marymack
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Meribel Honeymoon
Why Meribel/background:
My husband and I just returned from a week in Meribel, France to celebrate our honeymoon. We had a wonderful time! We got married in September, but knew that we wanted to ski for our honeymoon, so with me being a teacher, February vacation was the time to do it.
When we started planning our trip over the summer, we had just bought our house and were in the middle of planning the wedding, so we decided to use Scout Ski (https://scoutski.com/) to help do some of the leg work for us. Our travel agent Sarah was wonderful. While we might have been able to do the trip a bit cheaper had we booked things ourself, she really went above and beyond to research for us and listen to what we wanted. She even tracked down a rental shop that had Telemark Skis for my husband, even though it wasn’t one that she worked with.
When we first contacted Scoutski I told her a bit about ourselves and what we were looking for and she generated a short list of ski areas that we might like...well that quickly went out the window when the next day Vail announced they were buying Peak resorts and suddenly as New Englander’s it made a LOT of sense to buy an Epic pass. Since you get 7 days at Les 3 Vallees on the full Epic pass, we were sold.
Meribel/our hotel :
Over the course of the week we skied around a good portion of Les 3 Vallees and we both agreed that Meribel was the prettiest base area and was the right pick for us given it was our honeymoon (so romantic!) and it is pretty centrally located. The center of Meribel seemed to be made up of 2 streets that had a bakery, grocery store and plenty of ski shops for rentals. Not a huge variety of restaurants, but some fast/cheap options like take away pizza, right up to fancy restaurants. I think if we were to go back again, we might choose Meribel Monteratt though, which is a little higher up in elevation so better snow and easier access to the rest of the resort. We always seemed to end up there at the end of the day and needed to ski back down to Meribel center anyway.
We stayed in Hotel L’Eterlou which was just a quick walk to the snow. Our room was small but it was fine for the two of us. The hotel had a pool, sauna and ski lockers, plus 2 onsite restaurants. We went with the half-board option which seemed like a splurge when we were booking it, but it was so convenient and in the end probably cheaper than eating out around town all week. Plus it was a peak week, so it would have been a hassle to need to make reservations for all our dinners. The hotel had La Grange, where our breakfast and dinner were served each day. Each night we were given 2 options each for a starter, entree and dessert. You could also swap out your dinner for a credit to La Kousina or for lunch up on the mountain. Eating out all week did get a little heavy (and expensive) for our taste. If it were not “our honeymoon” I think we would just rent an apartment and cook ourselves, but it sure was delicious sampling all the French food!
It was a busy holiday week! This was the scene each morning as the ski school groups were gathering, luckily once everyone was on their way it seemed a lot less crowded.
Monday:
After picking up our skis at a small shop in Meribel Center (Mottaret Sports la Varappe https://www.mottaretsports.com/), we headed to the slopes. Our first day we really just wanted to get a feel for the resort. Having never skied in Europe, I was a little cautious in figuring out what adding a Red trail to the mix meant in terms of terrain difficulty. Plus, I was on new wider skis, the Blizzard Black Pearl 88 in 165cm. Yeah….I get it now...they were pretty awesome! Andy skid the Blizzard Brahmas and enjoyed them as well. I quickly decided that I think (at least at the 3 Valleys, of course terrain rating is always relative), that Reds were the ideal cruising trails. Blues and greens both seemed quite flat. That first day we skied Meribel and Meribel Mottaret. It was overcast and the lighting was pretty flat. We mostly stuck to the same area and lapped a few chairs rather than lots of traversing. We mostly stuck to the trails, although we did venture off piste a little, particularly when I saw a traverse heading off trail on the right of the Cote Brune lift. We discovered an untracked bowl! Of course given the lighting, I gave myself quite a fright dropping in and not finding the snow right away, but we would return here several times over the course of the week and it was our favorite spot on the mountain. We were shocked how many seemed to traverse right by it. In better lighting it was a pretty moderate pitch (though still steep in comparison to most of the on piste) and seemed to always have great snow. We had our first on mountain, outdoor restaurant lunch at Le Plan des Mains. It felt so funny to have such a sit down meal in the middle of the ski day. We even realized (sadly after we were done) that there was a boot dryer with slippers to wear during lunch! After lunch we went up to the summit of Mont Vallon. The trail down was a little tricky as the lighting had gotten very flat and there were lots of people struggling all around us. By the time we were down, it was late afternoon and it had started to drizzle heavily so we called it a day and skied back to our hotel. We enjoyed warming up in the sauna and then a hearty meal in La Grange.
Monday visibility wasn’t ideal, it also started raining in the afternoon.
French Onion soup at a mid-mountain restaurant.
Our view from our dinner table each night.
Why Meribel/background:
My husband and I just returned from a week in Meribel, France to celebrate our honeymoon. We had a wonderful time! We got married in September, but knew that we wanted to ski for our honeymoon, so with me being a teacher, February vacation was the time to do it.
When we started planning our trip over the summer, we had just bought our house and were in the middle of planning the wedding, so we decided to use Scout Ski (https://scoutski.com/) to help do some of the leg work for us. Our travel agent Sarah was wonderful. While we might have been able to do the trip a bit cheaper had we booked things ourself, she really went above and beyond to research for us and listen to what we wanted. She even tracked down a rental shop that had Telemark Skis for my husband, even though it wasn’t one that she worked with.
When we first contacted Scoutski I told her a bit about ourselves and what we were looking for and she generated a short list of ski areas that we might like...well that quickly went out the window when the next day Vail announced they were buying Peak resorts and suddenly as New Englander’s it made a LOT of sense to buy an Epic pass. Since you get 7 days at Les 3 Vallees on the full Epic pass, we were sold.
Meribel/our hotel :
Over the course of the week we skied around a good portion of Les 3 Vallees and we both agreed that Meribel was the prettiest base area and was the right pick for us given it was our honeymoon (so romantic!) and it is pretty centrally located. The center of Meribel seemed to be made up of 2 streets that had a bakery, grocery store and plenty of ski shops for rentals. Not a huge variety of restaurants, but some fast/cheap options like take away pizza, right up to fancy restaurants. I think if we were to go back again, we might choose Meribel Monteratt though, which is a little higher up in elevation so better snow and easier access to the rest of the resort. We always seemed to end up there at the end of the day and needed to ski back down to Meribel center anyway.
We stayed in Hotel L’Eterlou which was just a quick walk to the snow. Our room was small but it was fine for the two of us. The hotel had a pool, sauna and ski lockers, plus 2 onsite restaurants. We went with the half-board option which seemed like a splurge when we were booking it, but it was so convenient and in the end probably cheaper than eating out around town all week. Plus it was a peak week, so it would have been a hassle to need to make reservations for all our dinners. The hotel had La Grange, where our breakfast and dinner were served each day. Each night we were given 2 options each for a starter, entree and dessert. You could also swap out your dinner for a credit to La Kousina or for lunch up on the mountain. Eating out all week did get a little heavy (and expensive) for our taste. If it were not “our honeymoon” I think we would just rent an apartment and cook ourselves, but it sure was delicious sampling all the French food!
It was a busy holiday week! This was the scene each morning as the ski school groups were gathering, luckily once everyone was on their way it seemed a lot less crowded.
Monday:
After picking up our skis at a small shop in Meribel Center (Mottaret Sports la Varappe https://www.mottaretsports.com/), we headed to the slopes. Our first day we really just wanted to get a feel for the resort. Having never skied in Europe, I was a little cautious in figuring out what adding a Red trail to the mix meant in terms of terrain difficulty. Plus, I was on new wider skis, the Blizzard Black Pearl 88 in 165cm. Yeah….I get it now...they were pretty awesome! Andy skid the Blizzard Brahmas and enjoyed them as well. I quickly decided that I think (at least at the 3 Valleys, of course terrain rating is always relative), that Reds were the ideal cruising trails. Blues and greens both seemed quite flat. That first day we skied Meribel and Meribel Mottaret. It was overcast and the lighting was pretty flat. We mostly stuck to the same area and lapped a few chairs rather than lots of traversing. We mostly stuck to the trails, although we did venture off piste a little, particularly when I saw a traverse heading off trail on the right of the Cote Brune lift. We discovered an untracked bowl! Of course given the lighting, I gave myself quite a fright dropping in and not finding the snow right away, but we would return here several times over the course of the week and it was our favorite spot on the mountain. We were shocked how many seemed to traverse right by it. In better lighting it was a pretty moderate pitch (though still steep in comparison to most of the on piste) and seemed to always have great snow. We had our first on mountain, outdoor restaurant lunch at Le Plan des Mains. It felt so funny to have such a sit down meal in the middle of the ski day. We even realized (sadly after we were done) that there was a boot dryer with slippers to wear during lunch! After lunch we went up to the summit of Mont Vallon. The trail down was a little tricky as the lighting had gotten very flat and there were lots of people struggling all around us. By the time we were down, it was late afternoon and it had started to drizzle heavily so we called it a day and skied back to our hotel. We enjoyed warming up in the sauna and then a hearty meal in La Grange.
Monday visibility wasn’t ideal, it also started raining in the afternoon.
French Onion soup at a mid-mountain restaurant.
Our view from our dinner table each night.
