Messages posted by : TreeTiger
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Hi Gareth,
If all 15 of you are staying in the Royal Ours Blanc I?m sure you?ll have great fun! We found the atmosphere in the dining room a bit boring, but there were only 4 of us, and the other guests (French, British & Irish) generally kept to themselves. The five course dinners were very good, but we found that sitting there for 2 ½ hours after a long day kind of wore us out, so we went out one of the nights for a change (to Lounge 21, which had really fantastic food). There was a vegetable soup starter, then a first course followed by a second (a choice out of about 5 dishes in each case), then cheese - 2 slices of whichever you wanted out of about 8 - followed by dessert then coffee. The food was magnificently presented, everything looked beautiful. My daughter and I are vegetarian and we felt we lost out a bit because of that, but by the end of the week we were getting beautiful salads for our first course (which we asked to have served with the second course). We didn?t try the coffee in the evenings as the coffee at breakfast was nothing to write home about. Wine was dear enough, we went for a South African white at around ?20 a bottle. They charge ?6 for a large bottle of water. (Oh, and to warn you about the bar, ?6 for a 330ml bottle of beer! We either drank shop bought stuff in our room or went out, particularly liking the Hotel Les Gentianes around the corner, ?6 for beer + wine by the open fire!) Breakfast was a different kettle of fish to dinner, it was pretty tiresome by the end of the week. Grapefruit or orange juice, a couple of cereals, mini croissants, scrambled eggs sometimes, cold meat & cheese, sometimes some thin slices of hot bacon, yogurt and fruit. Seems like a good choice of stuff, but you?ll know what I mean when you see it! And don?t expect much of the coffee. Also, if you?re into your tea, bring your favourite teabags, as in the hotel they give you a pot of hot water and you choose from the teabags on offer, none of which satisfied my Barrys tea drinking daughter. There is no kettle in the rooms, by the way, and the balconies will keep drinks far colder than the mini bar. The rooms we had were ok, good size but décor a bit tired, husband and I were in 601 (a ?platinum? room) and son & daughter were in 103 (?gold? room) and to be honest there wasn?t much difference. Our bathroom had a bath with jets and a bidet (if we?d used it we?d have burnt ourselves off the heated towel rail which was hot enough to fry an egg on!). If you have one of these baths throw in a bit of bubble bath, press the button and see what happens :-o The hotel Jacuzzi seems to be permanently out of order by the way. The pool is nice, quite warm. There is a steam room and sauna, neither of which we tried. The gym didn?t appeal to my son who is a reasonably frequent gym user. If you look at eurogroup-holidays.com and click Destinations ?Hotels ? French Alps? you can read the official blurb and look at 360° pix. The hotel staff are all very nice, mostly English. One is nice but useless. We handed our room key back to reception on the first morning and when I got back in the afternoon the key was gone and all she could do was shrug her shoulders, she hadn?t a clue what to do & told me to come back at 6pm! Luckily Celine arrived and got a housekeeper to let me in while she had new keys made up. I could tell a few more stories but will just simply suggest you go to Celine with any issues you have! Oops, sorry I got a bit carried away here! :oops: Hope this lot helps anyhow! Was there anything else? :wink: Sandra |
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Back a week now from our first ever family ski holiday, and we were very happy with our choice of Alpe d'Huez. For myself, my husband and our daughter (19) it was a first time to ski (just lessons on dry slopes beforehand), our 17 year old son is a good intermediate.
We had morning lessons booked with ESF, son was in Class 2 with a bunch of 8 teenagers, probably could have managed Class 3 easily enough, but because the group got on so well was happy to stay with them. They carried on skiing together after lunch, went ice-skating etc and had a great time. For our daughter we were a bit sorry we hadn't booked snowboarding lessons instead as she might have met somone nearer her age, surprisingly our beginners class of 12 was all nearer husband's and my age! We booked a private snowboarding lesson for daughter and son on the last day and they really enjoyed that. The ESF instructor we had, a guy called Stephane C, couldn't have been nicer. On one of the days he got us to climb over to a quiet spot and pulled out 2 bottles of wine, cold meats & cheeses & bread, and we had a fantastic lunch on the snow! Snow quality wasn't great, but we knew that we were lucky to have any at all at this time of year. Overall, we were pretty happy with prices in Alpe d'Huez, certainly we were amazed at how cheaply (compared to Dublin) skiwear could be bought. Restaurant prices were reasonable too, although as we were on half board in the Royal Ours Blanc hotel, we didn't get to sample too many places. We did decide that next holiday won't be half board for that reason! As it appears we've been bitten by the skiing bug, I hope to be able to pick up lots of tips on this board, and if anyone has any questions about Alpe d'Huez, I'd happily try to answer them! Sandra |
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