We’re pretty much staffless now. The only people kicking around are us office staff and the hotel managers, all of whom head home on Monday. The chalet staff, chefs, kitchen workers, child carers, ski guides and everyone else have all made their way back to the UK. Oh, one exception – James, the assistant manager at the hotel here in Chamonix won’t fly home till Monday as his ankle is now held together with bolts. Last run of the season. Whoops.
There are still a few incidents to report relating to the mad bunch of people who’ve been here all season. And a few words of warning. Way back at the start of the season I had a post where I mentioned how quickly we were shedding staff, even during training. Rules are strict and they have to be. As the season goes on, people drop out. They get sacked. They do stupid things. They get stressed out. Believe me, I can’t blame them.
Working for a season somewhere like this is not as easy as you might think. It’s damn hard work. Blowing your chance to try by videoing yourself doing something rather rude in company uniform and posting it on YouTube is not a good idea. Yeah, that happened back in November. Three members of staff found themselves contractless and making their own ways home when YouTube (I believe) got in touch as the video was flagged and removed rather quickly.
Another hint. If you’re going to hold a bonfire on your last night, then that’s great. A barbecue and some beer is a wonderful way to say goodbye to your mates. However, it’s kind of impolite to burn your uniform as part of the celebration because we’ll want to use it next season. Oh, and don’t lose your camcorder with the footage on, especially somewhere that one of the area managers might find it after you’ve left. And thus find out what happened to 30-odd sets of uniform.
Think that’s bad? Top one of the lot – don’t burn your uniform jacket with your passport still in the pocket. That made for an interesting phone call from the airport.
Now… nothing. Sheridan had dinner in a restaurant last night and there were only two other people in there. When I went out with Leah less than two weeks ago, the place we went was around three-quarters full.
The weather’s lovely just now and we’ve waved goodbye to the hosting staff from the hotel. There will be more coming in for the summer term shortly, mainly from the other resorts – more of which close down this weekend. From what I’ve heard, Chamonix is a superb summer holiday place as well. Certainly, the lack of snow’s not affected how attractive it is. The surrounding mountains are now very much “snow-capped” rather than “snow-covered” and look amazing with the blue sky behind them.
Image via WikipediaBig night out, this one. Sunday saw our last guests being escorted to Geneva and dispatched homeward-bound. About 2/3 of the resorts are still operational for one more week, but Chamonix has officially shut up shop.
So what do you do when the resort closes, all the guests have gone and you have around 30-40 staff with nothing to do, at the same time, for the first night in almost 5 months?
You fire up the barbie, put the two Aussies in charge of it, and get monumentally wrecked. Of course. My beer count for the night was as follows:
1 bottle Carlsberg (or something – I can’t remember)
1 bottle Desperados
I may have been a little tiddly and somewhat late for work the next morning. As you can hopefully see from the attached picture, the view past the barbecue was phenomenal. The food wasn’t half bad either. Proper sausages, great chicken legs, steak, burger, corn…
All this was followed by a lengthy “Oscars†ceremony filled with awards such as “Most improved snowboarderâ€, “Most tardy hotel workerâ€, “Biggest slapper†(I was most upset not to even receive a nomination) and so on. Pete and the gang did a great job of putting it together. Although I did notice they want onto drinking shots of Coke about halfway through. Lightweights.
If memory serves, the rest of the night involved Bar D’up (where we were kindly supplied with free Jager-bombs), La Cantina and La Terrace. I’m not sure what time I staggered home but I had been awake for something approaching 24 hours by that stage so I think my little lie in the next morning can be excused.
We decided to do something different on my day off, and Leah has wanted to go to a spa in St Gervais. My boss, however, handed me some leaflets from a place over the hills (or through the Mont Blanc Tunnel) in Cormayeur. A bit of a traipse but actually easier to get to as they were offering a free bus service for a limited time. Big saving as it’s €40 return for the tunnel alone. The spa was called the Terme Pre-Saint-Didier and we opted for it. This would make it the third spa I’d been to on my trip along with Cologne and Hanmer Springs.
Glad we did as well. The free bus was almost exactly 15 minutes late at the pick-up point (with the same delay on the return trip), but otherwise it was a great day out. The spa were offering a deal to get cheap tickets for a chairlift up onto the Hellbronner pass but we decided against that as the weather was really poor. For €35 each, we got the full run of the place (which was enormous); towel, sandal and bathrobe; body lotion; and grub. Lots of grub. Lovely grub. Bready products, very good quality fresh fruit, delicious yoghurt and about 6 different fruit (and vegetable) drinks. Available all day as a buffet.
The sheer variety of rooms and so forth was staggering. Leah had a mud bath for an additional €10 and aside from that, everything else we did was in with the cover charge. There was a large outdoor area where we enjoyed the snow landing on our heads as we basked in warm water (with jets). We laughed at a very skinny girl with boobs far too large for her running across the cold ground to one of the saunas. I overheard a couple in one of the steam rooms definitely having more than just a conversation and a civilised sweat.
There were waterfalls, bubble baths, chromatography pools, whirlpool baths, saunas of various temperatures, saunas with various smells (including pine – fantastic – and hay, which was more reminiscent of a hamster cage), steam rooms, a Turkish sauna with scented salt to rub on, hot showers, cold showers, a fire room, an air room with hanging baskets to sit in, a water relaxation room with water beds, a darkened relaxation room with soothing music… the list goes on.
Yes, in places it could have done with a lick of paint (literally – probably moisture getting under the last coat) but other than that it was superb. Clean, well-decorated, well-lit and with very new-looking equipment. You can tell we had a good time, can’t you? My back’s even been better since we’ve been. That won’t last long with the crappy bed in my apartment but never mind.
We caught the last afternoon bus back and chilled out for a little as we waited for dinner at the Sap at 20:00. Only when we got there, Pieter apologised profusely as he’s forgotten they had to cater for an additional 12 guests and couldn’t squeeze us in. No problem. As a bonus, the overseas director had told me to take my guest out for dinner on the company when she was visiting. Chris, one of the head chefs, recommended Casa Volaria out past the casino so we walked down there.
Definitely a good choice for Leah, who had some kind of dead sea thing and pasta. I settled on a 300g rib steak that was very well cooked but about 50% fat and gristle. A shame as my starter and dessert were both very nice indeed. Mind, I can’t complain as I pocketed the receipt to shove on expenses. Our thanks to Goran!
The following evening, we did get that dinner in the hotel. The advantage for me was that we had been going on a Tuesday when I’d eaten there before so the menu was the same. This way I got to try another couple of dishes, although we missed sticky toffee pudding night. Instead we had to put up with chocolate brownies. For which I’ve been ordered to get the recipe to Leah. So she was impressed, then.
Next day was home day for Leah. After a mad panicked dash around half of Chamonix to find our handyman (who’d gone AWOL with the van keys), we set off a little earlier than originally planned. Apparently there was some kind of demonstration closing the tunnel which was causing problems with traffic all around town. I found a rat-run to get us passed it and we raced off to the airport in the brake-less deathwagon. In fairness the brakes worked. If you hammered the middle pedal down, allowed for 2-3 times the braking distance and covered your ears to the grinding sound. Not ideal as the heavens opened on the journey to Geneva. It was raining so much I actually stuck to the speed limit for most of the drive.
Thankfully the rain eased off on the way back, although it came down in town again today. Looks like the season may be drawing to a close. This weekend coming we are taking guests to Geneva and not bringing any more back with us. I will not make any more statements about this reducing the possibility of disaster. Not after last time.
As detailed in the previous post, Leah arrived this week (actually, now last week) and we decided we’d do something more than laugh at her inability to stand upright on a plank of wood this time. As such, Friday saw us ascend the scarily high cable car up the Aiguille du Midi. This ain’t cheap, coming in at €38 (£30 at current rates each) for the return trip but for one of those things we’re both likely to do only once…
Was it a great experience? Yes, definitely. Was it worth thirty squids? Hmm. I suppose so, seeing as it’s effectively a unique trip. The view was certainly splendid, with clear skies giving us quite a distance to squint in the sun to see as far as we could. The local wildlife (mainly blackbirds of some description) were pretty fearless and happy to perch within easy reach of a non-zoomed camera.
There isn’t a lot to actually do up there unless you’re a particularly experiences skier/boarder with a fair amount of expensive equipment. Ropes, crampons, radio locators and so on are compulsory for anyone considering traversing the Mer de Glace. With my lack of experience and the avalanche warning indicator reading 4/5 I wasn’t really up for it anyway. A British snowboarder died up here about a month ago as well. There’s reason they recommend you get insurance when you do snow sports.
In case I didn’t get the point across, though – the view is fantastic. I took quite a few photos, some dotted around here, and a short video that I’ve posted on YouTube. Sadly, we didn’t have time to get up to the peak (accessed by a separate lift). I’ve been told that section includes an engineering museum of sorts. The last car down was around 16:30 and we were pushing it to ensure we weren’t crammed onto it like sardines. We caught the one before and “enjoyed” (OK, Leah hated) the sudden drops which were part of the descent. Not aided by some middle-aged chap screaming like a girl every time the car dipped.
Oh, the “needles” in the post title refers to this peak. The name translates literally as “Needle of Midday”, a reference to the fact that at noon the sun hangs directly over the peak when viewed from the town below.
On Saturday, Leah bent to my begging and allowed me to sit in Bar D’up to watch the football. I was only interested in the FA Cup match, and well done to Portsmouth. Shame for WBA, as I think they had it in them to at least get it to extra time.
Sunday. Ah, Sunday. That’s the “chaos” above. You know in the last post I mentioned that this was our last weekend with a full set of open resorts, and that therefore there should be less possibility of problems? I opened my gob too soon…
Combine the snow in the UK with the fact that one of our planes had been taken out for servicing (meaning that all the guests supposed to be on it were split over two smaller aircraft with an hour’s difference in arrival time) and everything went to pot. All of the coach departures had to be recalculated, people moved, extra feeder buses drafted in and guests were made to wait for the next flight to land before they could get to resort.
Having said that, we did deal with everything and the majority of guests were really nice about it. Probably as they were too tired to make a fuss. In fairness, it was obvious that the situation was completely out of our hands. Many of them had sat on the runway at Gatwick watching as a foot of snow was swept off the wings of the aircraft. For four hours. Of course, we had one or two (pretty much precisely one or two, out of a few hundred) who decided to try and take their frustrations out on some of our staff by yelling and basically being rude. The workers had likely been up from an earlier hour than any of our guests and were doing their best to deal with a bad situation. I’d recommend that if you’re the kind of person who shouts at people as a means of trying to make yourself feel better about something, you don’t try it on with one of our staff (or anyone else’s, frankly). You’ll find that the majority will just stare at you, turn around and walk off. As they should. And you’ll just get more wound up at their “rudeness”. We’re actually told to do this. Partly as you’re just being pathetic, and partly as these people aren’t paid enough to deal with abuse, especially when it’s a result of something they and we had no control over. Deal with it. To the vast, vast majority of our guests this Sunday I would like to say “thanks”.
Anyway, I ended up being late back from the airport and missed the kickoff of the second FA Cup semi-final. Shame as it was a good match and well done to Cardiff (the land of my father, quite literally) in making it to the final. I’ll be rooting for them partly from heredity, and partly as it’ll cause the English FA a problem as they’re saying they won’t give the FA Cup-winner’s UEFA spot to Cardiff if they win. I’m sure that’ll be forced to change if Cardiff take the cup.
I should also mention that I kind of left the lights on on Sheridan’s car. So by the time she and Lisette got back to it, the battery was a little flat… Whoops. Fortunately they were parked on the roof of the carpark so rolling it down the ramp would be an easy way to bump-start it.
Unless the car was, let’s say, a Toyota Yaris. They have a little “feature” that means for the engine to turn over you have to have the clutch pedal pushed in. This is, I suppose, to stop you turning the engine over with the car in gear, thus lurching forward or back and smashing something. It also makes it impossible to bump start. Ah well, they got a jump start from one of the airport staff soon enough and got back in one piece. I’m blaming Lisette as I’ve never left the lights on before and this is the first time in weeks that she’s been in the car. Therefore the was the off factor out so must be to blame for me not hearing the shrill beep of the warning tone when we got out.
Back to the evening. After some beer/wine, we looked for somewhere to eat and ended up settling on the Annapurna curry house again. Leah had never been for an Indian before, the prices were keen and I knew the food was good. And it was. Again. The restaurant wasn’t so busy this time and by the time we left around 21:00, I think we were the only ones left. We got chatting to the man who runs it who, it turns out, is from Mauritius. Quite a jump from the splendid beached of this tiny island nation to the mountains of the Alps! Regardless, the food was superb and I’m promising myself at least one more meal there before the season ends.
Back to work today, though I have tomorrow off. Tonight’s plan is for half-price chicken wings at MBC again. I expect to be very full by around 20:00. I am almost belching in advance!
Finally, a quick “congratulations” to Delphine, who just landed herself a job in Paris. Sounds pretty cool, too. All to do with earth shifting and seismics and stuff.
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