We spent four days attending the third biathlon world cup of the season in the village of Le Grand Bornand in Haute-Savoie department in France. We did not stay overnight in the village but in Annecy about 20 kilometers away, and commuted to the stadium every morning and back […]
Every four years that we have been here the winter’s first and only snow has fallen in October and November. This year it came on the first of December. It has also always melted away in a day.
Another attempt to find snow for skiing. Did we find any? No. And how could there any be with the afternoon temperatures recently reaching mid-teens? The weather forecast promised a cloudy day, but as soon as we were on the Vercors plain, the sun came through the clouds, and we […]
We booked another weekend escape from polluted Grenoble in the little village of Cervières (pop. 183 in 2014) in the department of Hautes-Alpes. We stayed in a small cosy studio, heated by a pellet stove, on the ground floor of an ancient building (seen below in the far end of […]
People say that Chambéry is a boring town. How can it be when it has (at least) two great beer bars and hosted The Ukulele Orchestra of the Great Britain at Espace Malraux. The latter was our reason to visit the town in mid January. The weather was not. We […]
We spent one week (Dec 17-24) Winter vacationing in Serre Chevalier valley in Hautes-Alpes, a two-hour bus ride South from Grenoble. We stayed at chalet studio in La Salle les Alpes/Villeneuve at the altitude of 1400 meters. This sad little snowperson epitomizes our winter break. It was a lovely week, […]
We had friends visiting from the US this weekend. Today it was one of the first real Summer days here in Grenoble, and what did we do? We took these guys above 2000 meters to show them Winter (when it actually just unseasonally snowed in their home state). This is […]
This post is about our winter vacation in Biathlon World Championships in Kontiolahti, North Karelia, Finland. This was the first time we attended a winter sport event of this scale. There were some serious problems in the organization on the first major event day — long lines for toilets, food […]
Less than 500 meters away, to be exact. We got some sleet yesterday afternoon, but the overnight rain melted it all. This morning there were some snow flurries on the lower slopes of Chartreuse and Belledonne. While during the week we had some gorgeous sunny days, with daytime temperatures climbing […]