Skiing in the Alps

Sylvain and I started the tradition of instead of buying things for holidays and birthdays we would do stuff, go somewhere, make some memories. Last Christmas we left Chile and on our way out we went to Pucon, what great memories we have of doing hydrospeed and capping off the adventure that was Chile. For my 30th he brought me to Bruges and this Christmas I really wanted to finish our chapter in France with a ski trip in the Alps. It helped that Sylvain's lovely friend Fabien has a chalet there. We were joined by another friend Guillaume and his 3 year old son Rafael and two guys that were friends of Fabien's girlfriend Chloe.

I grew up having a cottage we went to more weekend's then we ever went to church. We played a lot of cards a lot of scrabble, and a lot of trivial pursuit. The week at the chalet did not disappoint and reminded me a lot of those nights around the dining room table both as a child trying to sleep but kept awake listening to the adults in the main room getting loud while drinking beers and playing cards, and also as a high school student being invited to join the adult fun myself.

I was worried that with that many people meals would be a disaster and cleaning up even worse, however, the dishwasher saved us from any trouble on that count, and the meals were some of the best I've had in France. We played cards, got loud, with Rafael we found an old game of Connect 4 (puissance 4) and young and old became obsessed with getting 4 chips in line for hours on end. We ate traditional Savoyen meals, the weather was perfect, and Rafael was the perfect edition to our group as he was a sweet natured kid and a social butterfly.

I learned to ski from my aunt and her family when they invited me along on their skiing holidays 16 years ago. Her sons have both worked in Colorado for the ski season as ski patrol and it's hard to catch up with their family without hearing about some skiing adventure the boys were on. During the week I learned to ski, I remember my uncle telling me how serious the hills were in Colorado, that the mountains took 30 minutes to get down, and the chair lifts were three times as long. I've never been to Colorado skiing, but I can confirm this for the French Alps.