Alpe d’Huez Town

In order to keep our costs down we had booked most of our accommodation for our trip to the Alps in the town of Allemond in the valley below Alpe d’Huez. But for the middle two weeks we had decided to treat ourselves to an apartment in the resort itself. We figured that 2 months in the thick of a ski resort would probably be too much but it would be nice to have a short ‘holiday’ in the town where we would probably eat and drink too much and be grateful to get back to the peace and quiet of Allemond.

Alpe D’Huez town is divided into a number of quartiers, each with their own small centre of shops, bars and restaurants. Some of these quartiers are nearer the slopes than others with Cognet, Jeux and Bergers being closest to the slopes. For the other quartiers of Vieil Alpe, Passeuax, Eclose, Outaris and Huez Village there are both lifts and a free shuttle bus to make getting to the slopes easier. Fortunately, more through luck than anything else, we had booked accommodation in Jeux which was only 100m away from the nearest piste.

In hindsight, and fortunately, it looks like Jeux is one of the better places to be based with a lovely outdoor pool (heated of course), the ice-rink and a short walk to the luge, along with a good selection of bars and restaurants.

One of the disadvantages of ski resorts is that once the lifts shut, at around 5pm, you need to be back in your home town as by road the various settlements can be a long way from each other and potentially a very expensive taxi ride. So it was very fortuitous for us, that while we were staying in Alpe d’Huez town itself and not Allemond, the ESF (French Ski School) put on a fantastic evening show on one of the slopes straight above town.

The event show-cased all the different styles of skiing such as telemark, snowboarding, skiing, slalom, biathlon, monoskis and parapenting. This was interspersed by freestyle skiing and snowboarding over a jump.

The whole event ended with a spectacular torchlight procession down the mountain and a fireworks display.