A short trip to Avoriaz

Myself and my partner decided we deserved a child-free ski trip, so in mid-January, we went for it!

 

There were a few logistical things to think about:

 

Dates

When could we get accommodation? When could we get childcare? When could we get flights?

Most accommodations run Sat-Sat so sticking within that period was opening up a lot more options. Little one is in nursery Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so we needed these 3 days to be the bulk of the trip so that childcare, realistically, just needed to do drop-offs, pick-ups and bedtimes. We're in the North, about an hour from both Manchester and Liverpool, which both have very frequent flights to Geneva so that wasn't too tricky.

 

Location

The next thing to think about was where to go? We wanted a shorter transfer to maximise the time in resort, we wanted it to be somewhere you can reach easily from Geneva and somewhere with a decent height as we were opting for early/mid Jan. Avoriaz was the perfect option for us! We booked Atria-Crozats in Avoriaz Sunday - Sunday, and just checking out early (make sure you tell them when you check-in so they can charge you the right amount of tourist tax).

 

Flights and baggage

We needed to choose where to fly from and what timings. We knew we wanted to maximise our skiing time, but also didn't want to be leaving little one with childcare more than we needed to. We chose Liverpool airport and our flight left Liverpool at 17:40, getting us to Geneva at 20:30. On the return we were leaving Geneva airport at 20:50 and landing in Liverpool at 21:50. 

We both have snowboards that we wanted to take, and luckily we both travel pretty light so we didn't need to fork out too much on luggage. With only 3 nights and 3 days skiing, we opted for 1 x snowboard bag at 20kg and 1 x 15kg bag, giving us a total of 35kg, and this was absolutely enough. We could even have dropped some weight!

 

Top tip - If you are in the North, looking at Liverpool airport would definitely be a top tip of mine. The flights are often similarly priced or cheaper than Manchester, but the parking is so much cheaper, it's super easy to get to and it's a really lovely airport. It's actually been ranked the UKs best airport with an 82% customer satisfaction rate. 

 

 

As little one has never been put to bed by someone aside us, we had a practice night on Saturday with a few tears, and then Sunday at 14:00 we headed off for the airport. We made sure that we had a big lunch so that we could just grab some sandwiches to eat on the plane/once we got to France. We'd checked in online and had our boarding passes on our phones. Bag drop and security were super easy and we headed straight through to departures. We stopped for a drink (we were child-free on holiday after all!) and before we knew it we were boarding. The flight was only about 1/3-1/2 full and they actually ended up moving us to the exit seats so we got the extra leg room!

 

Passport control did take around 45 minutes to get through, even with a quiet airport, and while in the queue we received a text from our transfer driver letting us know they were here so we gave them an update of where we were. The luggage carousel had actually stopped by the time we got through (although some people were just watching it without realising their bags were on the other side...) so we grabbed our bags and headed out, where we were met by our very helpful driver with our name on a board.

 

We headed up to Avoriaz, with the journey taking around 1 hour 30-45 as it had started to snow by this point. As Avoriaz is a pedestrianised resort, we got dropped off at welcome centre at around 23:00 and then just cut across the piste to get to our accommodation (make sure you have checked out the routes on a map/google maps beforehand as this could be quite stressful to figure out if you have kids/it's snowing/it's dark) and checked in. This accommodation has 24 hour reception on the weekends so this was easy to do. We headed to our apartment, made our beds, and went straight to sleep.

 

The next day, knowing it was probably going to be snowing and low visibility we allowed ourself a little lie in (don't forget we are CHILD FREE for the first time in 2 years, we have to treat ourselves somehow!), getting up at 08:30, getting dressed and then heading down to the lift pass office to pick up our lift passes. I exchanged the voucher we had for the lift passes (don't forget to add Carre Neige), took a photo of the card number and then we headed up the mountain. It was a snowwy day and the clouds stayed low (and you couldn't get higher than them), but as neither of us had ever been to Avoriaz this was actually a nice day to just get our bearings, figure out where we were, have a play on our boards etc, and there are lots of treelined runs to play about in. Around 13:30 we were happy to call it there, head back to resort to grab some bits from the supermarket and head back to the apartment for lunch. We took a nap (again, don't forget we're CHILD FREE for the first time in 2 years!), and then did a bit more exploring before some apartment beers. We googled restaurants in Avoriaz and chose one we fancied that did raclette (when in France hey!) and off we went.

 

The next day was due to be decent weather so we got up a little earlier at 8 and headed up. We stopped for a drink around 11:30 and then eventually came down around 15:00. Grabbed some lunch, chilled in the apartment and then headed to the main strip to decide where we fancied for tea. Another delicious meal, and a crepe from one of the little stands, and it was back to the apartment for beers and bed.

 

On our final day, it was raining. Not ideal when you need to shove your salopettes in a bag in the afternoon but it is what it is (and I'd packed bin bags in preparation for this). Up we went, and it was super super windy, to the point that some of the higher lifts were closed (I don't blame them, when we'd been up the day before my face was SMASHED by the wind and it did not make for a comfy ride!) so again, we just pootled about. We headed down around 13:30, and quickly shoved our salopettes onto the heated towel rail in the bathroom to dry them off a bit. We grabbed some lunch, packed our bags and cleaned up the apartment (don't forget that self-catered apartments normally have end-of-stay cleaning included but you still need to empty bins and clean the kitchen).

 

I'd booked our transfer from the welcome centre at 16:30 (I always leave more time than needed for a return transfer to avoid any risk of missing a flight). Now as Avoriaz is pedestrianised, which means that roads and paths aren't cleared, it was going to be a bit of a pain to walk with our bags through the resort so had planned to grab a horse sleigh (super reasonably priced for the service), but when I went to check-out it actually turned out this was a free service that the accommodation offered so they called for one and we waited outside. We hopped on the horse and sleigh (I felt like a queen) and waited for our transfer. The driver had already texted me to let me know he was going to be 10 minutes late (another reason to always leave more time for your transfer), then he arrived and off we went. It was rush hour by the time we were hitting the towns but we still made our flight with plenty of time. We had bought sandwiches in resort to eat at the airport, and the flight was on time. We were the last flight into Liverpool so the bags came out quickly and passport control was very quick (interestingly I didn't see any e-passport gates but I may not have been paying attention enough!) so we breezed through. Parking in Liverpool was ANPR so we drove straight out and we were home before midnight.

 

For us, this was definitely the right trip. A great height resort with a short transfer time, a decent time of the year and enough days to top up our mountain fix without causing too much disruption to the family. Yes, it wasn't as cost-effective as if we'd done a week but that wasn't our priority. Shout out to the nanas allowing us to still enjoy our passions!