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 […]
This weekend was probably one of the last chances, if not the last, to go skiing around here. Even if there is still quite a bit of snow, like in Chamrousse today, the skiing stations will be closing in early April. We had to climb quite high to reach the […]
Again this winter we spent a one-week vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Hautes-Alpes (Mar 17-24). This time we stayed in Le Monêtier-les-Bains at the altitude of 1500 meters. According to the schedule, the bus ride from Grenoble to Serre Chevalier takes about two hours. It took us ten hours. […]
We still have not bought the skis, so we thought that snowshoeing would be a nice alternative. We’ve only done it once before in Hokkaido, but not on maintained tracks but in steep unbroken snow and heavy snowfall. So, we planned a trip to Vercors this past Sunday, since the […]
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 […]