Again this year we booked a week-long winter vacation in Serre Chevalier valley and Le Monetier-les-Bains (actually the same apartment we stayed last Spring). The week had a catastrophic start as Tei fell ill on the first evening, and kept hugging the porcelain for the whole night with practically no […]
This past Sunday’s (24.2.) hiking trip took us to an abandoned ski station of St. Honoré 1500 above the Matheysine plain. We had seen the buildings of the old station from the valley below many times when driving towards La Mure or back, wondering what they were; they looked like […]
This is the second week in a row when we take the midweek off from work and go skiing to Vercors plain to profit from the nice weather the fullest, since this winter — especially during the weekends — has been quite bleak. However, this will be changing since the […]
It seems that this may become another bad skiing season; it has been too warm and it has not rained enough for the snow to accumulate, or it has come down as rain. This past weekend we took a chance and booked a trip to Briançon (with its elevation of […]
End of the year is probably not the best time to visit Finland, when it is cold, grey, and dark there, and especially Northern Finland, where the Sun stays below the horizon all day. However, that did not stop us from enjoying our week before Christmas in Helsinki, Tampere and […]
We wanted to take advantage of the great year-end weather and reasonably good skiing conditions, and booked a weekend in Alpe du Grande Serre, a small ski resort at the altitude of 1368 meters in Isère department. The daily newspaper’s ski report promised that all of their 20/20km of cross […]
We bought skis and shoes very late last Winter season, so we did not have many opportunities to practise our skate skiing skills. This year we decided to start early, as soon as there was enough snow and there were tracks somewhere. Last Saturday we drove to Gève in Autrans […]
(October 3, 2018) We took our moderately acrophobic friends to a mountain hike yesterday. We thought that Charmant Som (1867m) on Chartreuse would be a good compromise between ease of access, gentle slope, spectacular scenery, and lack of vertigo inducing drops or cliffs. We were right, but somewhat miscalculated the […]
We returned to Serre Chevalier valley for the weekend (April 20-22) to enjoy a bit more winter weather and strengthen our newly (re)acquired skiing skills — it feels like every time we are on our skis we need to learn skiing anew, but luckily after each time it takes less […]