Christine in Chamonix, France

If you can't spend Christmas at home*, I suggest skiing in the French Alps.  Chamonix is a beautiful city, near the boarder of Switzerland and Italy.  In fact, you can ski 3 different countries and 6 different mountains in the area.  How great is that?  For this trip, I stuck to the French Alps.  I skied at Brevent (2,525 meters- 8,284 feet) and Domaine de Balme (Le Tour) (2,270 meters-7,447 feet).   The sun shined at Brevent.  This made for lovely skiing conditions.  I prefer to ski in the sun, since I hate being cold.  The mountain had amazing snow for the 2nd time going there.  Loved skiing that day.  And the restaurant on the mountain had excellent tomato soup.  Best I've had in Europe.  And I've had my fair share of the soup.

Not my best picture ever in terms of framing for the top of the mountain.

Skiing above the clouds.

Le Tour had power though.  If you ski, then you know that most everyone wishes for a powder day.  It snowed all morning at Le Tour.  I won't lie, I had trouble skiing in the poor visibility.  You have no idea what the condition of the snow is right in front of you.  But I loved skiing in the powder after I could see it.  So much fun.  A tip I learned- lean back a bit to keep your ski tips up (over the powder).  So there are no pictures of Le Tour.

I stayed at Gustavia.  This hotel is Swedish owned and operated.  They are quite nice people.  Who love to party until 2 in the morning.  Interestingly, they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve.  At 3pm they watched the Disney movie Donald Duck.  They do this every year.  The bar was packed with people.  Some could not even see the tv; that's right they just listened.  Apparently the Swedish think that Donald is like them- a pull yourself up from the boot straps, can't keep me down type.  They said the busy season is actually the summer time.  They can keep summer, I want snow.  Lots and lots of snow.

I managed to have 2 types of fish on Christmas Eve.  Not quite like my family tradition of the 7 fish, but I tried.  And mine included oysters, which I like.  The hotel served a turkey dinner for Christmas.  But the dessert was lousy.  Some kind of English plum pudding or something terrible.  To the British people that may read this:  put butter in the cake/pudding batter.  Don't serve it as a garnish to add to make it taste better.  It doesn't help.  At all.  I'm just sayin'...

Waiting for the bus, there was a picture that I will paint some day:

Those are the real mountains.  They just look fake.  And this is my obligatory church picture.  ha ha

Christine

*I did have the chance to Skype with my family and it was wonderful to see you all.