Vicki picked us up at 10:15am and we had a trouble free journey to Gatwick's North Terminal. The First Choice section was mayhem though with the queue stretching outside the building. Fortunately, Gav had got there a bit earlier and sneaked in the queue so we joined in too and spent a rather dull 45 minutes snaking around to check-in. We had a while to wait in the departure lounge and had a very nice lunch in Yo Sushi! before heading to gate 101 for our 13:55 flight. The food was rank (and photographed by Gav, below) so I'm glad we got some nice tucker in before boarding!
After a fairly quick passage through passport control and baggage reclaim we were aboard our transfer coach clutching beer, water and croissants. We followed our climb into the Alps on Gav's new phone which, amazingly locked onto 7 GPS satellites to give our location on the earth to within about 10 metres as we neared Alpe d'Huez - Cool!
We were last off the coach arriving at Chalet Josephine just in time for dinner - a hearty tomato soup, followed by a fairly bland beef stew - cooked by our buxom, pregnant, no-nonsense chalet host for the week, Lyndsey (pictured below). Around the dinner table we made each other's acquaintance :- Myself, Gav, Vicki, Kathryn, Dave, Andy, Stu, Paul, Gavin, Liz, Ian, Barbara and a 9-month-old baby called Jasmine.
A post-prandial scout around for nightlife led us to Le Sporting, which we dismissed as too quiet, Free Ride, which we entered and left almost immediately due to pumping Euro-pop, and finally to Zoo Bar showing great snowboarding footage, playing excellent music and serving the oddest Guinness I have ever seen. I saw what I thought was a Guinness pump, so I ordered a pint of that to test the water... The barmaid got out a can of non-draught Guinness and poured it into a glass, which was confusing and frankly upsetting. She then popped the full glass on to a metal disc and pressed a button to 'ionise' the contents creating a not entirely embarrassing creamy head at the top... Whatever next? Jager Bombs ensued - Nice.
Gav and I decided at 1am(ish) that it was a bit too early for bed and sought out more drinking and Swedish Kronor eye socket balancing(?) in Les Caves de l'Alpe before finally retiring to our beds.
