I recently took a three-day weekend to join a group of coworkers in the French Alps. Because most people took a full week vacation I made the trek south from the Netherlands myself. To start I had to make my way to the Amsterdam Schipol airport via train ride from Den Haag. I managed to get to the train station on bike, carrying a laptop over one shoulder, snowboard over the other, holding the handle of my rolling suitcase in one hand, and steering with the other hand.
After a relatively quick flight from Amsterdam to Geneva, I took an hour-long shuttle van ride to the Chamonix valley. The Chamonix valley is the general area, which is composed of at least 6 resorts, including the one we stayed at: Les Houches (pronounced: “lay ooochhh”). Even though the driver didn’t speak a word on English (and my French was limited to “bonjour”), I safely made it to the Chalet.
The Chalet itself was fantastic: spacious, wooden/log cabin décor, sauna, and hot tub. We even had our own staff that would serve us breakfast and a three-course dinner with unlimited beer and wine. The whole trip went well, and I made it back after three full days of snowboarding in great conditions! Check back for posts about the Italian and French Alps experiences.
France, Snowboarding, Travel, Winter
I rented a car the other weekend to finish up some shopping for my move here. Driving was difficult. Lines separating lanes are the same color as other lines on the road (versus in the USA we have yellow to separate lanes and white to mark other lines). They have traffic cameras placed frequently around town and on Interstates that are set up to automatically send a parking ticket to your house if you’re caught. I’ve heard that you can get a ticket for only going a couple kilometers/hour over the speed limit.
While I managed to understand most traffic signs despite my non-existant knowledge of the language, parking garages were a different story. As I went to leave the parking garage, I placed the parking ticket in the machine, then put my credit card in the slot marked “Creditcard/Chip Knit” (I’ll explain Chip Knit in another post). Of course the credit card didn’t work and the machine started beeping at me and displaying messages on the computer machine display, none of which I could read. After about 8 cars were backed up behind me, I decided to press the help button and finally was rescued by a garage employee who took my cash and let me get out. While that part was no fun, the worst part about the experience was probably driving the French Renault SUV.
Den Haag
