Our Grand Tour of Europe

My Trip Skiing in the French Alps (And Learning to Ski in French) by Kelly

Note: I have included some words in French. Try to figure them out. If you can’t, remember the number and the same number at the bottom of the page will have the word in Anglais (1).

I had a great time skiing in the French Alps. It was my first time to ski. And it was very difficult because I had to learn in French. I passed my première étoile (2). My whole class (of twenty people) went with our teacher, a father, and two really nice ladies. Also the class from the next village of Lacoste came, and another class from a village I hadn’t heard of.

We left at 8:45 am. And after stopping for one break, we arrived at Allos at 12:30 pm. For some reason, though, we had to wait for about two hours downstairs in our hotel before we could get in our rooms.

When we finally got our room, I got the bed I had wanted the least. It was the bottom bunk bed, and seeing that I was the tallest of the four girls in the room it was given to me, and I got several knocks from my head.

Notre (3) chambre (4) was number 207. I shared it with three other girls: Julie, Lorie, and Marie. (If you add Kelly in, you get J, K, L, and M.) When you entered our room, on your left were the bunk beds and on the top was Marie, and me on the bottom. In between it and the bathroom door, was a space of about two or three feet. The bathroom had a shower, toilet, sink and shelf, but was very small. But we were lucky to have the bathroom, because some rooms had to share toilets in the hall. There was a door separating our hallway thing from the main room. The main room had a desk, closet, two big beds (Lorie and Julie) and a terrace off of it.

Our hôtel (5) was called the Rochecline. It has 60 rooms, and is a special hotel for families, and schools. We stayed on the second floor. It had a room where we went before and after every meal, where we sat around a chimney that was huge and steel. It was in the center of a little sitting area of the room. It had a restaurant with big tables where we sat with the kids from the other schools. When we ate so did the families, but they didn’t sit with us, and had different food. I didn’t think the meals there were very good, but there were some meals that I liked such as barbequed chicken wings and frites (6) and roast chicken. But I didn’t like the tartiflette (kind of a potato casserole with pieces of ham and melted cheese) very much, and I didn’t even try the fish.

Skiing was great!!! My ski teachers were called David and Christophe. I started off on the (tiny) beginner’s slope. After one and a half days I got to do the green slope. After two whole days on the green slope, I got to go to the blue ones. For an afternoon, and for the morning after, our group got to use poles. I think it was a bit harder at first because they got in my way, but then it got easier. The last morning I only fell once. All of my group (the débutants (7) got their flocon, except for me and another person. This is the order of the stars that you can get. The first name is the lowest.

Flocon (8)
Première (9) étiole
Deuxième (10) étoile
Troisième (11) étoile
Étoile d’or (12)

On Sunday, after we skied in the morning, we had to change really fast, then go to our bus, but we had to wait downstairs for a while, because the car (13) that was coming to pick us up tipped over and fell into the building. Even though we left kind of late, we got home early. I was really happy to see my parents, and they were really happy to see me. I had a great time, and I am glad I went, even though I didn’t want to in the beginning. I made better friends, and I think it was good for my French that I spent a week without basically speaking English. I also think that it was a great accomplishment to learn to ski in a different language.

For break in February we are going skiing (for four days) to Allos (the village I went to for the classe de neige (14). I am really excited to be going skiing again. It is going to be fun to show my parents all the things that I saw when I came earlier. But only my mom and I are going skiing, because we know how to ski--though she hasn’t skied in treize (15) years. My daddy will walk a lot, and we hope he will come and watch us ski one day and have lunch with us too. I’m really looking forward to it!!!

(1) English; (2) star; (3) our; (4) room; (5) hotel; (6) French fries; (7) beginner(s); (8) snowflake; (9) first; (10) second; (11) third; (12) gold; (13) bus; (14) ski school (neige= snow); (15) thirteen

Four Days in the French Alps (by Kathy)

We’re just finishing up four days in the French Alps… a skiing trip! This is an unexpected adventure in the midst of our well-planned grand tour of Europe. Although Kelly was initially very reluctant to go on the week long “classe de neige” with her classmates from the Bonnieux village school, she returned extremely excited about skiing. She had an absolutely wonderful time. Before Kelly went on her trip in late January, we told her that if she really liked the skiing, we might be able to go again for a few days during her winter break. One of her first questions when she got off the bus was: “Can we go back to Allos?”

Val d’Allos is in the département of Les Alpes de Haute-Provence, about three hours from our house in the Vaucluse. We’re still in Provence and only about two hours from the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded now by towering mountains in every direction. We’re also only about twenty-five miles from the Italian border. This is a totally different environment than our home in the Luberon, but equally beautiful. No olive trees, grapevines or lavender in this part of Provence!

There are a couple of ski areas nestled in Haute Vallée du Verdon (a beautiful mountain valley at the upper end of the Verdon River), surrounded by alpine villages and farms that preceded the ski areas by hundreds of years. We drove through this area in late October on a day-trip to the town of Barcelonette, the northern-most town in Provence. That day we decided to take a different route home from Barcelonette, what turned out to be a twisty and and extremely narrow mountain road with spectacular views of Mount Pelat (10,007 feet). We passed through the Col d’Allos (7372 feet), then through the barren ski areas of Le Seignus and La Foux and finally through the picturesque fortified village of Colmars-les-Alpes with an ancient fort at either end of the village. Less than a month later, the pass at the Col d’Allos was covered with snow and the mountain road to Barcelonette was closed for the winter.

And now here we are in February… skiing at Allos and staying just outside Colmars.

I set to work on the internet the day after Kelly came home from her ski trip. It was already the end of January, and we would potentially leave on February 10th. I quickly learned that much of France goes skiing during the winter vacation period in February and that there weren’t many accommodations available. Apparently, the country is divided into three different regions for the purpose of the school vacation schedules; each year the regions rotate the sequence of the autumn, winter and spring vacations. This helps ensure that all of France doesn’t descend on the various vacation destinations during the same two-week period. Instead we were competing with only one-third of the country for accommodations! Unlike me, most people made their reservations months ago.

I finally managed to find an interesting chambre d’hôtes (B&B) in Colmar-les-Alpes, about five miles from the ski area in Allos… perhaps the last available room for the four days we wanted to stay! Our new American friends—the Jenkins family from Savannah, Georgia who have just moved to Lacoste—also made a last-minute decision to go skiing during the winter break. After hours of work, they finally found accommodations near Pra-Loup, a ski area outside of Barcelonette. Jody (the father) suggested that we try to meet for dinner one night. Although our two locations are probably less than 15 miles apart (and the La Foux ski area is actually somehow connected to Pra-Loup), since the Col d’Allos pass is closed for the winter, we discovered that it is a three-hour drive around the mountain! We decided that we’ll meet for dinner at home, where the Jenkins live less than ten minutes away.

At one time skiing was a very important part of my life, an activity that I was really quite passionate about. I learned to ski in January 1985 when I was 29 years old. I went to Vail, Colorado with four women friends for a week, took lessons, and got hooked. Over the next six years, I skied several times a year—including a weeklong trip that was normally to Colorado. I was never a truly great skier, but I really loved skiing and the environment of a ski vacation. Then in the fall of 1991 I met Charley and soon after, we got engaged. He had never skied but wanted to learn. That first winter, instead of going on my annual ski trip, I was planning a wedding and a honeymoon. And then our lives quickly changed. The next winter, I was pregnant. And then the next winter, we had a baby. And we also discovered Europe, which replaced skiing as my vacation passion. I thought my skiing career was behind me. In fact, when we packed up our house to get ready to move to Europe for this year, I took my skis and boots to Goodwill—I didn’t expect to ever use them again.

But now here we were in France, and I was going to go skiing with Kelly. After years of skiing with friends, my sister and brother-in-law, I was now going skiing with my daughter. Charley decided he wouldn’t ski on this short trip. We would already need to invest in some essential ski clothes for me. Charley would need several days of lessons as well as clothes. We wouldn’t be able to ski together anyway. Charley decided he would chauffeur Kelly and me to and from the ski area and then do some hiking, exploring, writing and reading on his own. I think he was actually looking forward to some time alone.

I was lucky to do my ski shopping during the French “soldes” (sales) in January. The French stores have sales only twice a year—January and July—and there are some great bargains. I got ski pants, a jacket, hat, gloves, long underwear and goggles—all on sale. I even found a sweater to match my jacket—not a one-euro sweater this time, but a pretty good deal at 9.99 euro. Not only did I shop economically… I actually put together a reasonably-fashionable outfit! I wouldn’t embarrass my daughter with my outfit, though I confess I was worried about embarrassing her with my skiing.

I really was worried about skiing again. I hadn’t skied for 13 years. I wasn’t a trim 30-something who did aerobics four times a week… I was now approaching 50… with a body that definitely wasn’t the same. I was hopeful that all the walking we’ve been doing would at least give me some endurance.

As I write this, we’ve finished our three days of skiing and are savoring a few last hours in the mountains before we drive home to Bonnieux later this morning. Kelly and I have had a truly wonderful time together. I’m impressed that she really became a decent skier in her one-week classe de neige. I think skiing is another sport she could become very good at, and she definitely enjoys it. And as for me, it really was like riding a bicycle… despite the 13 years away from skiing, I found I remembered much of what I had learned in my many ski lessons. On my first trial run down an easy slope, it all came back to me. I was still a skier! I think Kelly was surprised to find that I’m a much better skier than she had expected. Unfortunately, although I think my skiing is at a similar level to where I left off, I definitely don’t have the same body! Saturday was a “change-over day” here for the people with one-week rentals, and so the ski area wasn’t very crowded. The lift lines were almost non-existent, and we really got to ski a lot. My upper thighs begin to ache after a couple of hours… and by the end of the day, my whole body ached. Kelly seemed to feel no pain. “Just one more time, Mom, please!”

We both fell a couple of times. On Day Two I had two very public falls on the lifts—once getting off and—my most spectacular fall—once getting on. I actually slipped off the seat and tumbled into the slushy muck below the lift platform. Now I think about it, I realize I am one of the oldest women I saw skiing at Allos. That is a sobering realization!

On Day Three the conditions weren’t very good and it was fairly cold all day. There hadn’t been any new snow for several days and there were a lot of bare patches to watch out for. The slopes were extremely icy all day—in some places, a solid sheet of ice. Later in the day it also became quite windy, and I was concerned that it was very dangerous for anyone but truly expert skiers. Kelly and I both fell in the afternoon, as did many other skiers. We both slid a long way down the ice. It was definitely dangerous for us! The highlight of the day was sharing a bit of our experience with Charley. He went up in the gondola with us in the morning and watched us do a run, and then came back to join us for lunch. It was fun to show him what we could do. Although it was supposed to snow a bit overnight, we awoke this morning to another sunny day… and no new snow. We decided not to ski this morning after all and just head home to the Luberon.

I thoroughly enjoyed sharing this experience with Kelly. On Friday afternoon she turned to me while we were riding the lift and said, “This is really fun, isn’t it Mommy?” And it really has been wonderful fun to ski with my daughter and spend this time with her. I feel I’m filling a treasure box of so many special moments on this trip, and I know our skiing adventure is one of those. I had a moment of “dejà vu” yesterday… remembering skiing with my sister Debbie on several trips during my previous life as a skier. I really enjoyed sharing the skiing experience with my sister: our conversations on the lift, the satisfaction of a really great run, the beauty of the outdoors, lunch outside in the sunshine. Now I’m having a similar experience with my precious Kelly.

Kelly has been excited to show us a place she really enjoyed. We drove up so she could show us the hotel where her class stayed. She was also the expert on the ski area at Les Seignus and knew all about the lifts and the runs. We even saw two of her ski instructors. One of them stopped to talk with us and remembered Kelly’s name. I have an even greater appreciation for the wonderful experience Kelly had on the classe de neige a few weeks ago… in another country, away from her parents, skiing for the very first time, and functioning totally in French for a whole week.

Skiing in another country is definitely interesting. There’s a whole new language of ski terminology to learn. We’ve skied at Le Seignus, not one of the big glitzy resorts that attracts lots of English-speaking visitors from England and America. It’s a family-oriented area primarily marketed to the French. It’s more laid back and less high-tech than what the ski resorts in Colorado were even 13 years ago. Some things are the same—families enjoying fun together, the bright ski clothes, daredevil boys whizzing by on snowboards. Some things are a little different—fewer marking of trails, a rigorous system of lessons and evaluations for children, and an entirely different menu at lunch! (Who would order lamb for lunch at a ski resort in America?) With the emphasis on the classe de neige as part of the elementary school annual curriculum, it seems that culturally most children in France (at least in the area where we live) are expected to learn to ski as part of their education.

We have especially enjoyed staying at this chambre d’hôtes, Les Transhumances. In France a chambre d’hôtes (B&B) normally means a few rooms in a private home with breakfast included. We’re staying in a farmhouse 60 meters above Colmars-les-Alpes, a five-minute drive from the village on an extremely steep one-lane dirt road. From the farm we have a wonderful view of Colmars and its two forts. Our hosts—Monsieur and Madame Barbaroux—have three B&B rooms and two gites (apartments) and also rent a nearby house. Monsieur was born in this old farmhouse, where the barn once occupied the lower level. He now raises rabbits and chickens and has a large garden including several fruit trees. In the warmer months, his brother’s 2000 sheep (moutons) graze in the mountains above the farm. Typical of sheep farming in this region, the sheep are kept in the southern part of Provence in the winter and then moved up to the Alps for the summer. In previous years, shepherds herded the sheep to and from the mountains, a journey that took several days and was called the transhumance. (Hence the name of this farm.) Now the sheep are transported in trucks.

On Thursday and Saturday, we had dinner at a little restaurant in Colmars. We enjoyed a change from the normal food we’ve been eating in restaurants in the Luberon. Kelly and Charley had crepes both nights, and I had tartiflette one night and raclette the other night… both popular dishes in this region of France. The tartiflette was excellent—big chunks of fried potato wedges topped with ham (jambon) and melted Reblochon cheese. Not at all low-calorie, but delicious! I really enjoyed the raclette too. This dish involves a special electrical appliance that you use to melt a special raclette cheese in a small heating dish. After you melt each slice of cheese, you pour it over various cold cuts, boiled potatoes, and other vegetables. I hope to find a raclette machine when we get home.

On Friday and Sunday we ate dinner with our hosts. In addition to offering rooms and a simple breakfast, Monsieur and Madame offer their guests a table d’hôtes, an optional evening meal at a very reasonable cost of 18 euro, including wine. On the first night, another family was also at dinner—a very friendly couple from the Marseilles area with a five-year old daughter. This family had stayed at Les Transhumances several times before. On Saturday morning while I was still at the breakfast table, another family arrived—relatives of the family from Marseilles. The two dark-haired sons—one five and the other ten—came into the dining room to greet their aunt and uncle, then came around to my side of the table and gave me a kiss-kiss on each cheek. The next morning they greeted Charley, Kelly and I this same way, even though they didn’t know us! It’s apparently the expected courtesy for children to greet others with the kiss-kiss in a social situation like this. (In the Luberon it’s actually kiss-kiss-kiss.)

At our Friday night dinner our hosts and the two parents spoke some English, but we actually spoke more French so the conversation was almost totally in French. Charley and I struggled to speak and understand, but we did manage to participate. Four months ago we would have been totally lost. Monsieur and Madame were especially complimentary of Kelly’s French—she seems to have developed an almost-perfect accent. Our meal last night lasted almost three hours—Charley and I both enjoyed the food, though Kelly had a hard time with the menu both nights. We started with an apertif, followed by soup, a main dish (fish stew on Friday and lamb on Sunday), a cheese course, dessert, and hot drinks. We drank lots of wine and ate lots of bread. (Kelly especially ate lots of bread in lieu of the other courses!) Much of our meal involved vegetables and fruit that were grown on the farm. Kelly and I enjoyed a hot drink called an “infusion” made of dried pansies—surprisingly quite good.

We enjoyed our skiing a lot. But we also enjoyed the opportunity to stay in a French home and share a meal and conversation with “real” French people. This was another unexpected aspect of our already-unexpected ski trip to the French Alps.

Hiking in the Gorges de Véroncle (by Charley)

Kathy and I have really gotten into walking while Kelly is busy at the village school. We’re probably walking an average of 30 or so kilometers a week. We went on a hike the day before we left to go skiing in the Alps that was a real challenge. The area is called the Gorges de Véroncle, located about 15 minutes north of our home. The gorge is a deep and twisting gash in the earth of the Vaucluse plateau. The gorge had five moulins d’eau strung out along its length.

The five water mills were spaced around a half-mile apart. The oldest mills date back to the early 16th century. Each was situated where the walls of the gorge were steepest. That meant the builders had only to construct a short but high stone wall across the gorge to have themselves a very good little dam. They would then cut flumes out of the solid rock of the gorge walls until they had the amount of fall they wanted.

The next step was to drill a vertical hole about the size of a house chimney down through the rock so the water could drop onto a turbine wheel that drove the mill stones. Although the mills fell into disuse a couple of centuries ago, several of the mill buildings, mill stones, flumes, and shafts are still intact. The apparent level of knowledge and craftsmanship of these ancient masons is more than enough to gain the admiration of the most modern of builders. I’m sure I’d be even more impressed to find out how they got the grain in and the flour and meal out. The walls must be 200-300 feet high in most places.

The mills and their history—which was well told on storyboards at each site—added an extra dimension to a walk that I’d already rate 99 out of a hundred. The gorge portion of the walk accounted for about a third of the total distance of fourteen kilometers. It twisted and turned along with the streambed on the gorge floor. The trail took us through some of the mill buildings and even followed the course of the flumes in many places. It felt totally bizarre to walk in a stone channel in the side of a cliff and be able to look over the side at a dizzying vertical drop. .

To make the walk a little more challenging, the trail was blocked in places by natural rockfalls. To get over them we had to climb up using a rope or a chain, usually ten to fifteen feet high. Sometimes there would be a metal ladder mounted to a rock face to take you up the higher obstacles. At one point there was a series of steel cables leading across a rockface with little steel steps imbedded in the stone. The steps were just big enough to support the front half of your boot. I couldn’t look down.

We finally got through several of these things and were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. Kathy looked at me and said, “Not bad for a nearly 50-something and a nearly 60-something pair.” I wholeheartedly agreed. We kept walking and eventually arrived at a dead-end. The canyon walls went straight up in every direction except directly behind us—the way we had just come. It was kind of like walking into a room where the door you came through was the only opening. We looked and looked for the usual ladder or chain but saw nothing and were about ready to turn back when I saw it.

It didn’t dawn on me at first that what I was looking at could possibly be the intended way out. I nodded at Kathy to look at what I was looking at. There was a hole in the ceiling of the rock wall with a rope dangling out of it. I walked over and looked up. The hole went straight up for at least 30 feet. The rope climbed up through the hole and disappeared over the top edge. I prayed it was attached to something very sturdy.

This “chimney” was one of the vertical bores made in the rock to drop water from an upstream dam onto a now nonexistent mill turbine. Kathy volunteered to go first so I could stand at the bottom and “break her fall.” I hoped that she was kidding about that but was happy that she wanted to go first. I wanted to see how she was going to go about climbing a chimney because, frankly, I had absolutely no idea how to start. .After about five minutes she made it up and threw the rope back down to me.

I watched as she found a foothold here and then there and wedged her back against one side and then the other while climbing up the rope. It looked like a rather painful process as well as quite a dangerous one. I was in no hurry to see my turn come. However, once she had gained the top and looked back down at me, what choice did I have?

I found that I wouldn’t fit in the tunnel while wearing my backpack, so I attached it to the rope and let her pull it up separately. I yelled up and asked her what was up there. “Nothing but a big red sign that says ‘DANGER,” her answer echoed down the well. It’s the same word in French as in English, and I wonder what our response might have been had the sign been at the bottom rather than the top.

I may have beat her time going up by one or two seconds, but alas, I had the advantage of having watched her technique. We were so proud of ourselves that we strutted around the rest of the afternoon like peacocks. We must have looked pretty pathetic. I guess we’re easily entertained but we had a great time.

The rest of the walk took us through some very spectacular scenery, but sadly, we’re getting somewhat jaded because our latest series of walks in Provence just proceed from awesome to incredible. We’ve come to expect every outing to provide scenery of incomparable beauty, to be dosed with loads of history, and sprinkled with surprises along the way. Top it all off with the wonderful Provençal sunshine, and we’re rarely disappointed.