The Wandering Hart

Okay, first a confession: I did not actually “hit the slopes” in France. I meant to….but then I decided last minute that I didn’t want to because I was too nervous and wasn’t having fun. Anxiety wins this round. Instead I ended up hanging out with one of my friends in a ski chalet – not a bad alternative! But because of that, this post will be partially my own experiences walking around the ski towns and eating amazing French food and partially things my friends who did ski said about ski culture there.

So let’s start from the ski culture and get all the secondhand info out of the way! Ski culture in Europe (or at the very least in Les 3 Vallées) is way more chill than in the US. Things seemed to start later and people definitely took more breaks and longer lunches. In the US, for those who don’t know, we typically would wake up at the crack of dawn to try to get the first lifts up the mountain and beat some of the crowds. We’d also usually have a very quick, expensive, and disappointing grab-and-go lunch amid crowds of people all trying to do the same at one of the limited restaurants on the mountain. In France, my group still woke up wayyyy to early for my taste, but they also took longer, sit-down lunches at places that served amazing food for pretty reasonable prices! I know my food experiences at restaurants at the bottom of the lifts were on average better than I’m used to from skiing in the US.

The other thing I really loved about Les 3 Vallées was that it had a TON of pedestrian access options for the mountain. My friend and I were able to ride multiple gondolas to get to different parts of the mountain and we enjoyed a delicious hot chocolate at the top of the mountain one day. This could also be great for people who want to get around and explore some of the other little mountain towns. We drove to Courchevel as a group one day but I believe there was even a pedestrian gondola to get there.

Speaking of Courchevel, this small ski town is renowned for being extremely luxe and it’s apparently where all the influencers stay when they come to this area. Honestly I thought it seemed a bit overrated. There were a ton of designer storefronts none of us could really afford to shop in and the restaurants were on average more expensive than other parts of the mountain. We did have a nice lunch at La Cantine sitting outside with a beautiful view of the slopes and then enjoyed wandering a little before deciding we had seen everything worth seeing.

For our stay we picked Les Allues, which was conveniently on the gondola line to Meribel Village where we could pick up a lot of different ski lifts and explore shops and restaurants. I’d highly recommend this area if you decide to plan a French adventure in the winter!