Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski Ski

Well I am sure that you get the idea....

We had always planned to do some kind of ski trip pretty soon after I arrived, but we hadn't planned anything. So with Jules off work for a month we decided that early Feb would be the best bet. Now unlike Australia where weekend or three/four day skiing trips are common here in Europe you can go for 7 days or 14 days (that is a long time skiing) and it is all organised through tour operators. Not wanting to go for that long we tried to build our own shorter ski trip but we soon worked out it would be too expensive.

Scrapping that idea and deciding to use a tour operator we came across a pretty good deal for 7 nights with flights from London Gatwick to Geneva and bus transfers for Flaine Ski resort in the French Alps. The cost each? Just £184.

An early wakening for our 8:20 flight saw the three of us pretty bleary eyed. Jules did some pretty fancy (read fast) driving to get us to Gatwick in time for our departure. At one point she was doing 95 mph and a police car overtook (the speed limit is 70mph on the motorways here). Anyway we parked the car and ran in for our charter flight to Geneva. Britannia Airways was the operator and our flight today was on a 767 (I think it might have been the first one ever built) where instead of 2-3-2 seating they had crammed in 2-4-2 seating. Oh well it was only gonna be a 1 hour 10 minute flight.

Once we landed an Inghams representative (the tour company we booked through) directed us to the appropriate Flaine bus and then we sat around for the next 1.5 hours waiting for other people (oh the joy). Oh I should also mention the charming Swiss passport control person. Even though I don't expect these people to have much of a personality, this guy set new limits for his total lack of anything resembling a personality.

Anyway the bus finally left only for us to be told instead of taking the normal 1.5 hours we have some people going to Chamonix on board and would need to drop them off somewhere. So some three hours later we were finally dumped in Flaine village only to be told that our apartment would not be available until 5pm (bear in mind we had been awake since 4am). So after dumping our bags somewhere we decided to do a little exploring of the village that would be our home for the next seven days.

The village is divided into two areas. Flaine Foret was where we were staying and this area had most of the apartments a couple of restaurants (including one for the Dutch!) and a supermarket. Flaine Forum was accessible via two funiculaire lifts (which were pretty funky). The forum area had most of the restaurants and shops and an ice skating rink!

After doing a little exploring and shopping (mmm salami and cheese) we picked up the keys and dumped our bags in the apartment. Now rather then have linen there waiting for you we had to take a ticket up to another building which would then be exchanged for sheets, oh what a lovely system.

We then went to pick up our pre-booked skis. Now in this internet day of age you think that a printout of your booking would not be necessary (we had noted down the reference number and Jules had a copy of the booking on her PDA). Well that was not the case. They seemed most annoyed that we did not have the printout and claimed that without it they could not get paid... While they gave us the skis they insisted we return in a couple of days with the printout (although they could not help with locating a printer).

Anyway, we were pretty much stuffed by the time we got back to the room, so Peter and I went out and picked up a couple of take away pizzas and we enjoyed a couple of beers before hitting the sack. Tomorrow was skiing day one!



Lake Geneva


Snow!


Le Hameau, Flaine - what we thought our apartment buildings would be like.


Flaine Forum - What our apartment building was actually like


A funky lift