Saint Martin de Belleville 3

The second of two brilliant days in Saint Martin de Belleville. Good morning, beautiful mountains against a clear sky!

 

 

Once again we wake up to the sun reflecting light on the mountains. (The sun comes up at 8 right now, and sets at 5:30 p.m.. By comparison, it rises at 7:20 and sets at 5 in Madison.)

Having had a full day yesterday, I feel less driven to get things done (before the weather turns). Our meetup for breakfast is nicely late (9:30!).

(we all have great breakfast appetites; case in point: my selections)

Afterwards, my daughter goes off to read while Snowdrop and I set out for a walk. I wanted to take in the one small museum they have in the village (from what I understand, it's about life in Saint Martin over the centuries). It's a short 15 minute walk down the hill.

All good, except that the museum happens to be closed on Saturdays. I'm usually careful about monitoring openings, since I'm used to the idiosyncratic breaks in Europe for lunch, for holidays, for no reason that I can figure out, but this one caught me by surprise: on Saturdays? The one day I would not have expected a closure is Saturday.

No matter. We like the walk! 

 

 

 

And I promised Snowdrop one more visit to the souvenir shop. She likes to pick up a few things for friends. We do that now.

The three of us meet up for a noon lunch at the bakery. (Madame closes for a two hour break at 12:30.) Again, no one is especially hungry, but with skiing in the early afternoon, we have to fit in this midday meal. We do go easy today. I'm thinking crepes with Nutella for the girl, a sandwich for my daughter and maybe a blueberry tart for me? Or... what's this, madame?

This is a family recipe my grandmother developed. We call it the Bellevillois. My cousin bakes all of them now! (It's with almond paste, raspberry jam and of course, blueberries.)

(individual "Bellevillois")

(up the hill to our chalet-hotel again)

(a few minutes of play with a small Lego set I'd packed for her...)

Matthieu, Snowdrop's ski instructor, is at the hotel promptly at 1:30. The girl gets ready quickly.

 

 

I would have gone to watch her ski for a small while, but today's not the day for it -- I broke down in the end and rented skis for myself. Just for one afternoon. This afternoon.

I'm not prepared for it (clothes-wise, otherwise). I'm not sure it's a smart idea (I haven't skied since Morzine three years ago and I did not like it then: I felt I'd lost control, even on the intermediate slopes, which in the past were easy peasy for me, even on icy terrain). But in the end, I talked myself into it. If not now, when it's convenient, proximate, uncrowded, sunny -- then it's a permanent good bye to a sport I have always loved (even though I Alpine-skied, as they call it here, very rarely in my adult years). And here's an additional bonus: I have never had a lesson in my life. All my skiing -- from the years I side stepped up a hill in the Polish mountains, to the mad racing down a mountain I did in my college years -- has been self-taught. Through watching others and a long time youthful subscription to Ski Magazine. French ski instruction is (relatively) not expensive and I think it is delightful. All the instructors I've watched on the slopes appear to be friendly and encouraging. Why not end my skiing career with one short lesson -- to learn what I could have done better for all my decades of skiing?

Meet Simon.

I explained my skiing history, my trepidation. My fears of having out of control skiers crash into me (Cervinia, 2007). He listened, nodded and we set off.

We stick to the nearby mountain (even though we are in the middle of the Three Valley ski area, offering possibly more ski options than any other Alpine district). At first, he watches me do an easy run off the "magic carpet" (the moving strip that hauls beginners up an incline). He nods, and says -- you're ready for the gondola. We can come down the big mountain together.

Two things happened on the long ride up in the gondola: in the last stretch, we looked out and we spotted Snowdrop with Matthieu. 

I was surprised. This is not an easy run in many places, and it is very, very long. I know she hasn't the confidence to handle a big challenge. Still, she is making her way down. With a lot of assistance. 

The second thing I noticed is that altitude changes aren't as easy at 71 years as they were at 21 (at the height of my ski activity). When we get off the gondola, Simon proposes an additional climb up by chairlift, to the very summit of the mountain. He tells me the snow is so good up there. He assures me I have the ability to ski any intermediate terrain. But I say no. I'm feeling the height and the thin air!

Okay then -- he says. Let's ski down and catch up with your granddaughter.

And we do. (The ski instructors know each other quite well here.)

That smile belies her tension: she is feeling out of her element on this run (and it is one hell of a long run and they are just at the beginning). I'm not sure she is really enjoying it. 

I give her a hug. Simon takes a photo.

I can offer encouragement, but really, there's no turning back once you start down the mountain. We leave them to their run.

At the bottom of the mountain (and it took us a good half hour to get down) I say to Simon that I'm done for the day. It's not that I am tired, but it took a chunk out me to go up, and another chunk to come down. Simon was helpful and gave me some tips on how to handle a icy and difficult incline, but otherwise my skiing technique appears to be just fine. I tell him he can use the rest of my "time" with him to go up and help Snowdrop, but he shrugs off that idea. 

Matthieu has been teaching for nine years, he can handle it.

We walk back to the hotel. I'm curious about him, about his skiing history.  He tells me he is from the next village up. His father was a ski instructor, his brother is a ski instructor.

You know, I took my grandmother skiing yesterday.

How old is she?

Eighty. But she hasn't skied in a while. She says she wants to do some now because in France, if you're over 75, ski lifts are all free, so she can go now whenever she wants to.

And how was she yesterday?

Good. But slow. She said she will only ski if she has two personal instructors: my brother and me. One in the front, one in the back.

As slow as me?

He laughs. Just like you!

I take that to be the highest compliment: I ski as well as the ancient mother and grandmother of a line of ski instructors!

And I dont break any bones, nor do I bust up my knees!

What do I wish I had known and done all the years I skied? Perhaps the shifting of body weight forward more, to support better control on steep terrain. But really, what Simon gave me was confidence to return to a tough long run. Even if I'm not likely to do it any time soon. Maybe when I'm 80!

Snowdrop comes back an hour later. She's all smiles, but she does tell me the run was difficult. She prefers practicing on the gentler slopes. It helped that they paused halfway down for a snack at a mountainside restaurant. What did you have? French fries! Matthieu had some too, but he ate his with mayo. He hates ketchup, just like me!

A few minutes later, Snowdrop goes down to the pool. I was going to leave her to swim with her mom, but the warm pool water feels good on a post-ski body. I take a dip as well, then I leave them to it. 

 

Evening rolls in and with it come the clouds, portending a very mixed weather pattern for the next three days. We'll see what we get!

Dinner time. We eat in a restaurant recommended by our hotel (they actually picked all of the dinners for us -- it's a small town and there aren't many restaurants and we aren't fussy). It's called La Ferme de la Choumette and it really is a farm, located up the mountain to the back of us (and requiring a shuttle by car from our hotel, because we should not walk up that road in the dark).

During the day, skiers stop here for lunch. In the evening the action moves inside. And here, the farmers came up with a clever idea: why not showcase the animals? The cows, the sheep -- you can see them as you walk in. There's a window separating the barn from the restaurant.

 

 

(They promise that the meats you eat are not from the animals on the farm -- these they keep only for the milk and cheese production.)

 Fondue for my dining buddies, tartiflette for me -- a Savoie dish of potatoes, onion, lardons, and Reblechon cheese -- but it was much liked by Snowdrop so we switched around some. She shared her portion of the cheese fondue.

 

 

Would you like our house Genepi liqueur? Treat from us. (It's an Alpine herbal concoction.) Sure. Ummmm, oh my, just one tiny sip is enough to waken my insides!

Satisfied and satiated we get a lift home. Once again, so grateful for the beautiful day we had here in Saint Martin de Belleville.

with love...

 

Saint Martin de Belleville 2

This is why. This day, this complete weather surprise, this beauty, this pace, this blueberry tart eaten outside, stripped of jackets, caps, mitts, this afternoon, sunshine streaming in from the west. This leisurely walk en famille that racks up steps as if they were bunny rabbits set loose to mate. This is why days like yesterday -- full of waits and flights and transportation hurdles are worth it, because the day like today is so very good!

We catch up on sleep (and would have caught up even more had Snowdrop's alarms not kept going off all night -- the girl keeps a schedule of what happens when via her watch and somehow she managed to keep these logged in, set to disturb, even in Europe, which functions with a seven hour time difference). 

We wake up to a day that hasn't any cloud hovering near out terrace. Indeed, it's looking pretty good out there! And the view!

Oh, that mountain view...

 

 

Breakfast, the three of us...

 

 

 

... with so many favorites to choose from!

And now it's time to explore the village of Saint Martin de Belleville. 

 

("we're ready!")

 

 (our hotel is near the top of Saint Martin de Belleville)

(down below...)

There is a tiny and empty tourist office, which is helpful. I consult about walks in the area for later in the day. For this morning?  We walk the narrow streets and seek out the shops. Just out of curiosity. There is a bakery, a butcher, a cheese monger, a very small grocery store with very many bottles of wine, and one shop that I would say comes close to being 100% souvenirs. Immediately the girl spots a penguin stuffie with a Saint Martin de Belleville scarf. There are no penguins in the French Alps -- we remind her, but it doesn't matter. Why even argue. That penguin will be coming home with us.

 

 

We concentrate on the old blocks of the hamlet (or is it a village?). 

 

 

 

(restaurant long closed: family has moved on...)

 

 

 

And they are old, as are the farm-style chalets that line them. This is the charm of the village! This is why you want to ramble right here, rather than on the busy streets of Chamonix.

(snowball fight!)

(followed by ice cream cone. before lunch.)

Our lunch is at La Voute. It's a place of typical mountain comfy food, but of course my daughter and I are still digesting our breakfasts from this morning. Nonetheless we sit down at noon, because we have to be back and ready for Snowdrop's ski lesson at 1:30.

We (like the handful of other French people -- grownups all, the kids will descend here in February) choose a table outside. 

 

 

 

I love it when the sun is so strong that you can eat outside, and even take off your jacket because it's just so beautifully warm. Snowdrop complains that it's too warm. Way too warm. Her mom lends her sunglasses because her gaga didn't think to bring them along to lunch.

She eats pizza, we eat salads with melted mountain goat cheese. Heaven!

And for me, there's that dessert that I love in Savoie -- the wild blueberry tart.

(ready for a close up?!)

 

We walk back satiated and I swear Snowdrop could have done with a rest -- we're still a tiny bit shell shocked from the time change, but she has a ski lesson scheduled for 1:30, so promptly at that hour, we meet Mathieu downstairs. (Matheiu was born in St. Martin, but his mom is English, so he speaks a lovely English with a variation accent -- somewhere between British and French!)

I walk with them toward the ski lift and here at once I see how convenient the Lodge is to skiing. Perhaps not for experts -- you have to take gondolas or drive further to get to the difficult slopes. But for beginners and intermediates, the skiing is literally a five minute stroll from the hotel.

And she is off!

Her mom uses this time to shop (in that one souvenir shop!) for the boys and I take one of the walks suggested by the Tourist Office guy.

[The town that you see just below the snow covered mountain is the end of the line for this valley -- it's Val Thorens, a big ski destination, lacking the charm of the hamlets, but surely giving you every skiing option imaginable. It is the highest Alpine ski resort and perhaps the most modern. On the other side of the mountain there is another road, with a tunnel leading south, to Italy.]

 

The trail itself is good, but I sure am glad I brought my cleats! It's slippery! They had some rain last week and the snow has a nice slick surface to it! But the views are stunning. And the only sound is that of the rushing waters in the valley, and of dogs barking. (On the other side of the river, there is a dog track. Can you see the huskies and the sleds? )

I walk all the way to the next hamlet -- Saint-Marcel.

 

I want to vary the return trip and here I get lost. In a fairly nice way, as I get to see some more more Savoyard homes. And Savoyard people.

But I'm stumbling a bit with the routing. There are too many paths and too many dead end alleys!

(a barn with the distinct smell and sound of cows, producing milk that is then made into award winning cheeses)

Eventually I pick up a trail again. It's icy! Back to the cleats.

 

 

 

In the course of all this hiking, I make a decision about tomorrow. (Which I will inform you of ... tomorrow!)

In the meantime, Snowdrop comes back from skiing. You can't get her to tell you the details of it. "It was good! He threw snowballs at me and took a video. I wasn't great." That's it. The report of a ten year old.

I thought for sure she'd be tired. Walking, skiing, still not caught up on sleep. And so when I throw out the half hearted offer -- want to go swimming? -- I'm shocked when she says yes.

(it's not a large pool, but it's a warm one. with a view!)

I go in with her. She loves pool playmates and she has me to do the best I can in that role. After a while, I suggest we maybe should be done, and the begging begins: five more minutes! three more minutes! one more minute! I give her all of them.

 

We eat dinner at Restaurant Montagnard.

It's a cozy place and it probably has excellent specialty dishes, but my daughter and I are itching for a fondue, made with local cheeses. (Snowdrop opts for fish and chips.)

It's predictably wonderful. All of it.

A day like today checks off all those boxes, all those questions you have back home -- is it worth it, does it suck up too many resources, will we manage, will the place live up... Today was grand. Even if the weather, the skiing, the food, the moods all fall apart tomorrow, we will have had this day. I am so grateful...

with love...

Saint Martin de Belleville

Wherever I travel to in this world, I am asked -- why are you going there? Most often I shrug it off. Who knows what lifts me and moves me when I study travel possibilities. There's never an easy answer. It's not just the art and food in Paris (and sometimes neither is even important to a visit there). It may be that one place may have a landscape that I want to experience, another -- an attitude that makes me want to dive in. I can't really come up with just one reason why it's there and not elsewhere.

However. There is only one reason, and really one person that is responsible for me booking this trip to Saint Martin de Belleville in the French Alps: on June 21st, I was up at the northern tip of Scotland, staying in a house where a young woman (Beks) worked. We chatted. Her partner is a ski instructor. In the summer, she works up north (while he takes care of their kid). In the winter he works in the Alps, teaching skiing (while she takes care of their kid). I described to her the type of place in the mountains that would appeal to me: small, but not so small that there is no movement, no commerce at all. A place that's not overrun by zealous skiers and visitors (like me!). A beautiful place. You've lived in a large number of Alpine towns. Which one do you like best? She said -- go to Saint Martin de Belleville (in the Savoie region of France). Shortly after I booked my winter trip there.

I've maxed out my skiing years (I think), but Snowdrop is just starting. If there is snow, the skiing here should be good for a beginner. Let's see what I think of the village itself.

Wait, let's first get there!

It's a short 7 hours and 14 minutes from Minneapolis to Amsterdam. Enough to get in a cycle of sleep were it not for the flight distractions. That is if you're one of those who can sleep in the air. (They can, I can't.)  In Amsterdam, we have a nearly three hour layover. By 1 p.m. we're in flight to Geneva. The arrival is a breeze. No waits anywhere. By 2:30 we're on the road, heading for France.

 

No place is a perfect destination and Saint Martin has the disadvantage of being a little more distant from Geneva airport (or any airport) than say Chamonix (last two years) or Morzine (the year before). It takes us two hours to cab over to the village. The weather today is variable. Warm and partly cloudy in Geneva. Not so much in the valley wherein you'll find Saint Martin. Cloudy. Foggy. Or is it that we're sitting smack in the thick of the cloud cover? 

I'm not driving. I leave this to a local guy and this is not a luxury but a necessity. The last twenty kilometers are around hairpin curves, up a mountain, down a mountain, and here, the air gets cold enough that you start to see snow. Surely the roads are slick?

Our driver is in a hurry. We wasted time driving through Annecy -- there was an unusual amount of traffic. Too, if I understood the guy correctly, there was a bank hold up, resulting in barricaded streets and gawking passing drivers. 

He sped up and down that mountain in a way that surely demonstrated he knew the road well, but who cares -- it was terrifying. (He apologized afterwards and I suppose it's easy to forgive because he did not kill us, but he came dangerously close to it!)

It's a long and adventurous travel day, but at long last we are here: Saint Martin de Belleville. Population: 2600. Elevation: it varies! Some homes are at 2100 ft (640 m). Some are higher up at 11 700 ft (so 3560 m). 

We are staying at a fairly new and comparatively small place --  M Lodge. I have the larger room with Snowdrop.

My daughter is in a smaller one below us. 

The view? Which I wanted so much? Ha ha ha - look out our window. Fogged in.

I have a few minutes to unpack, to refresh, but by 6 we are downstairs at their "Bistro" for our first supper in France.

 

 

The food at the Lodge is super, but less focused on regional dishes than the remainder of our eating places will be. (Yes, you have to prebook your dinner restaurants in the Alps-- this is a small town and even in January, there are plenty of skiers here. We are, in fact, set for all the days we are in Europe.) 

It's a good beginning: the hotel is Alpine rustic and authentically beautiful all at once. The bistro has a party celebrating someone's fiftieth, the clientele boisterous and in a vacation mood. But the truth is, we would have eaten here even if they served fast food in cardboard boxes. We're tired, no one feels like exploring tonight, and importantly -- they are willing to seat us on the early side of the clock. (No French person worth their chops would be caught eating supper at 6!).

(fish for the girl; though what she really loved was... the octopus)

Back in the room -- the fog is lifting! It's dark of course, but we can see the contours of the mountains at last!

Tonight we shower, we crash. Tomorrow -- we explore!

with love...

Wednesday departure

The Siberian Arctic blast is moving on. Kids are back in school. Chickens are feeling upbeat. 

 

 

 

Cats are once again willing to stay out for more than two minutes at a stretch. The day would be almost normal, almost without anything pulling it in strange or novel directions, except, of course, this is the day I take off, with Snowdrop and her mom. (The girl goes to school in the morning and then we meet up at the airport in the early afternoon.)

The timing of this trip is good: Ed has recovered, I certainly have. No one is sick. There are no snow storms in sight. (Last year, we had to scramble because a storm hit Wisconsin just the day we were to leave.) I'm really ready for some mountain sunshine. My daughter is ready for some R&R with a good book, with maybe a sauna, or a walk in the mountains. My granddaughter is ready for any adventure.

These days I ask myself -- how long will I be able to do these trips, especially with a young one in tow? When my daughter asked to join us, my first thought was -- good, I have back up care in case I need it! 

Snowdrop is a great traveler -- I would not take her if she weren't. At seven she was still fragile around the edges, but by eight, she'd gained a level of flexibility and adaptiveness that made it easier to stick with it. By ten she understands what the demands are and she can deal with the unexpected. And so for now, we keep going.  Maybe next time she'll be pushing me in a wheelchair, but for now, we are partners in travel! 

First, though, breakfast with my sweet stay at home guy.

Soon after -- flowers watered, dishes put away, cats petted, chickens fed, bathroom cleaned, suitcase packed, snow brushed off the walkway and the car and we are off!

Our schedule for today is to fly to Minneapolis, and from there to Amsterdam, and from there to Geneva. I'm posting this from the airport:

Tomorrow, I'll post from a small village in the French Alps.

with love...