Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Chamonix is like a storybook  We almost missed seeing how lovely it really is from a nature perspective is for the entire city was bathed in thick fog until mid-day today.  After seeing nothing but grey in all directions, suddenly we look up and we are surrounded by craggy peaks reaching miles into the sky.

Chamonix itself is not at a particularly high altitude.  Around the same as Denver, CO if I am doing my conversions correctly.  The city is a valley surrounded by mountains and if you want to ski anything above bunny slope, you have to take a gondola of some sort a few miles straight up to get to the actual ski villages.  There was a very small ski area with two green runs (drag lift) and a chair lift to a red and a blue.  I decided "what the hell" so this morning I picked up some skis from the hotel shop and headed over.  Unfortunately, things did not go quite as planned.  Problem #1: The lift was closed leaving access to only the green runs.  No worries, I thought, I can work on skiing parallel.

 Me in the middle in dark green with little ones to the left and right in red, PARALLEL

When I first learned to ski, I was taught pizza wedge.  Not til I was an adult and took a lesson did I learn parallel.  This means that when ever I get scared, I revert back to pizza wedge.

  Me in the middle in dark green doing pizza wedge

This prevents me from getting to more advanced levels and is frustrating so I was happy to work on it.  But, then came Problem #2:  My shoes were WAY too small.  For some reason, I just picked the wrong size in the ski shop and after a couple runs I was about to collapse from pain.  I know ski shoes are supposed to be uncomfortable and thats not what this was.  Undefeated, I loosened them as far as I could safely go.  This made the pain manageable though I still couldn't feel my toes.  It was, however, Problem #3 that was my undoing:  In France, the etiquette for getting on the lift is vastly different than in the US.  In the US, its a simple line procedure.  You wait your turn, the line moves swiftly and viola, in a few minutes you are headed up the mountain.  Not so here. Here it is an all out, nothing held back war to work your way to the front.  The only thing that was off limits as far as I could tell is two handed full out pushing, direct communication with anyone who cuts you off and using your pole to disconnect the person in front of you from their skis in retribution (oh how I wanted to do this!!).  The kids are the most ferocious and wily of all.  The first time up, I waited at least 20 minutes to get to the front....

At long last, heading up the mountain!!

There were only 20 or so people "in front" of me when I pulled up so this wait time was ridiculous.  My only salvation was the snarky comments I made with the Brittish people standing near me who were also horrified at the lack of a proper queue system.  After the first run, I decided to play the game as it was meant to be played.  This was effective, cutting my wait time in half.  However, I just couldnt get behind fighting with 5 year olds so I gave it up at lunch time.

After lunch, we decided we would take the famous gondola up to the very top to see the view or take the train to see the glacier.  No go.  You have to be 4 years old to ride, no exceptions.  So, we spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out around town and shopping.  

We tried to make a snow man but the snow wouldnt pack so instead, I made a snow angel.

Yesterday, we spent the morning sledding.  Lilah was not thrilled with the sledding which really surprised me given how much she loves slides.  She loved watching me ride though.  Peals of laughter every time. 

Something about the snow just rubbed her the wrong way.  Hopefully next year she will like it better cause ideally we want her to learn how to ski early but Im not going to make her do something she doesnt want to do.  Here, they learn how to ski before they can walk.  Its quite extraordinary.  After sledding we went back to our room for a long nap and then headed out to play.  Bowling and Mini Golf that is.  I sucked royally at bowling...

but Lilah had a great time romping around the golf course.

 

While we were there, she improved her crawling speed significantly.  When it was time for dinner, we headed to a burger joint and had some amazingly good grub, including a burger served Pirmanti style (fries on the sandwhich).  We met a very nice Brittish man who was enamored with Lilah.  He turned out to be a Sr. Exec at HP so I think Chris really enjoyed talking to him.

Tomorrow its back to Montfalcon for packing, a final play date with the twins.  I am already salivating at the thought of eating an actual vegitable (have i mentioned they dont really have those here).  And looking forward to seeing my PREGO!!! who is healing well and apparently is back to thinking that he is a ferocious big dog.

PS:  Wait for it

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