Courchevel, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France

5HappyTraveler852 5:00 PM Feb 18, 2023

Enjoyed our week-long snowboarding trip at The French Alps
Hubby and I spent a week at Courchevel. We snowboarded for 4 straight days, and ate at 4 different Michelin Star restaurants for 4 straight nights. So, yeah, rode all day, and ate all night, tiresome for sure, but AMAZING. We stayed in Courchevel 1650. A nice quiet base, just a gondola ride, a short boarding, then another lift to the higher peaks of 1850. Also, off the mountains there is a free shuttle that offered a quick ride to 1850 or all other parts of the villages. Very convenient. The snow condition was not ideal during our trip, but we could still appreciate the immense size of these mountains, and their gondolas and lifts that seemed to go on forever, which lead to super long runs. Yes, they have very nice and long runs. Because the snow condition was not great, as it was rather warm during our trip, some parts of the run were super icy, so, we tried to stay as high as possible. We rode mostly in 1850 and 1650, the conditions there were fine. We tried 1550, and found those runs icy. From Courchevel 1650, we took gondola, and snowbaorded to Meribel, it took us about 30 minutes to reach Meribel resort, but we found conditions in Meribel very icy that day. We also spent a day snowboarding in Val Thorens, and LOVED it there. From 1650, we rode and took a number of gondolas and lifts to reach Val Thorens, and it took us 90 minutes. That was a very long day, we left at 9:30AM, and got back to 1650 just after 4:30PM. We loved the runs at Val Thorens so much, that we decided to skip lunch that day just to get more runs in, and that was a great day. One of the things about Courchevel is that they have many Michelin Star restaurants, and I booked 4 of their Michelin restaurants during our 5 nights stay. We enjoyed every meal, but I may have over done it. In the US, a dinner for two typically takes an hour to 1.5 hours. In France, they take their time feeding you, these fancy dinners took over 3 hours to eat. Very enjoyable, but we were SO tired. So, I don't actually recommend our Michelin marathon. I think two Michelin dinners over 5 nights would be enough. Prior to our trip, we were warned that Courchevel 1850 is known to be snobbish. So, we were expecting snobbish people, but I have to say, during our week-long stay, we did not encounter such behavior from anyone, not their service people nor the other skiers or vacationers. Everybody we encountered were friendly and helpful in general. Another thing we noticed at Courchevel is the lack of ski resort staff. Very few people manned the lifts and gondolas, and no ski patrol staff on the mountains. Ski holidays are always expensive, but Courchevel seemed less expensive than the major American Ski resorts, they also had much better and reasonably priced food options on and off the mountains. This was our 1st experience snowboarding in Europe, and we loved the French Alps.

4PaulBYorkshire 5:00 PM Feb 29, 2020

Great Option For The 3 Valleys
Sitting beside its big brother (Courchevel) La Tania is a quiet little resort with a gondola (and a drag) leading you out of the village onto hundreds of kilometres of piste - without paying the 'big brother' price! Leading back into resort is a friendly little green run through the forest or a great blue that would add a challenge to beginners without putting them off. There are also a couple of reds and a nice black - that leads to the neighbouring Le Praz (and an easy chair lift back) . I would recommend a whole area lift pass to get the most out of the Three Valleys but La Tania is a great place to start.