We had a four-day weekend this week, but first, we had to get through the short week.
I took my German language evaluation on Monday night because I am heading back to German school! Compared to the last time we took German classes at the American university, this will be a German-taught class for those seeking citizenship. I’m not seeking citizenship, but I hope to get my German B1 certificate. The test was half-written and half-spoken, and I was placed at A2-2, which is actually a level higher than I thought I was. I only need three courses until I can take the B1 Exam, and I am on the waitlist for the next class, which starts at the end of February.
Tuesday was Brooklyn’s birthday! Our baby girl is 17 years old now. I don’t know where the years have gone, but we are so proud of her and can’t wait to see where life takes her!
For dinner, we went to Anami and had a sushi boat. Brooklyn’s boyfriend Kenneth joined us for the celebration!
On Wednesday night, we had the end-of-season wrestling banquet. Brooklyn was the first to receive recognition for her contributions as team manager. The coach talked about all her work with scorekeeping, equipment tracking, and injury treatment. She was also announced as the head manager for the team next season, which is like being named one of the captains! The team has six managers, so she will be responsible for organizing and leading the group.
Next was Ryan. Among the many ways the coaches recognized the wrestlers, the coach read out the goals each wrestler had written down at the start of the season. Ryan’s goal was to win at least two matches. But he far surpassed that by winning nine, qualifying for the European Championship, and moving up into the Varsity position. He earned his first varsity letter and was super pleased with himself, and so were we!
Thursday, we got a surprise snow shower. After we were all at work and school, we received about 3 inches of snow! We are hoping Spring is on the way soon! It was also the midpoint of the school quarter, so it was a busy day for everyone, but we had a free night, so we spent it catching up on school assignments that would be graded on Friday, the teacher workday.
We left early Friday morning for our ski trip to Le Trois Vallees, France. Since we absolutely could not afford to stay in any of the three super luxe valleys, we stayed just outside in the town of Moûtiers.
Our original trip plans had us leaving Thursday night and skiing for three days, but we were too tired to leave then and drove down Friday instead. We arrived mid-afternoon, and what can I say? The town of Moûtiers looks like it has seen better days. Our Airbnb was in a hotel down an alley, and it was definitely one of the more questionable places we’ve stayed. We were happy to find that the apartment was nice enough and clean, though. We unpacked and napped before having dinner in an Italian restaurant.
I would love to say that we were up early on Saturday, but we slept in a little before heading out to ski. Since we missed one day of skiing, we knew we wouldn’t be able to visit all three valleys, so we chose to visit Meribel and Courchevel. We will have to return another time to visit Val Thorens.
We arrived in Méribel by 10:30 and found the perfect parking spot at the base of several lifts. To start our day, we took a lift up to a blue run and found the snow super icy and hard-packed—not ideal skiing conditions! We were fortunate with the weather, though; it was a beautiful, clear blue-bird day with no wind!
We took the blue down, and it was steep! In Europe, ski slopes are graded blue, red, and black. In the US, a blue would be a blue, a red would be a black, and a black would be a double black. We all agreed this beginner blue should have been red, especially in the icy conditions. It’s a little wild that this “beginner” slope would probably be classified as black in the US. Méribel is definitely a challenging ski area!
We skied all day, with a break for lunch in the valley. Towards the end of our day, we stopped at La Folie Douce for aprés ski. La Folie Douce is famous for its aprés ski party, which boasts the highest altitude DJ in the world. At 2:30, a band started playing, complete with piano, saxophone, and dancers. That show continued until 3pm when the DJ started and yelled for everyone to get on tables while the smoke machines blew. It was definitely a huge party atmosphere and it got more and more crowded as time went on. The kids enjoyed their sodas while Matt and I had a wine.
When we were done, Matt and I made the steep hike back up the mountain to the gondola while the kids skiied down. We packed up the car and headed back to Moûtiers. We stopped at the Carrefour hypermarket on the way back to the Airbnb to stock up on our favorite French wines and snacks. Then, we had an early dinner in a French restaurant before an early bedtime.
Sunday, we slept in again before heading to Courchevel to ski. Again, we got so lucky with a second blue-bird day in a row!
It was hard to find parking in the garages in Courchevel as we had the roof box on top of our already tall vehicle. We did find street parking on Courchevel’s version of Park Avenue, just in front of the Rolex store. Other stores along the street included Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Chanel. We parked between a Lamborghini and a Ferrari. We definitely felt so out of place unloading our skis and getting our gear on in the middle of this 😂. The parking spot was also easy to secure since it costs €10 per hour! This place is super luxe (and expensive)!
It was also much more crowded, and we needed to wait over 20 minutes to get on the first gondola. Once we reached the top, we discovered amazing skiing conditions and much gentler blues and reds. It was awesome! Also different at Courchevel were the paparazzi waiting at the top of all the lifts. We guessed they were just waiting for a celebrity to get off, not that we saw any during our time there.
We were having a great morning skiing when Ryan asked me if I had his phone while we rode up a lift. Of course, I did not, and he promptly let me know he must have lost his somewhere. We checked the Find Me app, and sure enough, his phone was on the other side of the mountain ridge. We called it, and a nice Frenchman answered. He said he had found it on the slopes a little over an hour ago. He gave us directions to find him, and when we checked the map, we found that it would probably take us at least an hour to catch up with the guy who was skiing his way back to Meribel.
Luckily, he and his group had stopped for a picnic, so we were able to catch up with him two towns over in Courchevel La Tania. We had to ski down and take several lifts back up to get there, but we eventually made it. He and his group were so nice. We even tried to buy his drinks to thank them, but they refused. Although it disrupted our plans a bit for the day, I was never actually worried about not getting the phone back. Skiers are nice people, and we’ve always managed to recover anything we drop on the mountain. It also allowed us to ski in an area we hadn’t planned to visit.
As it was now past lunch time, we had lunch in La Tania before making the lunch journey back to Courchevel.
When we were done skiing for the day, we returned to the Rolex store to pack up the car and headed back to Moûtiers. The kids wanted to eat some of the treats they had picked up at a hypermarket, so Matt and I walked into town for dinner. We only found one place open, a pub, and stopped in. Unfortunately, we were about an hour early for dinner, so we nursed some wines until we could order pizza. It was definitely a locals-only kind of place, and I was the only female there the whole time we were there, so I felt like I was breaking some unwritten rule. Everyone was really nice, though, and the pizza was really good.
Overall, we really liked skiing in Courchevel! Meribel was more challenging and didn’t have excellent snow conditions, but we also enjoyed it a lot. I think it’s definitely on the list of places to return to next year. We barely scratched the surface of Meribel and Courchevel and still have to do the third valley, Val Thorens. I do not think we will stay in Moûtiers again, though; we may just have to pay a bit more to be closer to the slopes and have more of a walkable base with more restaurants.
We were up early on Monday to pack up the apartment, and to clean it, as I found out the night before we had to clean the Airbnb before departing. We definitely won’t be returning to this location. We were home by 4pm, which gave us plenty of time to reset for the week ahead!
Gilcrests Abroad 