France - Day 1: We've arrived!

So we're in France. And it's beautiful here! We're staying in a little village called Bessans. It's in a valley framed by spectacular mountains. The skiing is really fantastic: there are tons of snow and it's groomed almost to perfection with deep straight tracks. It's not as warm as you'd expect it to be in Europe and the snow is pretty cold, but that's just how we Ottawa skiers like it.

We arrived at around 2 in the morning and slept in till around 10, so that we can adjust to the time change quicker. The time difference with Ottawa is 6 hours. Amazingly, we took no wrong turns on our way to this tiny little hamlet lost in the French Alps, and the only thing that slowed us down was the weather. It snowed in Switzerland, rained at the border and then was dry for the rest of the way until we got here, where it was also snowing.

So today we just took it easy: went for a nice slow exploratory ski in the afternoon, settled some admin questions about our stay here while practising our French, and had supper.

Now's it's just about time for bed, so that we can get up at 7 and get started on anothe day of adjusting to the time change and altitude. We're at almost 2000 metres here. For now, this is our only goal: take it easy and acclimatize.

Good night from Bessans!