We took a flight from London to Geneva and from Genava Airport, and upon our arrival, a bus service (advanced online purchase) by the company AlpyBus.com picked us up and brought us to Chamonix town and dropped us to our accommodation.

We stayed at a lodge called Chalet Inora (a very cosy gingerbread-ish type of house), and arrived pretty late in the afternoon. Like in most temperate climate countries, it gets dark early during winter, so couldn't go anywhere that night (though there was an attempt at going into the town but failed because we got lost and it was freezing cold outside!). So we just stayed in that night, cooked ourselves some simple dinner and planned for tomorrow's activities.

Our little lodge: Chalet Inora (and Fizal posing, hehe)

Magnificent mountain view from the window of our lodge.

So the next morning, we went to explore an ice grotto (ice cave) at Mer de Glace (The Mer de Glace is the largest glacier in France - 7km long and 200m deep). To reach the glacier, we took the Montenvers Train from the town, and it took us to see spectacular views of Chamonix Valley along the way. There was then a cable car at the train station where the train terminates, which descended us from the train station to the glacier and ice grottos.

Montenvers Train Station in Chamonix town.

Beautiful view surrounding the glacier. 

The grottos. 

They've decorated the inside of the ice cave with colored lights to highlights the many carving that were done using ice. Now that's ice sculptures!



It's just so cool!

 It was indeed an amazing experience to be able to see an ice cave for myself, for I have been wanting to do so for a very long time! Tick bucket list for this one! :)

We then went around Chamonix town. Chanomix is a small ski town, which I find very lively because everywhere you go, you'll see people walking around in the ski boots (though it hurts to walk around in ski boots!). The town has frequent bus services for you to get around town especially if you're going to other ski areas that requires bus rides. The surrounding landscape is just spectacular offering snow-capped mountain views and sky filled with parachutes and paragliders (which, you won't be seeing in any of my photos because I just don't have such powerful camera. haha).

Cute little wooden chalet.


Doesn't that just look like a Gingerbread House? hehe




So the next day was programmed for some skiing! There are several ski areas/ski pass to choose from, from beginners areas to advanced skiers. Ski pass can be bought online here.

Being the beginner that we are, we weren't aware of the ski area that we went to were not for first-timers like us. But because it was the closest to our lodge, we chose to go to Brevent-Flégère ski area. It is considered as the 'gentle slope' for beginner skiers, (but little did we know that there was such area as the nursery slope area! - for first time skiers. haha), since we've never skied before, the first moments were a hell lot of fuss. I think I spent my first 20 minutes struggling to ski down the (not so) gentle slope. Eventually and slowly, after falling a gazillion times, I got the hang of it towards the end of the area. It was a great experience though, despite an unfortunate event that happened that day (we dropped and lost our GoPro 3+ Black while skiing *cries a river*). Luck were not on our side as we tried searching for it but couldn't find it. It was the fact that we had already taken so many beautiful shots and videos of the mountain and our first skiing experience and didn't get to keep them, and I kept praying that someone would contact us to at least let us have our photos, and you can take the GoPro man. After taking a few photos using our phones, we went back down feeling frustrated, devastated, angry and upset.

But lets not make that one unfortunate event ruin my perception about this trip, which I still find exciting, experience-wise. :)


This is the map of Chamonix Valley overall ski areas from Chamonix Le Pass - in green (access to all main ski areas and nursery slopes) to Mont Blanc Unlimited - in red (advance skier slope areas - up to Aiguille du Midi).


At the Brevent-Flégère ski lift point. The cable car that took us up to the ski area offered some breathtaking, albeit steep mountain views, and I'm afraid of heights so my feet were a little bit wobbly just staring down at the little trees beneath us.




Since we lost our GoPro camera and the photos and videos that went with it, we had no other photos of us skiing. We were actually in no mood to hang around anymore but we just had to take a couple more shots at the ski area for memories...




The surrounding view was super amazing SubhanAllah.


In our ski boots! hehe

And that was the end of our skiing activity. Was a lot of fun though I wish we had went to the beginners areas (Le Savoy and Les Planards) it would've been much easier for us to learn how to ski. haha.

And that was all for our Chamonix adventure... Until my next 'Travel Tales'.