Chalet Hotel les Chardons

Chalet Hotel les Chardons Highlights

• Bright and comfortable chalet hotel in the best location in Val d’Isère, right by the church
• Head Chef Murray cooking what many consider the best food in the resort
• Famously charming team of staff
• Ideal for big birthday groups, small parties, couples, singles – everybody, in other words
• Bedrooms ranging from simple to very comfortable, mostly en-suite
• Eleven single rooms at unusually reasonable prices
• Charming dining room
• Large sitting room for quiet reading or pre-dinner drinks
• Snug with wide-screen TV with HD Sky and TNT Sports.
• Bootwarmers AND glovewarmers
• Separate ski and snowboard locker

Chalet Hotel les Chardons Description

Chalet Hotel les Chardons is a sweet little family hotel in one of the best positions in Val d’Isère, which we run as a YSE chalet. It is probably the best-loved and fastest re-booked chalet in the whole of Val d’Isère.

Why? Well it’s not the fabric of the building. This is a former 1-star hotel, and is on the basic side. The rooms range from simple to very comfortable, and YSE guests are always delighted to stay in them, but they are not plush. If luxury bathroom fittings or distressed timber wardrobes are important to you, you’d be happier looking at some of our really smart chalets (though YSE and the owners have spent hundreds of hours and many thousands of euros improving it over the summer).

So what is the appeal of Les Chardons? First, it is in just about the best position in Val d’Isère, ten seconds’ walk from the church, at the very heart of Val d’Isère’s quaint and quiet old village, and mere metres from the snow square, nursery slopes, drag lifts, ski schools, bus stops and all the shops. Guests here spend more time skiing, eating and drinking and less time travelling around than anyone else in Val d’Isère.

Secondly, its food is famous. Our top chef Murray leads a team in the professional kitchen, aiming not just to match the food in our smaller chalets, but to surpass it. Eating well may not be your main motivation for coming to Val d’Isère, but breakfast cooked to order before your eyes and fresh cake when you get home are very pleasant. And it’s good to know that dinner in the charming dining room will provide the perfect ending to a day when all has gone well on the slopes, or the antidote to the day when you kept falling over.

Thirdly, Les Chardons seems to generate an atmosphere of benevolent bonhomie. Don’t worry: we’re not going to rope you into pop quizzes or funny hats nights. The ambience depends entirely on you. We have crowds of doctors on conferences discussing cirrhosis while trying to develop it, and families during school holidays amazed to hear their young actually complete a sentence. We have large groups of friends on long dining tables, and honeymoon couples at their own table. We even have couples who come regularly and have their own little table in the sitting room where they can eat in peace and quiet. The smiley young staff are carefully supervised by Murray’s lovely wife Christina.

Fourthly (is that a word?), Les Chardons has fifteen single rooms. As well as having space for 24 guests in pairs or couples, Les Chardons has fifteen rooms for people travelling alone, who are normally faced with the choice of sharing with a stranger or paying a huge amount to keep the other bed empty. The singles actually comprise ten twin and five double rooms, but we treat them as singles because they don’t have the same facilities as the other rooms. Two bedrooms on the first floor and two on the second are at the end of the landing behind a lockable door. Each room has two beds, a shower and a basin, and just shares a separate private wc with the other room. Until this year we have always sold them as suites for four guests, but now each bedroom is available as a really comfortable single in our price grade A+.

Then there are six single rooms with showers and basins, and five just with basins. There is a communal shower and a separate wc on each landing (in addition to the private A+ wc).

During school holidays, or when a single group books the whole chalet, a second person (must be a child during school holidays) can stay in any single room half-price, up to a maximum of five extra people. This applies to the pairs of A+ rooms when both are taken by the same party, though please note that we do not give child discounts in our A+ rooms.

The twin and double bedrooms aren’t huge, but they’re comfortable, with modern bathrooms and good lighting. Some have balconies, and all the rooms’ views range from good to fabulous. If views don’t do it for you, eight bedrooms (2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16 and 17) also have little flat-screen TVs with British Freeview.

Ten rooms have en-suite showers and loos (actually, some of them are baths, but quite short baths, so some people treat them as showers).

Two more bedrooms are in almost fully en-suite pairs, one twin and one double, each room having its own shower-room and basin, but with one loo on the landing between them. To some people it is very important to have their wc in their bathroom. Others however, particularly of the long-suffering wife variety, are quite glad not to! Anyway, for having to share a loo we give the four guests in each of these rooms quite a generous discount.

If you wonder why you’ve never noticed Les Chardons, it is next to the Hôtel Les Cinq Frères (which you’ve probably never noticed either) on that little lane leading from the Tourist Office roundabout to the church. The proper name of this little alley is the Rue Nicolas Bazile, though the locals tend to call it the Montée de l’Église. Very few people and even fewer vehicles use this road, and it really is astonishingly silent. Even the church clock doesn’t chime at night.

We do not run a bar, but guests keep their own drinks in a fridge in the sitting room, and we can buy drinks in for you if you tell us in advance what you’d like. It’s all at supermarket prices and there is no cheaper or more convenient way in the Alps to imbibe.

And there’s the snug, a second sitting area with HD Sky and TNT Sports (formerly BT Sport) for those of you who don’t want to miss Politics Live or the Champions’ League (or TOWIE!).

There’s a ski/snowboard locker and a room containing nothing but boot warmers and glove warmers. If you are accustomed to the pleasure of slipping your feet into warm, dry boots, wait until you put on warm, dry gloves!

Chalet Hotel les Chardons is unique in Val d’Isère: a large chalet for keen skiers who are also keen foodies, and it sells out very quickly.

We think the following, received from one of our guests, describes Les Chardons perfectly:

We have just enjoyed a fantastic week in Les Chardons. This is truly a skiers’ set up, with a great family atmosphere created by Murray and Christina with little Leon, who make it feel like a real home from home. The team spirit is great and we enjoyed getting to know all our staff who looked after us brilliantly and always responded to our endless questions and requests with a smile! We enjoyed the guest appearance from JYS and trading stories of Val d’Isère in the 1970s!, as well as getting to know other guests.

The food was an unexpected surprise – this was not run-of-the-mill skiers’ grub, but creative and delicious home cooking at its best with highlights too many to mention but including the homemade hummus, katsu chicken and tasting menu of puddings.

All this within a few minutes of the main lift and staggering distance from the nightlife – yet with blissfully peaceful bedrooms. What more could real skiers want?!

PARKING

There is no parking available at Les Chardons. If arriving by car, you will be able to stop temporarily to drop bags (preferably leaving someone in the car) and then go and park. Please visit the Val d’Isère car park website for information. The regulations for tyres on vehicles in the French Alps have changed for 1 November – 31 March. If you are driving, please see our Arriving by Car page.