1 post tagged “hauteluce”
When I woke up in the chalet my cousins rented in Hauteluce, this is the view I saw from our balcony.
For those of you who forgot, my cousin Gerard, his 19-year-old daughter Laura, his partner Claire, and their 3-year-old son Martin, rented two apartments in a chalet in the French Alps and invited me and Laura's boyfriend, Matthieu, to join. I've never been skiing before, but was not about to pass up the opportunity.
Over the course of four days I ate way too much tartiflette: a kind of stew of potato chunks, Roblochon cheese, sauteed onions, and pieces of ham covered in cream and baked. Oh yumminess! Laura, Matthieu, and I played poker (Laura must cheat, she's too good!), watched movies (I've never heard of Gadjo Dilo, but it's amazing), and shlepped our skis all over the place.
I signed up for a private instructor at Les Saisies, the ski station. We also took to ski school, where all the 3-year-olds were crying and did not want to ski. Here's Martin, posing for the camera, his first time on skis!
He was a good sport, unlike these two who refused to participate:
The kid in blue did not move for like 2 hours!
We took the ski lift up to see Mont Blanc, which was very cool. It looked so close!
That's it, directly behind my head. All that green should have been white, in a normal year!
There wasn't enough snow, but it was gorgeous out. Check out the clouds below me! I was above the clouds!
My ski lessons went really well, and I discovered that whenever I'm going too fast I yell "crap!!!" I completely could not control it. It just came hurtling out of my mouth every few meters. After the third day of lessons Laura took me up a slope that was probably too difficult for me, due to the huge patches of ice. I fell twice on my right arm and hurt myself pretty badly, including a big bump to the noggin. Laura just gave me a swig of cognac from her flask, and we continued on. I refused to end on a bad note, though, so we did one last run, with no falling.
It's funny, but I don't know ski vocabulary in English! I learned how to ski in French, which is not so easy when your instructors are telling you to slow down but you don't know it. Oops.
The last night I took Laura and Matthieu out for fondue. They're both really cool kids, and pretty mature for their age. We had a good, silly time. Here's Matthieu:
And the photo that Laura approved for internet use:
Over the course of four days I ate way too much tartiflette: a kind of stew of potato chunks, Roblochon cheese, sauteed onions, and pieces of ham covered in cream and baked. Oh yumminess! Laura, Matthieu, and I played poker (Laura must cheat, she's too good!), watched movies (I've never heard of Gadjo Dilo, but it's amazing), and shlepped our skis all over the place.
I signed up for a private instructor at Les Saisies, the ski station. We also took to ski school, where all the 3-year-olds were crying and did not want to ski. Here's Martin, posing for the camera, his first time on skis!
We took the ski lift up to see Mont Blanc, which was very cool. It looked so close!
There wasn't enough snow, but it was gorgeous out. Check out the clouds below me! I was above the clouds!
It's funny, but I don't know ski vocabulary in English! I learned how to ski in French, which is not so easy when your instructors are telling you to slow down but you don't know it. Oops.
The last night I took Laura and Matthieu out for fondue. They're both really cool kids, and pretty mature for their age. We had a good, silly time. Here's Matthieu:
And the one that she's going to kill me for using:
It must run in the family, right?
