Christmas in The Alps

We were able to make it out of Paris, despite the adverse weather conditions of last week. It was snowing pretty heavily the morning we left, but luckily we were taking the train and not driving. We arrived in Bourg Saint Maurice in the French Alps a little after 2pm. From the train station, we had to take a funicular up the mountain and then a shuttle bus to Les Arcs 1950. And I have to say, this place is pretty great, for what it is. And what it is, is a great big cruise ship in the sky with every convenience at your finger tips! We rented a condo in a little car free prefab village (think Main Street USA Disneyland, only french) with restaurants (again, think France, so replace Goofy's Burgers and Dogs with Pierre's Gooey Fonduey), ski shops, market, gaufre stand and sweet shoppe. It's ski in, ski out... no need to get in the car or shuttle bus or what have you, just slap on your skis and go! (I really believe now that the torture of getting your kids ready to ski and out the door is far beyond anything we were meant to endure as humans anyways, getting them onto transportation after that is just plain 'insupportable'! I mean, who came up with the term 'ski vacation', anyways? Haven't the jews suffered enough?) The kids are in ski school til noon, then we get them, have lunch (crepes, anyone?) and go out for a few more runs. And the best thing is, everyone is so exhausted by the end of the day, they pass out cold. We even got a little goyesha Charlie Brown Christmas tree for the room. I should also add, however, that we mistakenly used some chocolate ornaments to decorate it with (only the top branches) but when we came home from dinner one night, Chloe had helped herself to 4 of them. And didn't even knock the tree down. She's quite agile, the little bugger! Noa loved the ski school and really likes to go fast (surprise). She started doing this thing where she parallels her skis, bends at the knee, slaps both hands on her thighs and then jumps up. She says it makes her go faster. Lili wasn't too keen on ski school but she did a great job and warmed to the idea a little after the first 3 days. I skied some but I'm really a fair weather skier so today, as it was snowing, I bowed out. Ethan, the ski fanatic, decided to continue to ski and apparently held a huge yard sale right under one of the lifts, something worthy of a standing ovation, or a least a number of cheers from the chair above. Tonight we stood out in the cold for about an hour waiting for a torch lit ski descent and when they finally started coming down Noa says 'This isn't magical, this is boring!' Currently, the girls are trying to fall asleep so Santa can come. We'll spend Christmas day here and then back to Paris on Sunday. Happy Holidays! (This post was written on Christmas Eve, however, with the internet connection, we couldn't get it to download, hence, the time lag.)