Here’s the second post of our four night trip to Megève in France. We left the resort on the Monday of the English half term and by then the lifts were crowded, queues were long and at the start of the easier pistes it was busy but we both felt there wasn’t as much shoving as we had at Chamonix or Les Houches resorts and seemed slightly less hectic. The pistes appear to be better groomed and we liked the fact that most of the runs were wide, good for those like me who are not experienced and good for children. There are also very few button lifts and they’re easily avoidable.
Below is me on safer ground taking photos staying away from the pistes, where I spent the first day walking, then on my bum then on my back sliding down the slopes rather than skiing down….and yes it was very funny, if only Bikerboy could have taken his camera out in time to video it, everyone could have a good chuckle. I scared myself to the point of not wanting to ski anymore and even surpassed my oldest daughter’s trick of cutting across slopes when scared, I would come to a halt, snow ploughed into a turn, failing and falling for the ‘nth’ time and crying…that’s right I burst into tears, to the surprise of Bikerboy, who has never seen me in such a state of frustration with myself.
If it wasn’t for his patience the next day of taking me back to the nursery slopes and working on my right foot problem and changing to shorter skis I think I would have given up for good there and then. I partly blame the French and their mapping of ski slopes where you easily start on a green run which then turns into a blue without any notice or signs and for some bizarre reason some of the blues are harder than the reds. Not good, not happy as my youngest says..
My middle daughter has just reminded me of our Austrian ski trip where we learnt to ski and I, having to move down a group because I was too much of a scary cat and slow, I was with my new team members halfway up the nursery slope practicing our turns, lost balance forgot how stop, fell and slid down the slope until I reach my old group and my well-weathered dry humoured ex-ski instructor who seeing this snowball coming towards him said,” aahh…Aaazeeliia…you’ve come to jooin uss, ves?” Maybe I should give up all together!
Although it has been three years since we’ve been skiing to France we do not remember in Chamonix, Les Houches or Courmayeur being as expensive as Megève, for a tiny bottle of apple juice or large coffee in either the piste or town restaurants you were paying €4. Regardless of what restaurant we ate in the town and we ate in six different ones we would pay over €100 for the two of us, and at times only had two glasses of wine.
Two out of the six restaurants we tried were better than the rest but no enough to write home about.
It is a very pretty resort and reminded us of our ski trip to Seefeld in Austria, little shops, very quaint and the very centre of the town looks as if almost frozen in time.
We had our favourite Salon de Thé where we would make a stop once down from the slopes before heading back to the hotel. I would recommended it, the hot chocolate is very good and they have a large selection of teas, we thought it was better than the Salon de Thé in front of the church in the town square.
WARNING: If you’re eating when looking at these they might very well put you off your food!
The Hotel From Hell
We were booked by our travel agent WhiteRoc, into this two star hotel called Hotel Etoiled’Or, 387 rue Ambroise Martin in Megève and I don’t know where to start? We have stayed in two star hotel before in Lake Guarda, Italy run by a husband and wife team and I could not praise it more for being clean, all essentials were there and we used to run to the buffet breakfast early in the morning before too many guests woke up because we enjoyed it so much, served up on the balcony overlooking the lake and mountains. So I don’t buy the story of staying in a two star place should equal expecting dirty, stains, warnings of theft, previous guests pubic hair on bath towels, brown bath towels that look as if they have been drying too many previous arses off. I don’t expect we would not be able to have either a shower or a bath, dirt, large cracks and mould in the tiles. I don’t expect to find a sausage roll for my pillow which has no pillow case and it’s covered with stains.
The Other Thing I don’t expect to find in a hotel in a ski resort is a freezing room to come back to.
And I don’t expect to find this notice in my room:
Yes this is the previous guest’s pubic hair on our bath towels!!!
This is what they had for pillows, no covers the bed sheet was used to cover this sausage roll, which was full of stains.
The bedside tables were covered in dust.
A touch of elegance here….
Apart from the offensive this bathroom causes the eyes the practical problems were the following; bath far too small so you can’t have a bath. There is no holder for the shower head nor shower curtain, you can not have a shower.
After a day’s skiing the absolute must is to have hot water over your aching muscles, yes I know I’m unfit but still the minimum requirement is to shower in any hotel.
The tiles’ grouting was covered in mould.
Dirt all over the corners of the floor.
No shower holder so no shower, bath too small so no bath, I’m guessing the owners are preventing you from using water….
Forgetting the choice of colour of hotel towels these towels look like those teddy bears adults keep from their childhood that have seen better days and are falling apart. NO ONE wants to be reminded how many times a towel has been used.
And after wiping yourself on the gorgeous towels you get to step onto this lovely mat.
OK So we complained about the heating and tried really hard to find another hotel, spending our evening and next day ringing around including 5 star hotels but everywhere it was full, we hit the French, Italian and English half-term and you could not find a room it seemed for love or money. We did have some luck with a three start hotel up the road for three nights out of the four.
The night we had to sleep in this hotel we slept fully clothed….
This is what a hotel should be like – the hotel au Vieux Moulin, 3 stars hotel saved us for three nights of our trip and it was clean, so very warm, friendly staff, good shower and what seemed like a luxury, white clean bath towels.
