For those of you who aren’t sure you want to read all of the juicy details of the trip, here is a brief overview of how our trip turned out:

Belgrade: Sunday-Thursday, just hanging out while Jim worked and Irena recovered from a very bad cold, visiting family and friends, and driving and GPS-ing a couple of Jim’s favorite cycling routes (THAT was fun!).

Drive to the Alps: Thursday I visited 3 new countries (Croatia and Slovenia and Italy) and we made it to Venice and spent the evening exploring there; Friday we stopped in Verona to visit Romeo and Juliet’s famous balcony, then made it to Torino; Friday it took us an hour to find our way out of Torino, and we arrived in Val d’Isere around 4pm.

Sun: First day on the slopes – very difficult heavy snow for me, but AMAZING views.
Mon: Second day – absolutely miserable! Zero visibility.
Tue: Beautiful! Rode THROUGH the mountain and skied on top of the world.
Wed: Tricked by Irena to start the day on a black; fell later in the day & nearly lost my pants!
Thu: Fantastic day of skiing (my last); visited the Keyhole rock.
Fri: Blizzard conditions – Irena is tackled by a snowdrift.

Head home: Saturday, Jim & Irena drove me to the notable and lovely village of Annecy to drop me off and drive back to yet another Alps resort for another 7 days of skiing. I wandered around the old city, then caught the 2-hour train to Lyon early Sunday morning for my flight home via Munich.
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I can now definitely recommend, from personal experience, skiing (or snowshoeing, sis) in the French Alps. Since Irena asked me, it seems a good idea to put this here: For me the very BEST of our ski trip was the spectacular beauty of the mountains, and skiing the Grande Motte (above).

Here we are…tired, happy skiers on the amazing funiculaire 🙂 —->

PS – Check back soon – I plan to add links to some Google Earth GPS track files of two days of skiing, and two of Jim’s most difficult cycling routes that you can download.