Skiing Holiday!

Hi, today's post is about my skiing holiday in France that I went on a few weeks ago.

 

If you're considering booking next year's skiing holiday, this might help you decide whether it's worth the money and effort (SPOILER ALERT: it is).

 

My family and my friend Emily's family went together in one very cramped (but I see it as cosy) seven seater car which took us all the way to the French Alps to a lovely resort called Sainte Foy Tarentaise. It's 17km from Val d'Isere.

 

Just being in the mountains was pretty exciting- the views were incredible and all around us were people skiing and it made us so jealous. Without wasting any more time, we went to get our skis, ski boots, poles and helmets from the ski hire place.

 

In my opinion, the boots are the worst part about the whole skiing holiday. First, you have to get them fitted which feels like such a chore when you just want to get outside skiing. Next, they're uncomfortable as hell. Luckily for me, my ski boots fitted me perfectly and were good for the whole week of skiing, however they were still ski boots and there is a limit to how comfortable they can be.

 

They have to be tight so that you can ski without your feet slipping around inside them but, especially if you feet are a funny shape, this can make the boot be really tight around certain pars of your foot and cause bruising. Basically, it's difficult to find some ski boots that fit your feet, and even when you do, they have far from the comfort of your soft snow boots.

 

Anyway, once the ski stuff was all hired and sorted out, we went straight to the chair lift which headed right up the mountain. It took a few runs to get used to skiing again (it had been a year since we'd been last time) but before long, we got super ambitious and whenever there weren't too many people, we'd go as fast as we dared.

 

One of my favourite parts of the whole mountain was the viewpoint. This was at the very top of the mountain and the chairlift to get to it took ages, but it was so worth it. As you can probably guess by the fact that it's a viewpoint, he views were stunning. I just didn't get bored of standing there taking it all in, feeling on top of the world. I'd check the time and realise that on a normal school day I'd be sat in double geography, and that made me feel even better.

 

I have taken many photos from the viewpoint, but none of them reflect the real beauty of it.

As you can see in the photo, the ski was perfectly blue and everything looks so calm and peaceful- worlds away from work, school and the stress of normal life. You can't see it in the photo, but slightly to the right is Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe! (I think- don't quote me on that)

 

With all of the breath taking scenery, I couldn't resist using my ipod to take hundreds of photos and videos. I have a habit of making movies for all of the holidays we go on, so I was getting plenty of footage for that (I won't show you the movie because it contains members of my family who came with us and they might not want it to be on the internet, sorry).

 

An event that I found particularly exciting (in a bad way) was when I was about to take a video of my Mum, Dad and brother skiing down the mountain after me but I dropped my ipod! It started sliding down the slope and my instinctive reaction was to chase it. I had a rush of adrenalin and hormones so after skiing dangerously fast and skidding round to catch the ipod, I felt all wobbly and my heart was still beating really fast afterwards.

 

I don't know if you find that exciting, but for me I had a rush of emotions: shock, panic, fear, concentration (if that's even an emotion) and relief, so I found it pretty thrilling.

 

Despite it being a skiing holiday, we did do other things apart from skiing. One of them being snow shoeing! I'd never done this before but was very happy to because, though skiing is one of the most fun and addictive sports I've ever done, after 6 days of doing it for 6 hours each day, we just wanted to vary it a little (and I'm so glad we did).

Emily doing something (I don't know what) when we were snow shoeing

I found I could appreciate the views a lot more because I didn't have to focus so much on not falling over. We could all chat and get some exercise at the same time. The snow shoes made walking in the snow a lot easier but some of us just wore snow boots because we were walking on a path which was already quite patted down.

Every evening, we'd retreat to our little French hotel 10 minutes drive away from where we skied. It was lovely and rustic with unique paintings for sale all over the walls.

We ate in the hotel's restaurant and I had the opportunity to try lots of local dishes which were (mostly) delicious! Most nights the light was off by 10 because, trust me, skiing is EXHAUSTING, but it was still very easy to get up and go the next morning (partly because of the buffet breakfast!).

Basically, I had a great trip and I recommend skiing in France (or anywhere) to anyone considering it (: