Hello everybody! You all may be wondering from looking at the pictures: where the hell am I? It’s too sunny and mountainous to be Paris. Plus, there’s snow everywhere! Well, dear viewer, you would be correct in your hypothesis. I am no longer in Paris. Instead, I am about 3 hours south of there (by high-speed train), in a city called Grenoble.
Why am I here, you may ask? Well, since French people love vacations so much, my school gave us a two week vacation! Thus, I decided to take advantage of this by going to see my grandparents who live in Grenoble, as well as go skiing in the Alps for the first time. My father also flew over from the US to accompany me. My dad arrived in Paris on the 16th (Sunday), and we took the TGV (high-speed train) to Grenoble the following day.
The next two days were spent going to a ski station called Chamrousse, located just at the front of the Alps. On Tuesday, I went nordic skiing with my father and grandfather. The track that we went around was located on a small, wooded plateau that gave us a great view of the surrounding mountains. The next day was a bit more exciting, as me and my father decided to tackle the downhill skiing part of the station. The station was medium sized, and was relatively similar in difficulty to what I am used to in the US (for comparison, it’s about the same size and difficulty as places like Loon or Waterville Valley, if any of you have been there). There were some quite difficult locations, especially if you went off the slope and into ungroomed snow.
What I enjoyed most about my first ski trips in the Alps, however, were the small differences between New England and France. Firstly, though mountains in New England are still very pretty when they have snow, it all looks very similar due to the ubiquitous cone shape that almost all of the White Mountains possess. In France, however, the way the snow covers the irregularly shaped peaks and ridges of the Alps, especially considering the sheer scale of everything, makes for an incredible view. The layout of the slopes was also different. In the US, the difference between what is and is not a slope is very stark, since whatever isn’t a slope is taken up by trees. However, due to the altitude, in the Alps, there are little trees, and so you can go off track and make your own path. The slopes are also much wider than in the US.
Well, that’s about it for the first few days of my trip! There will be even more skiing to come, so stay tuned for my next post!
