Courchevel 1850 Ski Trip

It's been pretty hot lately so I thought this post would cool everyone off a little bit...

Back in the fall, since we knew that our final departure from Switzerland was inevitably impending, we wanted to schedule just one more fun ski trip somewhere in the beautiful European mountains to take advantage of being right there.
We chose to spend a long December weekend in a famous French resort called Courchevel 1850, it's the crème de la crème of ski resorts in Europe. The name comes from the elevation of the village, which is feet equals about 6100 feet above sea level. Now the slopes are much higher than that, you take the lifts all the way up there. But the village itself is at this height.

On the way to Courchevel we obviously had to get stuck in a horrible blizzard for almost the entire time of the drive. How else... This is what I had to do to entertain the tiny one...

Also once we arrived at the resort it continued to dump tons and tons of snow all through the day (and later night...) The weekend we were there was the opening weekend of the season on the mountain, and as we found out, that meant that a good number of the shops and restaurants were still closed. There was already a good amount of people there but the place was not yet overrun with tourists so it was really nice to spend some time exploring, hanging out and skiing.

Our hotel was super cozy and charming. We had a room on the main floor just a short distance from the lobby/hangout area so we were able to hang out there (with our monitor in hand) every time it was time for Katherine to take a nap. We would sit in comfy chairs in front of the fire and sip tea or hot chocolate. It was awesome!
We did this a lot too...

Wow she was such a baldie in those days!!

Every now and there we braved the blizzard and went outside to explore the town or to grab something to eat. We actually ended up taking Katherine to dinner with us and staying out a little later, past her normal bedtime, and she did great with that.

The staff at our hotel were super nice and helpful. They even dug out a couple of sleds for us from somewhere in storage, so that we were able to take Katherine sledding for the first time. It was so much fun!!

And here are a couple of videos we shot:



This is our balcony! Nuts!! Crazy amounts of snow!

 Snow bunny!

It continued to snow overnight and the next morning all the slopes were closed due to avalanche risk and being groomed. But in the afternoon some runs finally opened and CJ hopped on the lift and went off to have fun on his snowboard. Katherine and I stayed in the village and walked around and had some fun together.

Then on the third day the weather changed. The snow stopped and the sun came out. It was the most gorgeous day ever. CJ went off to snowboard again, and we hung out at the lodge and slowly got ready to go back home.

 

Our hotel in good weather...

It was such a fun and relaxing family weekend. We were trying to soak up every minute of it, because we knew that it was probably the last time we would ever have an opportunity like that in our lives. Young family, tiny baby, gorgeous alpine resort in Europe... Wonderful!