Paris in February (2/1-2/28)

February kept the stream of visitors coming to Paris...we had a great time with friends from Stanford and Dan's brother and sister. We even visited Dan's distant relatives who live in Normandy, right near Monet's house at Giverny.

And, after many requests, I have finally taken photos of the school where I work...and my posh doctor's office in the 7th arrondissement near the Eifel Tower.

Kimberly

For photos, click here.

Paris February with Visitors

February was surprisingly warm this year, especially after a very cold December! But we decided that it was our friends Meredith and Jason who brought the good weather with them...as they narrowly escaped a blizzard in NY over Presidents' Day Weekend! Jason lived in Paris a few years ago, so he was thrilled to visit hiss old hood and take us out to a few of his favorite places. The highlight by far was taking in a Line Kruse Jazz concert at Sunset-Sunside (60 Rue des Lombards 01 40 26 46 60 www.sunset-sunside.com).

A few days after Meredith and Jason arrived, Dan's sister Rachelle flew in from Chicago, and his brother, Allan from Boston. Allan actually participated in the same program that we are doing a few years ago. So he was thrilled to reminisce of his days being an Assistant d'Anglais! (He has been teaching Math at Cambridge High School until a recent promotion to Dean!! Yes, Dan's older brother is now that guy who sends you to detention!)

When Allan and Rachelle were here, we visited Allan's old neighborhood where he lived and the schools where he taught in 10th arrondissement. He could not believe how much the neighborhood had changed! Little did he know that the Canal St. Martin had been completely cleaned up and now is the place to be on weekend mornings, when they turn it into a pedestrian playzone.

We also took a cooking class at Atelier des Chefs. This is Dan and my favorite find in Paris. You spend an hour learning how to make two different dishes (a main course and a dessert) and then at the end of the class, you get to eat your creations! They have a lot of different styles of classes offered, and you sign up in advance (usually a week or two) knowing what the recipe is that you will be learning. Classes are in French, but the teacher will usually translate for English speakers. They email you the recipe after the completion of the class (in French only), so you don't even have to take notes. Great fun! www.atelierdeschefs.com

Lastly, we visited two of Dan's distant relatives, Stephan and Blandine Bricka, who live in a little town right next to Giverny in Normandy. We had visited them six years before, when Dan was studying abroad in Spain and I met him in France for his spring break. It was wonderful to see them again. As always, they were great hosts! They showed us around their region: walking us by the hotel where the Americans came to set up their own Impressionist school at Giverny, visiting a Renaissance Castle, and going for coffee at the Chateau de Brécourt. Best of all, they loved Zookie! (This was quite a surprise, since neither of them like dogs...but how could they resist Zookie?!)

More restaurants:

Le Relais de l'Entrecôte
20, rue Saint Benoît -- 75006 Paris -- 01 45 49 16 00
(Allan took us here for a great surprise...Steak-Frites! We had been searching all over Paris for them for months, with no luck. But this is where they were hiding...and it's a good thing that we weren't vegetarians because Steak-Frites is all the restaurant serves. You queue up outside (no reservations) eagerly anticipating your mouthwatering filet. When you sit down, the waitress asks you only two questions: Which wine would you like? How would you like your steak cooked? Delicious!)

Le Petit Prince de Paris
12 rue de Lanneau -- Paris 75005 -- 01 43 54 77 26
(A wonderful tucked away bistro serving great food in a very romantic setting. This restaurant has to offer the best food/value ratio in Paris. Menus are very affordable and the food is divine.)

Creperie de Josselin
67, rue de Montparnasse -- Paris 75014 -- 01 43 20 93 50
Next Door (and open Mondays) Le Petit Josselin
(The best crepes in Paris? We found them! And apparently so have all the other Parisians, given how packed this place always seems to be. These are authentic Breton crepes, served with delicious French Cider (think alcoholic Martinelli's Apple Cider). Come hungry!)

Marriage Freres
www.mariagefreres.com
13 rue des Grands-Augustins -- Paris 75006 -- 01 40 51 82 50 (across the street from our apartment)
30 rue du Bourg-Tibourg -- Paris 75004 -- 01 42 72 28 11 (the original location)
260 Faubourg Saint-Honoré -- Paris 8e -- 01 46 22 18 54 (near the Arc de Triomphe)
(We really cannot believe that we have lived across the street from this famous tea room for all this time and didn't make it inside until now! We were intimidated because we had heard they make you order the full (and expensive) high tea or lunch. Apparently not true! We came twice in a week (once with Meredith and Jason and again with Rachelle and Allan) and had amazing tea and wonderful pastries. The only problem...choosing among the hundreds of teas they have!!)

Courchevel (2/6)

Dan and I actually made the decision to move to France while we were skiing in Lake Tahoe over Martin Luther King Day weekend. Silly as it sounds, one of the main draws was that I have always wanted to ski in the Alps…and if we lived in France, we could go on a European Ski holiday easily. So, we were really looking forward to our first ski adventure in Europe! We managed to sneak away from Paris for an extended weekend, so we had five days to spend at the resort of Courchevel in the French Alps. It was amazing!

Kimberly

For pictures, click here.

Courchevel

Here are the major differences between skiing in Europe and in the U.S.

Most people come for an entire week
-Europeans get significantly more vacation time that we Americans do; so taking an entire week for a ski vacation is perfectly reasonable. This means that the resorts can get people to book for entire weeks, and therefore expect it. Thus, it is really hard to find a hotel or apartment that will even let you stay for less than a week. Oh, and most place even require that you arrive and depart on Saturday. It’s a completely different system. This has other ramifications, such as…

Since people are there for a week, they actually spend a surprisingly small amount of time skiing.
-Why wake up early and rush to be the first on the mountain when you have seven ski days? Slow down. Relax. Go out clubbing at night. Wake up late in the morning….and

Take really long lunches on the mountain
-There really aren’t any self-service cafeterias in the ski resorts. Instead, the expectation is that you will spend at least an hour (if not several) enjoying a leisurely lunch at one of the mountain’s fine dining establishments. This is not like the U.S., where the resort owns and operates all the dining establishments and overcharges you for a reheated frozen hamburger patty because they have a captive audience. All the restaurants are individually owned and operated…and competition usually means for higher quality and better value, right?!
And when I say fine dining, I mean it! There is a range of restaurants, from small family owned places, to high class gourmet restaurants with chandeliers and waiters in tuxedos. No, I am not joking! We enjoyed some very very fine lunches during our trip. Yes, it’s funny when you are wearing your ski clothes and boots and dining on rack of lamb or prawns. But it’s even funnier when you notice that the people at the table next to you have probably consumed one bottle of wine each, in addition to the very strong irish coffees they are just finishing off….and you wonder, “How are they possibly going to ski down the rest of the mountain?”

And the ski territory is enormous!
-Courchevel is one of the many ski resorts that have been linked with other resorts to increase the amount of skiable terrain available to its guests. There are several resorts like this in Europe. Until recently, Les Trois Vallées was the largest. With Courchevel, Meribel, Les Meuniers, St. Martin, and Val Thorens you have over 200 ski lifts and 600 km of ski runs at your doorstep. Another way to look at the expanse of this region is to take a look at how many of the largest ski resorts in the United States can fit into the Trois Vallées region. The former Snow Country magazine concluded that the six largest ski areas in the United States could fit inside Les Trois Vallées. That means that Killington, Vail, Heavenly, Steamboat, Squaw Valley and Park City could all fit inside the space covered by Les Trois Vallées with almost 10,000 acres left over. So you can throw in Jackson Hole, Taos, Sun Valley, Keystone, Crested Butte, Alta, Solitude, Cranmore and Stowe and still have room.

And at least here, when they say linked, they really mean linked. It’s not like trying to ski from the Nevada side of Heavenly to the California side, where you are spending the entire day traversing the mountain. Here, you literally take one or two lifts up from the town and you can immediately ski down to the next resort over!

As if that weren’t enough, you can ski anywhere you like. You don’t have to stay within the boundaries of the ski resorts.
-At most resorts in Europe, if you can see it, you can ski it. There are very few out of bounds areas (most likely due to nature reserves). So, if you feel like trying to ski to the next big town through completely un-maintained snow, go for it. You can’t sue the resort like people do in the U.S., so it’s up to you what kind of risks you want to take. (We didn’t do any off-piste skiing because the snow conditions actually weren’t that good. But if we had decided to, we definitely would have hired a guide to take us out.)

So, all-in-all, skiing in Europe is an amazing experience. We had a wonderful time.

Courchevel is well known not only as a fantastic ski destination and a place for the jet-set to spend their “vacances d’hiver,” but also is often featured as a stage in the Tour de France bike race each July. The resort is actually a collection of four little villages, most of them named after their elevation. Courchevel 1850 is the main village (at 1850 meters above sea-level), with Courchevel 1650, 1550, and the small towns of La Tania (1350) and Le Praz (1300) making up the rest of the resort.

We chose to stay in Courchevel 1650, primarily because the hotels were way too expensive at the main resort of Courchevel 1850 (commonly referred to as the St. Tropez of the Alps...which I would have to say is an appropriate nickname, given the number of furs, atrociously large diamonds, and expensive cars we saw there.) We stayed at Hotel Edelweiss (http://www.courchevel-edelweiss.com/), which was completely fine, and a bargain at only 90€ a night.

We brought Zookie with us to experience the Alpine splendor. Zookie had been to Lake Tahoe several times as a puppy, so this wasn’t his first time in the snow. And, as a Tibetan Terrier, he is actually very well suited for snow playtime. I’m not kidding. His paws are special so that he can run around in the snow without sinking in it…oh and does he love the snow! (or the “neige” as we call it…) We even took him up the mountain on the gondola one day…Yes, you can take your dog on the ski gondola in Europe…I know it’s crazy!

And, as mentioned before, we dined very well! Here were some of the highlights:

Mountain Restaurants
*Note, you must reserve at most of these places for lunch, especially if you want to sit outside. I know it sounds funny, but just do it.

La Soucoupe (Courchevel 1850) 04 79 08 21 34
-Chandeliers, formally dressed waiters, and meats grilled over an open fire. Mmmm! (One of the pricer choices in town though.)

Le Bel Air (Courchevel 1650) 04 79 08 00 93
-Wonderful food and an amazing view off the terrace. This more reasonably priced restaurant (thanks to its location in 1650) was where we had one of our best lunches.

Le Roc Tania (La Tania—Courchevel, just on the border with Meribel) 04 79 08 32 34
-Possibly even better views than the Bel Air. Watch paragliders take off and soar over the alps while enjoying your raclette, lamb chops, or spaghetti. Or you can sit on a sun lounger and sip on a bottle of wine as we saw others doing.

Le Corbeleys (St. Martin de Belleville) 04 79 08 95 31
-We had heard that St. Martin was the most adorable ski village in the Alps..and compared to the purpose-built and relatively characterless Courchevel, it was more atmospheric. However, it sits at a really low elevation, which this year meant there was little snow and much exposed dirt and hillside exposed…hardly picturesque. We enjoyed a local dish of crozets, tiny squares of pasta cooked with cream, ham, and (of course) cheese.

Village Restaurants

La Seizena (Courchevel 1650) 04 79 01 46 46
-A shockingly refreshing and modern restaurant with very reasonable prices. (I think it would cost double if it were in 1850.) In a brand new hotel with a lot of emphasis on modern design, the restaurant has a very innovative menu focused on fusion cuisine from around the world. Highly recommended.

L’Eterlou (Courchevel 1650) 04 79 08 25 45
-A small place serving fondues, pasta, pizza, and Pierre chaud (where you cook your own meat on a little grill)

Le Genepi (Courchevel 1850) 04 79 08 08 63
-A very nice place with fancy, but not too exorbitantly priced meals. The food was good, but the dining experience left something to be desired. They had put too many tables in the dining room, so we were literally stuck in a corner once the tables next to us were seated. This meant that the waiter had to ask the people at these tables to get up so he could clear our plates…not acceptable when you are paying 150€ for dinner!

One last word of advice, because skiing in Europe is so different than in the U.S., because the resort is that much larger, and because dining out is such a key part of the experience…I highly recommend you find a guide on the resort before you go. We used both the Mad Dog Ski Guide and the Snowmole guide. We like both of them, but found the Mad Dog guide especially helpful as it rates and describes all of the Red and Black runs on the mountains, so you have an idea of what exactly you are getting yourself into before you