Since we last posted anything, we have had Christmas and New Year and a few visitors. The weather has been fairly good to date, and we have picked our times when best to go out. All in all we went out on fourteen days in December – though these ranged from a quick two hours to full days.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were particularly sunny. We skied on Christmas Eve in the morning to give us enough time to prepare dinner for the next day. We’d already done the shopping so Tim roasted off the turkey and prepped the vegetables. We then went out in the village for a few drinks and bumping into some of the seasonnaires on their Christmas break.
Christmas Day was equally as nice. We took it quite gently after the drinks from the day before, ‘phoning family and friends during the day. We skied quite a while before we came home and spent the afternoon having our Christmas dinner and watching some Christmas television in our “sloppy gear” – very nice and relaxing.
We had a nice surprise between Christmas and New Year, when Stefan Rice asked to ski with us for a day. It was quite snowy by the time him and Lucas arrived at 10.30 in Avoriaz, but that did not stop Lucas jumping off the first slope he saw into deep powder and on into the snowboard park. We didn’t want to be upstaged by a nine year old so we just followed… It was a fun day though.
The next day we had our first ski visitors. This was a full blown test of the bus transfer, ski hire etc.. which all worked well. Steve and Jill arrived for a four night stop, which seemed to involve us in eating, skiing and shopping for the best part of three days.
New Year’s Eve started by us wandering into the village and watching the French ski instructors do their torchlight decent from Pleney, followed by great fireworks. Our evening continued with a lovely tasting menu and fine wines in the Samoyede before watching the London fireworks on television back at home.
However, New Year has started with a bang. There has been a few storms bringing rain lower down and high winds above. Avoriaz and Morzine have actually been closed, but hopefully things will get better again soon.
