My host family always spends the time surrounding Christmas and New Year’s in a ski resort town in the French Alps called La Clusaz. It’s everything you’d wish an alpine ski village to be, beautiful and charming and, as luck would have it, snowy white for the majority of our stay. For the family, this was a great thing, because they are indeed a skiing family. For me, well, it just made for much better pictures 🙂
We arrived on Christmas Eve, and while the weather was clear and beautiful, there was no snow for Christmas or the day after. After attending midnight Mass in the village, we returned to the chalet to discover that Papa Noel had indeed been there and left a pile of goodies under the tree. Of course everything was mostly for the girls, but very kindly my host mom and her mother had gotten me a couple of little things so I wouldn’t be left with no presents under the tree. The next day we did some hiking, and my five-year-old was very disgruntled to realize there was in fact snow that is no good for making snowballs. Thankfully, the next two days turned the entire area into the epitome of a winter wonderland, and then became clear and beautiful once more, making for perfect ski days for the family and perfect hiking/photography days for me. It was a little lonely, but great to have the freedom to do what I wanted, and after scoring a bad case of whiplash due to a few embarrassing falls on the slopes, I figured I should save my money for something besides lift tickets. Good thing I did too, or else I wouldn’t have been able to drop an entire week’s salary on paragliding! More on that in another post.
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| Found this artist in the middle of the town square, hard at work. His name is Jacques Pissenem and he’s an award-winning wood sculptor whose work is just incredible. Check out more of his stuff at jpsculpteur.fr! |
It was a beautiful place to spend the holidays, and certain parts of it reminded me so much of my time in Geneva (to which we were very close, but unfortunately for me did not visit). I took a ridiculous amount of photos, so narrowing it down to the ones in these posts has been tricky, but hopefully they’ll provide a good representation of where we were. I hope to have the chance to return one day! Although maybe not for quite so long this time- I’m still remembering that whiplash. *rubs neck*
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