Advertisement
Published: December 27th 2012
Edit Blog Post
We had finally got our chalet looking spick and span when I turned to see Viv waving out the window with a big smile on her face saying through her teeth ‘shit, they’re here’! I said, ‘Viv, the window’s open’.
I went down to greet our guests; three of them had driven themselves and the others would be arriving later. They seemed nice but slightly intimidating given that they had stayed in the chalet every year for the past ten winters. We knew that their expectations would be high and were already nervous for the evening meal. Luckily, we had had time to prepare before they came and also our chalet manager, Jim, was helping us so the service went smoothly.
The next day wasn’t quite the same; we had a lot of work to do in the morning but were desperate to get out so did it as quickly as we could. We were so excited to get on the slopes and were having a great time until we were half way up a chairlift and Viv realised that she had left some pastry cooking in the oven. We quickly skied back to the chalet to rescue the
pastries. Thankfully the guests had taken them out for us although we were slightly embarrassed of this.
We got back to the chalet in the evening and managed to get our starter out with no hiccups however the main was a lot trickier. The hard part is getting the food out before it goes cold but also serving up sixteen plates in a presentable way. All our slices of beef were completely uneven and at one point Viv was snipping bits of some and creating plates of off cuts to take out to the guests. I had gotten to the point where I could do nothing but laugh hysterically about this. Somehow we made it through the meal and then rest of the nights went fairly well with just a slight wait in between the courses. I knew that the chalet work was going to be hard but the first week was so much tougher than I anticipated; I was so grateful that Viv was with me so that I wasn’t panicking alone.
We didn’t manage to get anymore skiing in until our day off when we had a first blissful lie in and woke up to fresh
powder and sunshine. We were so excited to get out but it wasn’t an ideal start to the day when we realised that we had lost our room key and spent about an hour and a half searching for it. We eventually met up with the rest of the team and had an amazing time skiing in Alpe d’Huez and Vaujany. It was an incredible day and felt fantastic to finally be out in the fresh air having a good time and not worrying about getting back for dinner service. I finally felt like I was getting back into the swing of skiing with lots of helpful tips from the others. However at the end of the day I did get a bit tired and was flying round a corner not really bothering to turn when I hit some fresh powder and landed face first into the snow. I was laughing my head off as Viv came flying towards me, swearing and slumping down next to me, this was when we realised that one of our guests was stood right next to us trying to retrieve my skis for me.
It was back to work the next day and
all of a sudden it was the guests last night; the week had gone so quickly. After serving up our last meal the guests gave a little speech to thank us which made all the hard work seem worth it. They also gave us the nickname Villen which we absolutely LOVE. Unfortunately, far too soon, transfer day came around, which meant getting up at 4.15am trudging up the hill to our chalet and beginning to cook breakfast for our guests. After seeing off all our guests and receiving a tip of £190 from then (!) we set about cleaning the entire chalet for the next group. It was a horrible day of scrubbing, cooking, mopping and moaning. I was so shattered but we didn’t leave for home until 10.30pm that night. I was exhausted to the point of feeling ill; full of cold, aching and skin tingling all over I crawled into bed ready to get up at 6.00am the following day. It was not an easy day but they say it gets better..... The first week was a rollercoaster of highs and lows; the lows were the 6am starts and sometimes midnight finishes but then there’s the highs that
come just in time- skiing, appreciation and tips.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0514s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb