László Varga

We went for a 7 day skiing holiday to Les Deux Alpes, France the other week. It is a very nice location, I would recommend it to anybody who is learning to ski or is already a professional. The place itself is very nice, clean and for skiers it provides all sorts of pistes from green learning pistes to steep, black, professional ones.

For me, this was the first time I went skiing, so I had to learn the sport first. The pistes at Les 2 Alpes were really good, so I was quickly able to learn how to do it, and in a few days I was able to go up for a bit of glacier skiing at 3200 meters. I really liked the fact that even for a beginner like me it was no problem getting down from the glacier on skis (a really long slide by the way). The blue/green pistes provided enough challenge for me to slide down with only little trouble. For those ones for whom skiing is easy: don’t worry there are plenty of red/black slopes on the way down also (Even I tried a red one… I was terrified… :P). There is also a snow-park (for those who like jumping around).
What I really liked was the fact that down at the beginner’s pistes, there is always a possibility to slide from any piste to any other (in parallel), because of the existence of connecting pistes between them (although some connecting pistes are really steep blue ones).

Accommodation in Les 2 Alpes was pretty easy (we have booked earlier before) and it was not expensive at all. The 6 day holiday did not cost more than 230 euros including ski-pass. There were a few supermarkets, where tourists could buy anything for the day to day life, for a reasonable price (although I would recommend MarcheU instead of Spar, the later seemed a bit pricier). The apartments we stayed in were well equipped (bathroom, kitchen with fridge, micro, grille, toaster, dishwasher etc.) and heated (although i heard complaints from our neighbors, that their flat was not very warm). We also had a TV with all the 6 (:-P) french channels it could reach. Downstairs there was a locker where we could lock our skis.

Ski rental was really easy to find, almost any shop also has a ski rental section 🙂 . I only rented boots for 6 days (34 euros) because I had skis already. My friend rented some professional carving skis with boots, that did cost a “bit” more (54 euros for two days), this actually was due to the short period and the quality of the equipment.

Photos can be seen here:picasaweb

All in all I liked it very much and I would return there for the next year…

I have had the chance of a brief contact with the French transportation system from Turin to Chambery and back, onboard a TGV going to Paris. The train itself is pretty cool, although it was a rather old TGV (but still a TGV). It did not go with its famous high speed, because it was traveling on normal tracks linking Italy to France. The carousels are simple layout 2+2 seats (just like on a bus), with seats facing each-other at the beginning, middle and end of the carousel. What was really annoying was the lack of power-plugs at each seat. I was told it only had them at the bathroom…

Railway stations in France are really clean (well, they look clean). Even near the Chambery station the restaurants were clean, people were civilized (as opposed to Italy, where this is not the case). The trains I saw were all punctual, our train even arrived at the very second it was supposed to. In all aspects, the system is very similar to the Italian system: it has the same yellow/white boards for departures/arrivals, the same ticket validating system, even the tickets are very similar. All of the similarities, however, seem to be… well… better. It is almost as if Italy copied the system from France, but never really got the hang of it…