancel the whole thing (and lose half of the total cost.) After agonizing about the decision we called our
parents who gave us basically the same advice of ‘take it easy, but go’.
So we went. We
packed up my car at 4 o’clock Saturday morning.
Just before we left, Chris tried to check the car’s coolant (it had an
episode of being low last week) but was thwarted by a suddenly broken hood
latch. Instead of heeding this last
sign to just stay home, we transferred the bags into his car and made our way
to the airport. The flight into Geneva
was an hour late but otherwise uneventful, and we managed to catch a shuttle
to our hotel in Les Bossons, part of the incredibly gorgeous Chamonix-Mont
Blanc Valley in the French Alps. The hotel
was quaint and the staff was the friendliest we’ve ever encountered.
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| We had great views of Les Bossons glacier from the hotel. |
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| Such a typically French (or European) bathroom: pull out bidet, deep but short bath with a built-in seat, and never a shower curtain in sight (whyyyy?!?!) |
The
timing was such that we dropped our things and headed to Les Houches ski resort
nearby to eat lunch, then ski/snowboard the rest of the day. The snow was decent, but it was the dazzling
sunshine and spectacular scenery that stole the show. We somewhat followed the ‘take it easy’ advice for one run and
assessed ourselves at the bottom of the mountain. My back was tight but not painful and Chris’
ankle was pretty snug in the brace and snowboard boot. Yay, the trip was looking up! The rest of the day was great.
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| Chris soaking up the sun and snow in Les Houches. |
That night we ate at our
hotel’s restaurant, where the servers were confused we didn’t want the €33/each
‘menu’ option, but quickly handled their surprise and were accommodating to our
ordering of other things. The whole
exchange was confusing, although not put-offish and it was only the next
evening when Chris asked the front desk about something else did he
realize that our room rate included half board, which was not ‘breakfast’ as I
had stupidly interpreted, but ‘breakfast and 6-course dinner’. HAHAHA!
That explained the servers’ confusion at our refusal of a soup course, cheese
course, AND dessert course… I imagine
they were thinking something along the lines of: ‘crazy Americans are such picky eaters’ but I
can’t mention enough how genuinely unpretentious the staff was. Needless to say, we opted for the 6-course
dinner option on the second night!
Anyway, the next day we explored Brévent / Flégère (1030 m -
2525 m), another resort in the valley. I
think there are five resorts in the valley, and we were only able to explore
two of them this trip, so may have to go back next year! We were again blessed with a gorgeous day and
bodies that held up to the strenuous pistes, moguls, and a few impressive
tumbles.
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| Got a little lost from Chris and ended up having to haul myself up a hill of knee-deep powder. |
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| View from the top of the Brevent cable car. |
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| Must've been a little avalanche in the past few days. |
Even the lift rides were entertaining as we watched hang gliders soaring
in the clear sky hundreds of feet above the slopes. To get airborne, some of the crazies skied
down a scary mountain face until they wanted to lift off (oftentimes as they were going
over a cliff!) Others simply ran off the
side of a steep slope or cliff edge to engage their chutes. Over lunch, Chris and I chatted about how
exciting it would be to go up in tandem with an instructor, and not 200 feet
away from the restaurant we came across the tandem launch point! We stood and watched for a few minutes until a
couple of the crew came over and offered to take each of us up (in tandem, of
course) for a twenty minute ride.
Sold! Not even ten minutes later,
Chris and I were each harnessed onto an instructor. All we had to do was run to the edge of the
drop-off and they did the rest. The loft
was incredible that day and within a few minutes I was looking down at little
specs of people, the whole Chamonix-Mont Blanc Valley visible 2000+ feet
below. Wowza. Gently soaring up there was paradoxically peaceful (smooth movements with no engine noise) and exhilerating (realizing just how high we were and seeing the stunning views). We finished with a bang and a bit of vertigo as the instructor asked if I wanted to do some tricks. Hehehe. It was cold that high up, and our poor little frozen
hands were the only negative about the experience!
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| "Claire, I'm not sure about this!" |
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| My equipment! |
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| My knee is in the photo on the right. Basically this is as we're skimming by one of the steep mountain faces with the Chamonix-Mont Blanc Valley below. |
We landed and had time for one last run before heading into
Chamonix to walk around town for a few minutes, then grabbed a bus back to the hotel. Dinner that night was fantastic, although in
retrospect Chris would’ve done better to limit himself to a piece of bread
instead of gorging on a 6-course meal…
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| Downtown Chamonix. |
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| Course 5: a variety of mostly local cheeses. I love you, France. |
We later learned that a novel norovirus was spreading
rampantly through parts of France and Switzerland. On Sunday night, this particular stomach bug struck
and made Chris sicker than I’ve ever seen him. We had to be out of our room Monday by noon, so instead of skiing a third resort of the Valley, I had to pack us up and
help him to the lobby where he slept on a couch for the remainder of the
day. I felt fine at that point, so took
a bus into Chamonix town center and went on a couple-hour hike in the valley to
enjoy the sun and views that never quit.
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| Gorgeous valley view and the cross-country ski track. |
By the time I made it
back to the hotel around four, my tummy was a tiny bit queasy. Maybe it was worse for me because I knew what
was coming… we’ll just say the rest of that evening involved an awful hour
shuttle ride from hotel to airport and a somewhat-less terrible (thanks to meds
from the airport medic) flight home. The
next day, Chris took his first-ever sick day from work. Honestly, we’ve been kind of a mess for a
while now with my back and his ankle, but the addition of the devilish
norovirus just made everything seem ten times worse. We’re hoping that as time passes we’ll
remember more of the good than the bad of this trip but for now we’re so happy
to be home.
