Christmas Part 2: The Journey to the Alp

This was, very obviously, the part of Christmas most fraught with potential for disaster. 5/6 people (depending on the day) in a small metal box, driving in icy, snowy conditions, in several foreign countries.

Miraculously, no one died.

I spent the journey up in The Metal Box in bed in the back. If you ever get the chance to be carried around by experienced sedan chair bearers, I recommend it - it must feel rather like that did. By far the best way to travel long distances, stretched out in bed with big windows all around you. (And I have tried several methods of travelling long distance - in case you were interested, and I will assume you are, else you wouldn't still be reading this sentence, the worst is by far travelling in a bus with no suspension where the seats are so high your feet don't reach the floor. Surrounded by chickens. Next to the bus toilet.)

Aside from random shouting by an Italian service station man when we tried to fill up with LPG - apparently cars are allowed, campervans, not so much. In which case, you'd think they would have a sign like this:



They didn't, and we never really got the bottom of why we weren't allowed to fill up. Remote internet research by Paul suggested it might be because our LPG pump converter thingy has an alarming tendancy to blow up occasionally. I think the phrase he quoted from Internet was "they will identify you by your dental records, if you're lucky." I decided Mum and Dad probably didn't need to know this little snippet of information; it wouldn't help reduce stress levels any. James and Vix looked thrilled to hear it though!

So, since I spent the whole time reading a book in the back, I can't tell you much about the journey. (The book was crap - so crap I can't even remember the name to warn you off. Premise was a good one - race against bad guys to save the world through visiting various ancient wonders and stuff; writing was utterly appalling, and it carried on a previous story, without giving you adequate introduction to who anyone was.)

We arrived in Chambery, eventually. It was dark, and snowy, and there didn't seem to be anywhere to park a rather large Metal Box in town. So, as you do, we found ourselves parking in the car park of a shopping centre for the night, with the intention - and this is important - of heading up to Meribel to see my big brother and his girlfriend. Where Paul and I would get a bed, since it would be my birthday. For one night, the car park was ok - there were fast food places, the shopping centre had free wifi, toilets, all mod cons. (We won't discuss the toilet in The Metal Box. Suffice to say that we were all thrilled to find real toilets in the shopping centre.)

However, the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. The snow continued. Paul's flight up was delayed. (Unaccountably, he had opted not to run away from work a day early and spend an extra night in The Metal Box, but fly up on the Saturday and meet us in Chambery.) Internet predicted temperatures of -17 up in Meribel. LPG stops being gas at those kind of temperatures. Since the heating in The Metal Box ran on the *gas* part of LPG, it was decided we would stay in the car park another night.

We collected Paul from Chambery station - via the weirdest pub, it was like a Victoria station pub, down to the ugly carpet and furniture, but all in French and staffed by French people. Deeply disturbing. Then we went back to the car park, where James and I amused each other (if no one else) by recounting past horrors of Christmas and the various ways in which we had nearly died growing up. (Quite an impressive list, if I do say so myself.) And we played cards. My birthday dinner was in Flunch. (Which is sort of a French equivalent of Littlechef, but with slightly better food. And alcohol.)

The next day, The Metal Box shuddered to life in the sunshine, and we set off to Meribel. We had a reservation for lunch at 12:30. Astonishingly, we made it more or less in time. By the way, though walking in snow in stiletto heels sounds like a silly idea, and I was mocked, they do give a good grip and are worth considering!

Breaking this now, since it's longer than I expected. Part 3: The Alp and Geneva will come soon. Photos from Chambery follow:

Icicles:


Photo out the window as I woke up on my birthday:


We amused ourselves as best we could:


You can tell it's a shopping centre. A lonely trolleys waits in the freezing sunshine.


The Metal Box when the sun finally came out

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Christmas, Part 1: Villefranche

Christmas started early, with my family coming down to visit me this year. [Which is a very sensible idea - why have we never gone away to warm and sunny places for Christmas before? We should definitely do so again. Although you (feckless relatives) bought the rain and cold with you. But I forgive you, because it's Christmas. And because you helped me move.]

It actually went spectacularly well, for a Hill family Christmas. No one got electrocuted, nothing burnt down, we didn't crash in a pit of fiery metal-box-of-death collision. Everything went great! The plan was, for those of you who are eagerly awaiting every detail of my family Christmas - and, more realistically, so I can remember in the future what we did - for my little brother and his girlfriend to come down to us, flying into Geneva where my parents and The Metal Box would pick them up. But my dad ripped his ankle to pieces a couple of days before they were due to set off, so James and Vix ended up flying down to Nice instead, where my parents drove down a more direct route, avoiding Geneva entirely and getting here mid-afternoon. Albeit slightly more stressed than they would have been, had they had the benefit of my fabulous local wisdom and directions, to get them down big main roads, rather than the tiny twisty ones they actually took. Still, they ended up exactly where I had envisaged them being, and no one official came and threw them out, so a success all round.

James and Vix stayed in our old flat, and moved all our remaining stuff over, box at a time, in payment - thank you both, much appreciated! The next few days were spent going round Christmas markets (the one in Nice was good, the one in Monaco was good, the one in Villefranche was sadly non-existent, despite signs indicating the contrary...) and seeing the sights of round here. And shopping and cooking. Our flat is not, it seems, big enough for 6 people for any great length of time... Still, no stabbings, no contamination of vegan food, all sorted! (And this flat, surprisingly - and uniquely amongst all the places I've lived - actually has matching place settings for 6 people. Including champagne glasses.)

We left Villefranche in The Metal Box insanely early on the morning of the 18th December (I hadn't woken up at 6am for a very long time...), to go up an Alp for lunch with my older brother and his girlfriend.

We should all pause here, I think, to be particularly impressed by Vix - not only was she stuck in a very small metal box with my family, who she didn't know at all well, but she was doing so completely unexpectedly, as James hadn't mentioned the metal box element of this trip to her in advance. Presumably on the grounds that she's sane, and therefore wouldn't have come, if he had. I suspect shock and large amounts of alcohol may have been her salvation, but I'm still deeply impressed at how well she coped!

Part 2: The Journey to the Alp and Geneva, to follow shortly...

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