Les Deux Alpes
Berangere Hotel
We have just returned having
visited
for the first week of the season - 10th to 17th Dec 2011 having booked
a few days before we departed.
Initially we were worried that there wouldn’t be enough snow –we ended
up getting loads of it and some windy weather – but that’s the chance
you take at this time of year.
We flew from Gatwick to Geneva then the 3.5 hour transfer to Les Deux
Alpes. It sounds worse than it actually is – we had a really
enthusiastic friendly meet and greet from Ski Host Mike, nice coach
lovely scenery – the time flew by.
This was our first trip to Les Deux Alpes – but third trip with Mark
Warner – having stayed previously at the Tarrantaise and the Christina
a few years back. I’d say this one is easily the best – nice room and
bathroom with sunny balcony overlooking the slopes, comfortable large
bar area and dining room, larger than expected indoor pool, steam room
and sauna.
Food was excellent with buffet breakfast and tea with cakes and soup at
4.30. In the evening, we had one buffet night and five nights with a
choice of three starters, mains, desserts and wine. Dinner was a very
sociable affair - by mid week we had grown to a table of six with a
group of people that we’d met - but there’s no pressure to share tables
if you don’t want to.
There were several families with young children staying and it appeared
that they were well catered for –there was in house childcare. The
young ones had their own evening meals. They certainly all seemed happy
and well behaved.
The Hotel is situated at one end of the town –a good ten minute walk
from most of the shops and bars. There was snow on the ground in town
while we were there –I thought it was pretty with many wooden chalets.
There were quite a few nice bars – our favourites were the Polar Bear
and the Sherpa (Dutch and noisy in the evening)
We skied with Ski Host Rosie most days which was really good fun and a
nice way to get to know the ski area.
The skiing in Les Deux Alpes is varied, with lots of nice blue runs at
the top of the mountain and a wide selection of red/blue and green
across the area. There is a chair lift and two button lifts on the
green run next to the hotel so we were able to ski out of the hotel and
get up the mountain from here. A long green road type run or a black
run comes back down so it is possible to ski to the hotel door. The
main gondola – the Jandri Express starts in the town and goes up to the
glacier runs. If you wanted to walk down from the hotel (with skis) to
this – it’s about a 15 minute walk – there are free buses into town
too.
Without exception all the staff we met were friendly enthusiastic and
helpful - Assistant Manager Elle even tried to change our early
transfer time but couldn’t due to the bad weather.
To sum up, despite a week of fairly bad weather and therefore not as
much good skiing as we would have liked – we had a brilliant time – met
some lovely people and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Mark Warner to
anyone.
All pictures are taken from our room on the 3rd floor
