AspiringNomad

Our last day of skiing has come to a close and we are back in our apartment. Let me paint the picture for you. We both have a cup of tea on the go, our Ski gear is sprawled across the furniture to air out, our hair is all sweaty and stuck to our heads from wearing a helmet all day, our toes are pink from where they have been cold and then warm and our legs are exhausted from the past 5 days. Arron is watching some of the GoPro footage we got during the day and I am sat on the sofa writing this.

It’s been an incredibly strenuous day with lots of milestones achieved. We made it to the highest point across the 3 Valleys at 3200m and even ventured across into the Orelle valley (the secret 4th valley is what people like to call it, although as it’s on the map, it really isn’t that secret). Whilst there, we reached 3230m at the top of Sommet des 3 Vallées. We managed to successfully ski down a black route and even headed off piste for a bit of an adventure. That was not so successful, mainly because the snow was very icey, but we did it nonetheless.

The past 5 days have heavily consisted of getting on as many ski lifts as you can imagine and skiing down as many slopes in the 3 Vallées that we could! But first, I’ll rewind to Wednesday evening, when we headed out to a pizza place that was apparantly going to be so easy to find. 
Albeit, there might have been lots of choice, we seemed to have headed out for dinner at the same time as the whole population of Les Menuires! This meant we had to hang around for an hour before finally getting a seat in Restaursnt Brasserie De Belleville La Croisette. It was worth the wait. I tucked into my Tartflette and Arron had a Pizza, we decided that after all the skiing we had done, we deserved a dessert too!

The Alps woke us with a spectacular pink sky on Thursday morning. I headed out to the local shop early to get a couple of baguettes to make rolls for lunch.
It’s true what they say, ‘red sky in the morning, Shepherd’s warning.’ And unfortunately it was cloudy all day! We didn’t let that damped our spirits though and infact I probably skied the best overall on this day. The fact I could still feel my legs on Thursday probably had something to do with it!

We crossed over into Val Thorens first thing, as we had remembered that the last time we were here, we hadn’t explored much of the higher points in this valley. This was mainly because they involve a lot of red routes, but apparantly I was feeling much more brave this year and so we headed up and down and up and down a few times before making our way back into Les Menuires. Despite it not being too far away, getting across the mountain on chair lifts from Val Thorens proved quite difficult. But we were back for about 4pm and had time to relax before heading to Brides Les Bains.

Unfortunately our trip was slightly tainted because as we left Arron announced that the toilet was blocked. Needing to go to the toilet myself, you can imagine I wasn’t very amused! Dad shouting ‘Plumé Douché’ came to mind, and the memory of using, I quote ‘poo sticks’, when we were on one of our Martindales on Tour holidays many moons ago, sprung back to mind!
We still headed out in seek of food whilst I was contacting the Airbnb host to try and get a maintanence person out to fix the problem.

We ended up booking a table at a quaint little restaurant in the centre of the town for 9pm and past the time by having a drink at a nearby bar. We tried to get into the casino but we didn’t have our passports. Clearly we looked a bit dodgy and the bouncer didn’t let us in. Probably a good job because after a few Vin Chauds, I may have considered trying to double all my money of red!

Arron drove us back up the windy mountain roads to Les Menuires as I tried my hardest not to fall asleep in the passenger seat!
Both exhausted, we went straight to bed!

I was woken Friday morning to the sound of Arron plunging the toilet. The sloshing noise soon turned into a promising sucking sound and before long, Arron emerged from the bathroom with a big smile on his face! The toilet was unblocked!
A quick message to the Airbnb host to cancel the maintenence man and we were full steam ahead for another day of skiing!

We started the day as usual. From our apartment block, we headed down the slope to Tortollet chair lift. Obviously, we renamed this lift ‘toilet’ as the spelling is fairly similar and it’s mildly amusing to say we need to go to the bottom of ‘toilet’ every time we leave off in the morning.
From here, we hop onto the Menuires lift (no nick name for this one) and continue up into the mountains. Lastly, we get onto Mont de la Chambre, a very busy lift, but this takes us all the way to the top. We can pretty much decide if we are going into Meribel/Courchevel or Val Thorens. This Friday morning, we decided to head into Meribel. Despite our enthusiasm and desire to ski down to the best of our abilities, our tired legs had other ideas. We struggled to keep steady and found some routes harder than we should have done. As we lay on purpose-build picnic chairs eating our rolls, we contemplated how awful our skiing performance was. However, we were still having a lot of fun so continued on skiing until the day drew to a close.

We relaxed in the apartment and had the remainder of the tortellini and veg for dinner.

Saturday morning soon rolled around and the sun was lighting up the tips of the mountains as it was making it’s way high into the sky. We wanted to ski across to Courchevel today but needed to be back for the Spa at 4pm so, without too much persuasion, we geared up and were out on the lifts at 9:00am!
We are so glad we got up when we did because the slopes were lovely! Quiet, good coverage and good sunlight. It was the perfect way to start the day. We headed up to one of my favourite routes, at the top of Mont Vallon before sliding all the way down to Courchevel Moriond. This place is a favourite of ours, and although the restaurant didn’t let us eat our homemade sandwiches outside on their deckchairs (even though we spent a fortune in there for coffee’s and a Vin Chaud) we still love the ambiance of the resort and the route that leads down to it.
It wasn’t long before we had to make our way back to Les Menuires and get changed for the spa.

A short drive away into Les Bruyeres, we eventually found a parking spot, of course it was probably in the furthest point to where the Spa was located, but it was a spot, so we didnt complain. We had use of the facilities and I had a massage booked in with someone called Lucas. I was rather looking forward to my massage (despite what Arron says, I was excited for the massage itself, not to meet this Lucas man) and Arron was quite happy using the sauna, steamroom and pool.
At 5pm I was greeted by a very handsome masseuse, this of course, was Lucas. Typically, I had to tell Arron this information and I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it!
In true French weirdness, the Spa was laid out as though we were in a school. The pool was up some stairs and the changing facilities were far from private but it was relaxing and our legs were thanking us for it!
When we left the Spa we walked along the snow front and grabbed ourselves a Nutella Crepe, they were delicious and just what we fancied. Just as we were heading back to the car, we noticed the toboggan run that was next to one of the ski lifts we regularly use. Without hesitation and before Arron could talk himself out of it, I had enquired about the price and got two tickets for us to give it a go!
Arron was almost shaking with nerves as he mounted his toboggan first. I wasn’t far behind and we were pulled up the track, just like you would on a roller coaster. Both of us had seriously misjudged the scale of the toboggan and we were heading about 100m up onto the slopes. Gaining some serious speed, we raced down to the bottom swinging round the bends and using the breaks only because we were fearing for our lives! As we dismounted the toboggans, we unanimously agreed that it was €9 well spent! After quite an eventful evening, we headed back for some pizza and a film before bed.

It was our last day on the slopes today and we were determined to make the most of it. It seems like the next lot of tourists had arrived during the night as the slopes were heaving full of people of all abilities and all ages! Our aim for today was to stay high and stay red to avoid the busy crowds and get the most out of our last day. Once we decided on our ‘cool’ handshake we threw ourselves in to enjoying every last ounce of skiing we could get.

We tried to leave no route unturned and from 9:45am to 4:45pm we headed into the 4th valley and back across to Meribel and headed down some of our favourite runs. Our legs were burning but our smiles were wide, our last run was my favourite ‘3 Marches’ (which of course we like to say in the most French accent possible). As the sun dipped behind the mountains and we travelled down into the valley, we had to accept that it was time to hand our skis back to Intersport. Fortunately for me, the attractiveness of the men who work there softened the blow a little, but I am still sad that the skiing is over.

To round off our holiday we headed out for dinner and after an extensive and unnecessary walk around Saint Martin de Belleville (the less said about this little excursion, the better), we decided to head back to Les Menuires and at 9pm took at seat in La Trattoria. We ate more food than we thought was possible and took the scenic route back to our place, via the weird free public lift that we can see from our room.
Arron has now drifted off to sleep and I plan to do the same soon!

It’s been a trying, painful in parts and cold week, but once again, we have had the best time exploring the 3 Vallées together, judging most other skiers, laughing at the falls and praying it won’t be us, testing our limits and admiring the views whilst we are at it. Despite a few arguments, a blocked toilet, a few near misses on the slopes and Arron still giving me unwanted skiing advice, I would, without doubt do it all over again!