Sounds hard, doesn’t it? Naa, I have just been on holiday. One week skiing in La Tzoumaz, which is part of Les Quatres Vallées. 2 days of snow fall in the beginning and then 6 days sun, snow and fun. Our two little monsters (5 & 7) went to ski school during the day and my ex girlfriend (my wife) and I took every black or black/yellow run we could find. Most of them several times. I really like Verbier for skiing. I have been skiing in most of the areas in Switzerland and in Italy, Canada, France and Austria, but I have yet to find a cooler place.
Every time I am in Verbier, I am amazed about the number of good skiers. If you like it steep and deep, that’s the place to go. If you like moguls, here you can still find them. Freeride? Yup, plenty.
One day my wife and I decided to use every lift only once. It’s easy. There are so many. We went from La Tzoumaz to Verbier to the Mont Gelé , to La Chaux, from there to Gentianes/Mont Fort, then to Siviez, Tortin, Gentianes, La Chaux, Les Ruinettes, Atlas and then via Carefour back to Savoleyres. Took us about 5 hours and we used only 15 lifts (and no, we are not just slow).
During that week, Viviane (monster no 1) went to 6th grade (red star) in skiing school and Camille to 3rd grade. They both loved it. First we were afraid, that 6 hours of skiing course a day would be too much, but no. They always came home grinning (but tired) and they want to go there next year again.
Anything I don’t like? We stayed in La Tzoumaz, because Verbier is just too d… expensive to live. But all we missed was the evening sun. With the kids we can’t go out in the evening anyway and the apartment we found was just perfect for a very, very reasonable price. Because it does not have tv, phone, internet or fireplace, they can not rent it very expensive today. But that suits me. With internet I would have checked my emails every evening and probably started to work. A killer for family live. A few DVDs is enough to pass time when the batteries of all family members are just too low for anything else and since I don’t use a smart phone, I was free to just using my head.
Interestingly, when I returned, the world was still spinning.
I am glad to here that I am not alone in not letting technology control our lives. My vacations are usually in places and activities that I try to minimize contact to technology. Nature has much more to offer that technology.