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Our Unforgettable Christmas Vacation In The French Alps

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Dec 26, 2017
in France, Travel
0
Our Unforgettable Christmas Vacation In The French Alps
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Christmas In The Heart Of The French Alps

Two readers gave me the idea.

At the opening night cocktail party for our Live and Invest in France Conference in Paris in October, I spent the evening speaking with a young couple from New York who explained that one reason they had decided to attend our event in Paris was because they already had a deep affinity for France.

They come every winter, they told me, for a week or two of skiing in the French Alps.

“We rent a catered chalet,” they explained.

I’d never heard of a catered chalet, but a ski trip in the Alps sounded like a great idea.

“Let’s rent a house and take the kids for Christmas,” I suggested to Lief.

“The trip can be our gift to the family.”

We didn’t end up with a catered chalet… but we did find a mountain chalet overlooking Chamonix valley that is everything you imagine a mountain chalet should be.

From the living and dining rooms, our view is of Chamonix town and the peaks of Mont Blanc.

Chamonix France
The view of Chamonix town and Mont Blanc from the dining room window of our rental chalet

From every other window we see snow… in every direction.

Looking out now, I see that more snow is falling.

“Last year,” explained the helpful Frenchman whose house we’re renting this week, “we had no snow.

“It was horrible… everywhere green on Christmas Day.

“This year,” he continued, “is perfect.”

At various times throughout the day, we hear church bells.

If I were a better Catholic, I might understand the significance of the timing and the number of chimes at each instance. In my ignorance, I simply enjoy the sound ringing up from the valley below.

We are as unplugged as a 21st-century family can be.

We’ve streamed Christmas music via Netflix and googled poulard recipes for Christmas dinner… but video games, email, social media, and iTunes television have all taken a hiatus.

And the best part is that I didn’t have to ask my kids or my husband to set aside their devices. The transformation occurred organically.

The setting has enveloped and insulated us. Here in the heart of the French Alps we are isolated and cut off from the rest of the world… just as Lief and I hoped we would be when we planned the trip.

Our picture-postcard chalet sits at the top of a steep mountain trail with two hairpin turns. We find the private setting a plus, but it comes with a practical downside. No local taxi or shuttle service will venture up our hill in the snow… so the only option when we want to go to town is to pull on our snow boots and take off on foot.

We’re seeing it as a family fitness program.

And we’re reminding ourselves what it means to delay gratification. If we don’t remember to source it and carry it back with us from town… we go without it. Domino’s does not deliver.

Our first night here, walking down our wholly unlit hill trail well after dark, we came nearly face-to-face with a big buck. We got close enough to see the panic on his face. Panicking a bit ourselves, we walked as slowly and calmly as we could in the other direction.

We’ve seen our antlered friend every day since, as well. He and four or five other deer seem to call the woods immediately surrounding our place home.

Ordinarily, Chamonix is a town of 10,000. This time of year, the population swells to more than ten times that number. You’d never guess this by day, when most of those visitors are on the slopes.

About 4 p.m. each afternoon, though, as the skiers come off the mountain and head to town for their après-ski fun, the pedestrian thoroughfares, restaurants, and shops overflow with merrymakers.

Last night, after our Christmas dinner of mussels, oysters, and roasted poulard, we ventured down the mountain to join our fellow winter tourists out and about on the streets of little Chamonix. The village was aglow with tiny white lights strung up and down every rue.

Outdoor heaters kept open-air café-goers warm, and children followed street performers through the heart of the village.

We stayed out well past our usual bedtime, enjoying perhaps a little too much champagne and vin chaud, then hummed Christmas carols as we hiked back up our hill.

I’m the first one up this morning. The house is silent and still… and chilly.

I think I’ll go wake Lief and ask him to start a fire to warm the place before the kids get up…

Kathleen Peddicord

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Tags: catered chalet French alpschalet rentals ChamonixChristmas in ChamonixChristmas in franceChristmas travel franceskiing Chamonixskiing French alpsskiing mont blancwinter travel mont blanc
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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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