Tuesday, March 20, 2012

DAY 359 - le tour de ski resort Francia & Italia


It was a little sad to leave our apartment in Bourg d’Osians but also exciting to get back on the road and check out a little more of Europe.

As our season pass for Alpe d’Huez gave us free access to other ski resorts and with fresh snow forecasted in the coming days, we didn’t get very far, just 20kms up the road is Les Duex Alpes.  We got a fresh dump on the 2nd night and it continued to snow lightly for the next couple of days. 

Les Deux Alpes is huge and we actually liked it better than Alpe d’Huez.  They have about the same amount of runs in km as each other but Les Deux Alpes in sqm would be bigger.  The runs are huge, really long & really wide and so many lifts and pommers to use, you never had to line up.  Whereas Alpe d’Huez  has long skinny runs which lead into flat return tracks which require you to skate back to the village or lift system and always, always had line ups.

Pole Position camping at Villenvue - Serre Chevalier
10days later we drove to Serre Chevalier.  It’s approx. 1hr drive from Les Deux Alpes and is beautiful.  The chair lift system is really well linked to 5 villages which are situated on the main mountain road to Italy, so you can ski all day on the mountains and then have the convenience of being in a bigger town or village at night or for non-ski days. 

We stayed in Villenvue and really liked it.  It was really pretty, built on both sides of a little waterway that goes straight through the village.  It was full of yummy bakeries & restaurant’s and has a really good vibe about it.  It’s only 5kms from Briancon which is a decent size town, with big brand shops, easy and convenient to get too and thus made it more reasonably priced that Alpe d’Huez or Les Deux Alpes.  We stayed for 3 days here and totally enjoyed it.  It has really picturesque, nice long tree lined runs right from the top down to the village with an excellent lift system.  Not a soul in sight (ie School kids) and with light snow at night we were able to make some fresh lines virtually every day.

We then moved onto the Italian Milky Way (via Lattea) ski resorts.  We ended up staying right on the boarder (French side) in a ski resort town called Montgenevere as they had a really excellent camper park.  The Milky Way is made up of 5 Italian ski villages and 1 French village.  All linked by ski runs and chair lifts and as it was host to the 2006 Winter Olympics, so therefore the lift system, ski runs, services and facilities are excellent.

It was pretty cool to wake up in the morning and have brekky in France, board a chairlift 100m from the motorhome and get off the chair lift in Italy.

Out of all the ski resorts we visited on this trip, if I was to do another season in this part of France or Italy then it would be Serre Chevalier or the Milky Way.  But for next year we are tossing up Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

No major stacks or face plants to report and yes we can confirm we are officially addicted to the snow!


No comments:

Post a Comment