The worst ski vacation ever?
The great Thomas Cook/Nielsen holiday rip-off
After a great dinner at Gaucho's the previous night, it was tough getting up next morning. But, I had a plane to catch, so had to get to the Gatwick airport (the other side of town), by 11:30am or so, in time to catch our flight leaving at 1:30pm.
However, I needn't have bothered. The thing to remember when you book a package holiday, especially with Thomas Cook/Nielsen is that everything is done on the cheap.
This meant, for example, that Thomas Cook, who we had chosen, had one plane, which was on its way to Innsbruck while we were still checking in. After it flew to Innsbruck, it was going to pick up some people there and fly them back to London, in time for us to fly to Lyon. Except, of course, that it couldn't land in Innsbruck due to heavy fog... so it had to fly to Munich instead. We had to wait for the Innsbruck people, headed for Gatwick, to be bussed to Munich, before the plane could finally head back our way.
The net result being that our flight, scheduled to take off at 1:30pm, didn't actually leave the ground until 9pm that night.
Thomas Cook were amazingly apologetic about this "for the want of a nail" catastrophe. In fact, as compensation for our 9 hour wait in Gatwick airport, we were each given a 7 quid "Thomas Cook" food voucher (not valid for alcoholic beverages mind you)! Let me tell you, knowing that our time was valued at 77p an hour certainly helped matters.
After our wait in Gatwick airport, we then flew in the most uncharitable seating I've yet experienced. My knees were jammed into the seat in front: anyone taller than me (6' 4") would have been physically unable to fit.
I'm guessiing that Lyon airport must be a lot cheaper to land in than Geneva, because as an airport, it sucks ass. Once we had landed, we waited an additional half hour (still on the plane) while they found a bus driver to drive us what seemed like 50 feet from the plane to the terminal. It then took a further half hour for our luggage to be unloaded. (Hard to imagine that this could happen in Switzerland). During this time, we searched around for some bottled water to take on the coach - but it appears that Lyon airport has a "package holiday" terminal with only the most rudimentary facilities - all closed at the hour we landed.
Finally, we had our luggage and could commence sitting on the coach for another half hour while the organisers appeared to doddle around aimlessly chasing up people and flights. The coach was packed with even tigher seating than the plane, if that's possible. We were all sharing the same coach of course, which didn't just stop at our ski resort.
After this, I've made a solemn declaration to myself never a package holiday again. The only way they can achieve the prices they did (and the savings weren't really that great), was to scrimp on every single detail.
We could have driven to Courchevel in less time than it took Thomas Cook to get us there. In more comfort too. In fact, considering the fact that you can wait until the week beforehand to decide whether to go or not (depending on snow), driving to the Alps makes a lot of sense to me now.
I could tell you about the trip back - but I figured, Thomas Cook have wasted enough of my time already.
Finally, we turned up at our apartment:
That's the living room of an apartment that "sleeps 8". From left-to-right, back-to-front, that's me, Thomas, Alex, Padraig, Pad, Terri and Jason.
Well, things didn't really get that much better when we were there -but imagine sharing a cramped apartment with 8 people, some of them with a temper, for a week, and you might get an idea. For the sake of the people involved I won't mention any more of those events.
To top it all off, there hadn't been any decent snow since mid-January, leaving mainly icy skiing and lots of exposed rocks. Many of the really great runs were closed.
Still, it could have been worse. I might have broken a leg (we saw one girl on the flight back who had done that). The weather was warm (but not too warm), and sunny, with spectacular scenery. We got about 5 cm of snow mid-week which helped matters a little too.
It's a shame really, because I think that Courchevel, with decent snow cover, done without Thomas Cook/Nielsen, would be awesome. The terrain is unmatched compared to anywhere else I've been skiing (Whistler, Keystone, Zermatt, St Anton, Les Arcs, Chamonix). The scenery is only rivalled by Zermatt and Chamonix. Zermatt and Chamonix have a better village atmosphere, without so many "brits on holiday" - but I also remember the lift lines and poor access to the lifts in general in both of those places. Courchevel had fantastic lift access, and virtually non-existent lift-lines for most of the time. And the three valleys itself is a vast skiing area. You could be there for a month and still not ski every run.
Despite everything that happened, it was still a great week, with a lot of laughs and some good memories. I only wonder what might have been...
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