Day 10: Sweet Valley High

Today was another cracking day of weather and skiing. What's more, we finally got the staff at the hotel to make us an omelette at breakfast, we've been trying the last few days but they're never around, so this morning when I saw the guy I grabbed him to ask for one.

Very nice too!

We left for the slopes a little late in the morning (someone was blogging...geez...I know right?)

But once on the snow we quickly made our way up and over the Col de Loze. It was a pretty picture perfect day. The chairlift up was fun too, as planes were taking off at the altiport and hang gliders and skydivers were coming down from above.

The view from the Col de Loze was incredible! It's hard to take a bad photo, if I don't say so myself!

The run down to the town of La Tania was very pretty. We navigated our way through the trees which framed a different view of the town below on every turn you made.

At noon we made a pit stop in La Tania itself for coffee and lemonade. The buildings here had their own distinct character. Kinda quirky! 

One funny moment was when I asked a waitress where the 'La Farcon' restaurant was. I pronounced it La Farkon, and she was like "hmmm... Oh La Far-son"

It was a bit of a Graham Kennedy moment and made me realise how Aussie we are!

We met up again in Courcheval for lunch. The facilities and buildings here are quite new, as the village had a lot of the 1992 Winter Olympic Events. 

Lunchtime is great here on the mountain - they always have meal deal options. Today was a choice of entree and main or main and dessert for 19euro. Pretty good value. I again had the fish and simi again had a soup. Recurring theme here. I decided to go the dessert option as it was a chocolate milkshake ( apparently ) although when it came out it was more like choc ice cream, whipped cream with a dash of milk - still awesome!

We sat for a while and we studied the trail map to organise our run to the end of the day. This place is huge so you need to have a plan ( all roads don't necessarily lead to home here)

We then each went separate ways around Courcheval. Simi stayed on the lower side while I made my way up to the top of Dent De Burgin at 2739m high. I took the long route back which went right into the heart if the Courcheval valley and skied back down to meet sim.

I met up with Sim down at the lifts in Courcheval and we caught a ride all the way back up to the summit of Sailures. The view here is stunning. It was now 5 or so in the afternoon and the sun was getting low. But it was beautiful conditions for skiing, albeit if our legs were weary!

Sim caught the lift halfway back down to Meribel while I attempted the long run down from the top, descending from 2700m to 1400m

The best part of today was the long run down into Meribel, listening to Phoenix (very apt choice I thought when in France) on the iPod, and stoping for photos and just to capture the view and soak it up. So much fun. 

PS - loving panoramas at the moment. Best thing apple did to the iPhone, although they need to work on its capacity to work in cold conditions. Both our phones have died numerous times, saying no battery but it's at 60% or so . Very annoying.

In the evening we headed down to the 'laverie' to do sone washing as we've used lots of layers in the cold here. We had a little more success this time than in Paris.

We then headed out for dinner at La Taverne, a seemingly Enhlish run French menu pub/bistro. The food wasn't bad , pot of mussels with cheese & white wine sauce. Cheese fondue seemed to be the popular choice looking around the restaurant. It's a very done thing here. Perhaps another time. 

Off to bed now - 2 more days of skiing still to go!