Chalet Aquila 107

Chalet Aquila 107 Highlights

• Brilliant location on the nursery slopes by Rond Point des Pistes
• Ski-in-ski-out on to/from Solaise and Bellevarde slopes
• Four bedrooms with en-suite facilities
• Lovely sitting-dining room with huge terrace
• Wifi and Smart TV
• One member of staff, who lives out
• Damage deposit for all bookings with babies/children aged 6 months to their 5th birthday.

Chalet Aquila 107 Description

There are very few chalets in Val d’Isère which are truly ski-in/ski out. The village lies along the floor of its narrow, steep valley, and you’d need to ski uphill to ski from most buildings. That’s why there are so many liveried minibuses taking people to and from the slopes. But the small, private Aquila résidence is at the Rond Point, where all of the buses turn round, and is right on the nursery slopes. It is genuinely ski-in, with five major pistes leading straight to the door, plus a couple more, including the infamous Face, terminating nearby. And it is practically ski-out, with the pistes just fifty yards away.

Aquila 107 is a very smart four-bedroom, four bathroom duplex apartment. On the upper floor are an excellent living area with plenty of space at the dining table, four large sofas around the coffee table, a balcony and spectacular views across the nursery slopes. Next to it is a smart double bedroom with an en-suite shower room and the same views towards the church.

There’s an obvious master suite on the lower floor –  a rather bigger bedroom and bathroom, with a jacuzzi bath, separate shower, wc and double basins. Same view across the balcony. (We don’t know why we keep harping on about balconies – under a foot of snow they only serve to cool one’s gin!).

One room on the lower level has three single beds, which can become a sizeable double plus a single, and an excellent en-suite bathroom with loo.

The final bedroom is a twin/double on this lower floor with an en-suite shower room and wc. It doesn’t actually have a window. Some British people cannot imagine a room without an outside window. They want to throw it open, breathe in the fresh air and commune with the owls. Forget it! At -20º almost nobody opens their window, there are no owls, and communing with Ratrak drivers isn’t quite the same! The locals rely on the excellent ventilation…

Although these two rooms could theoretically sleep five and the chalet nine, we find that it feels better with eight, and that is the maximum number of guests we are taking. We don’t mind how, where or with whom you sleep, so long as there are not more than eight of you.

You could easily spend the whole week here without once taking a bus, driving your car from the free garage or even walking anywhere. L’Étincelle, widely considered Val d’Isère’s best mountain restaurant, is just above. The popular little Gourmandine bar and restaurant is just across the way, there a supermarket next door, the Snowberry ski shop is 20 yards away and Val’s best après-ski spot Cocorico (known to us Brits as Coco’s), is about 100 yards. (Don’t worry, it closes at 9pm, and is never audible to us anyway).

But if you did feel tempted to venture further afield, all of Val’s free bus services stop just outside, the village centre is but one stop, or you can walk across the nursery slopes in less than ten minutes.