Semana Blanca in Southern France

Each year the kids have a week off of school for Semana Blanca, which translates to white week...which is really a week for everyone to go skiing. (grin) This year for Semana Blanca we were originally planning to have some visitors stay with us, but that fell through. And so it was a bit last minute that we ended up at a quaint little ski village in the South of France called Font Romeu. It's located in the Pyranees mountains. It is also Catalan, which is something I never realized before. The country that was Catalunya extended into France. Friends of ours were letting their reservation on a chalet go, and it seemed easy enough to step in and enjoy. The chalet was a bit further than we would have liked from the town...and it was on the small side but we all fit in...even the puppies, who you can see if you look really hard in the photo below. They are playing in the meadow across the street from our chalet.

The chalet from the outside....

inside...with no internet and only French tv, the kids resorted to making their own movies on Andrea's Macbook.
Joe taking the dogs for a walk.
The puppies...I have no idea why they never look at me when I'm taking a picture.
Alexa on our second day of skiing. The first day there wasn't a lot of snow but it was ok on the trails. That night it snowed all night and throughout most of the morning. It's still falling in this picture.
Joe was posing with his board when I started to take this picture...it fell. (grin)oops.
Day three skiing, the sun was back out and it was really nice skiing. The lovely thing about this particular mountain is that it was very family oriented. Lots of kids and families everywhere. It reminded me a lot of Smuggler's Notch.(if you ever want an a.maz.ing ski vacation with young kids go there) Here is the family at the top of the mountain...
and me too!! and what I loved most about the mountain is that the greens are really green! I didn't fall once.
Another fabulous thing about the mountain was that our friends were there. The Khan family who helped us with the Chalet stayed a few towns away as well and we met up to ski with them. We also ran into Anner, Aline and Susanne, friends of ours who live around the corner. (we didn't get to see Bente because she was confined to her chalet with the stomach flu...and Stieneke, her Mom was there with her.We did run into Stieneke in town right before we left though...it felt like our own home town, friendly faces everywhere!)
Chillin' in the lodge

Our last night we went out to dinner with the Khans. They have three kids...so you can imagine the group we were at the restaurant. It was a fabulous little place that served amazing food. They first handed us our menus in French. Sadly, our French has not progressed since our trip to Paris. She apologized for not having a menu in English..when Joe asked for one in Spanish her face lit up. We found there weren't a lot of people who spoke English but we were able to speak to them in Spanish to get our wishes across.
trying to get a group picture after dinner was madness so we gave up.
Here is the main street in Font Romeu at night
Our last morning after checking out of the hotel we went back to the town to stock up on French pastries. Mmm that is good stuff, and we found some blueberry jam that was heavenly. Nick too the pups up a staircase for no particular reason...it seems like a good picture place though.
Our final shot of Font Romeu...it won't be our last though. The kids were asking about going again even before we left. They had a great time skiing/snowboarding.
I'm certain we'll be back. It's always nice to leave a place wanting a little bit more of it.
~Bren