La Vie en France: Val Thorens

This past weekend.. ahem.. more like 5 days.. I went skiing in Val Thorens. Thibaut's parents know someone who rents an apartment there so we got a good deal for the trip. Val Thorens is in the French alps, and it is part of the biggest ski resort in the world. We left early on Saturday, and it was a long train ride to get there! It took over 8 hours, then a 3 hour bus ride (which was only supposed to be an hour) following that. When we got there we were a bit grouchy but happy to find a nice apartment and a really cute ski town! We literally could jump out our balcony onto the slopes. We skied Sunday and Monday, the snow was perfect and the views were even better. This place must be a hot tourist spot for English and German people, because I'm pretty sure Thibaut was the only Frenchie in the entire town.

One of my favorite memories of this trip is finding a discothèque right in the middle of one of the slopes. Sooo French! Gotta love them. There was a DJ outside on a balcony playing dance music, and tons of people dancing outside in their ski clothes. There were even people dancing on the tables. It was so funny coming up the chairlift and seeing all these people smoking, drinking and dancing outside in the middle of the Alps. I saw some awkward dance moves, considering that everyone was still wearing their ski/snowboarding boots. Of course the first thing I thought of was uhh doesn't this put a bit of a risk for avalanches? It was loud techno music, that can't be good in the middle of the alps where there's a risk. I decided to trust that they know better than I do, and we sat down to have a few beers. Well, scratch that, the beers were too expensive. So we people watched for a bit with our 5 euro beers and headed on our way. I would have really liked to see some of these people get down the mountain after drinking beer all day. Can you get a DUI on skis?

The only thing that was not good about the trip was the unbelievable cold! It was -24˚ Celsius on the mountain, which is about -13 Fahrenheit! I've never been so cold in my life. It actually felt like my hands were asleep they were so cold. Luckily I was well equipped with lots of layers to help handle it!