OPTIONAL EXTRAS
We are happy to include any of the following extra touches in your holiday.
Different diets, packed lunches, hampers, linen changes, scheduled flights and taxis are available to individual guests. All other options are only for parties booking whole chalets.
DIFFERENT DIETS £25 per person per week (for the cook)
Not everybody wants to eat the same food. Our guests include vegetarians, no-red-meaters, Orthodox Jews, and proper Englishmen who faint at the smell of garlic!
Much as we sympathise, we regret that most chalets do not have vast kitchens or teams of chefs. We can only cope with alternative diets, on any grounds, including health, religion, dieting or fads, by increasing the cook’s hours or lowering the standard of everyone else in the chalet’s food.
We offer several solutions. Individual guests can always avoid whatever they don’t like. We love our vegetables, so vegetarians won’t die of hunger. Or the whole chalet can agree on menus acceptable to everyone.
If neither of these options work, we ask the cook to come in earlier to prepare alternative food. We pay the cook £25 per week for each guest who wants any different food from the majority in the chalet, and this will automatically be added to the invoice of anyone requesting a Different Diet. Please do not demand different food without paying. It is not fair on the chef or your fellow guests. But if you see the alternative food and decide it looks deliciously healthy, you can always give the chef £25 and join the Different Dieters.
We cannot provide vegan, kosher or gluten-free food, and may charge extra for particularly costly alternative ingredients. We cannot guarantee a nut-free environment.
HAMPERS WITH CHAMPERS £30 per person
A hedonistic hamper (or maybe a romantic rucksack) of champagne, smoked salmon, brie and strawberries etc. brought wherever you choose on the sunny Val d’Isère pistes. A must for alfresco epicureans.
SCHEDULED FLIGHTS and TAXI TRANSFERS
Booked by our UK Office at whatever price we can get. We can’t see any advantage, since our own aircraft and coaches are more comfortable and just as rapid, but if you hate Gatwick or buses, please call. The taxi fare from Grenoble to Val d’Isère and back for up to 4 passengers is around £680. For 8 it is £950, so it’s not bad value if you can fill a minibus.
HEART-ATTACK BREAKFAST £20 per person per week
The gentleman’s breakfast is yet another endangered British institution, but if you’re not one of these namby-pamby yogurt-and-orange-juice types too wimpish to appreciate the finer points of English cuisine, this matutinal repast is for you. Forget the healthy stuff: this is a full cooked breakfast with all the trimmings – everything the doctor forbade. Or you could just have a gallon of fruit salad if you prefer.
TAXI SERVICE
If you prefer to be chauffeured to and from the lifts and slopes in Val d’Isère, we can arrange an 8-seater minibus whenever you wish. Allow about £12 per trip. (Not available on Saturdays.)
BON VIVEUR £50 per person per week
If you think it’s a shame to eat good food without an apéritif, a good claret, some pudding wine, fruit and cheese, port and cognac, this is for you. We sort out day one; you tell our girls what you want after that, and they’ll make sure your contribution is well spent.
TUTTI FRUTTI £20 per person per week
Occasionally guests express surprise that we don’t leave more bowls of fruit lying around, like some of the smarter hotels. To be honest, we find that most of the fruit available out of season in the Alps is of the cold-stored, artificially-ripened variety, where they get the colour right, but forget the flavour. Give us proper winter veg any day! But lest your body crave its daily fix of mangoes or Mouldy Malicious, we will gladly provide as much fresh fruit as £20 will buy.
WINE LIST
We offer a wine list from which you can select fine wines at less than their cost price, since we deduct the cost of the house vins de pays and AOCs you will not require. The list changes from week to week, and cannot really be seen in advance. Please pay the staff in cash.
PACKED LUNCHES £25 per person per week
This is for proper skiers who eat breakfast at 08.00 and don’t stop at noon: a substantial snack on six days, including the final Sunday, comprising two baguette sandwiches filled with ham, cheese or something similar, a can of soft drink, a bar of chocolate and a piece of fruit.
SOFT OPTIONS £5 per person
Contrary to popular opinion, chalets are not allowed to run their own bars, however small, convenient or lucrative for the chalet girls. This way, you can either send us a fiver per person and let us know in advance whatever beer, coke, tonic etc. you require, or simply give the chalets girls some money on arrival in Val d’Isère, and they will buy your mixers etc. for you at the shop and charge you cost price, of course.
LINEN CHANGE £5 per person per change
We change your sheets and pillowcases weekly. If you are particularly fastidious (or dirty!) we’ll change them daily, hourly or whenever.
TOWEL CHANGE £5 per person per change
Every guest receives a bath towel and a hand towel – and not the normal French hotel tea-towel – which are changed mid-week. If you’d like clean towels more frequently, just let us know.
EIGHT DAYS A WEEK £50 per person per week
If you can’t face preparing breakfast, selecting a restaurant or coming home to an unmade bed on the chalet girls’ weekly day off, we will provide the complete normal YSE service, including any options taken.
FRESH FLOWERS £25
We will convert your £25 into euros, and spend it all on fresh flowers.
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