Val d'Isère station de ski & village — Attraction in Albertville

The most wonderful place to ski. I have been going there twice a year for over 20 years! Great lift system and connectivity with Tignes. VD, I would say is a better for beginners than Tignes with two easy to get to beginners areas: the Belvarde and the Solaise. The Solaise being better at the end of the day from the stand point of sun. The Belvarde has a difficult initial descent from the Olympic cable car if you are a beginner with a congested slope with people going in lots of different directions which will freak out someone on their first day. I think there are some steps to avoid this on the LHS but who really wants to do that? This I think is an issue the resort needs to address. Someone mentioned parking I would say parking is probably more available in Tignes particularly Tignes le Brevieres but of course you then have two lifts first thing from there to get to altitude and some dodgy stretches on the way back particularly if you own your skies! If you park under the Maison de Tignes (Tignes Le Lac adjacent to the bus station) you have easy access to the Toviere Gondola lift which takes you straight up (and back avoiding Trolles Black run) to a blue slope access to the Belvarde Ski area in VD. Genepey VD Green and Grand Pre VD Green are cracking beginners runs a good place to initially really let go and feel the speed. A lot of the upper ski areas in VD have awkward ski trails back to the resort level. IMHO not really worth doing at the end of the day when the snow is getting firm and the legs are getting weak much better to take a comfy lift back down and save the legs for the next day! It is also a great opportunity to watch people making their often uncomfortable descent. The Folie Douce (check it out on the web) is a must visit place at the end of a sunny day if only to observe, unless you are well minted. Both Tignes and VD have a good free bus service to get you around the various bottom lifts. Great off piste: Pays Desert, Route of Col Pers and stuff from the top of the Borsat Express lift down into Tignes and around the top of the Panoramic Restaurant in Tignes to name a few. I could go on but finally there is mountain biking in the summer with use of the lifts! Take spare brake pads they...

We had a ski pass from Tignes that also covered Val d'Isere so we were able to spend a few days here. You can freely get from one resort to the other on the piste, just keep an eye out for the signs. Aside from the main area, there are a few base areas in Val d'Isere that has lifts that take you to the pistes including Daille and Fornet. It has really nice pistes as well as lifts and gondolas. The area is really large and the top of some of the lifts such as Grand Prix, have really impressive scenery. The Pisaillas Glacier is on the far end by Fornet and has quite a nice area for snowboarding. Getting back to the main area from the glacier was a bit of a mission involving multiple lifts but it was enjoyable to go down. There are plenty of restaurants near most of the lifts to rest. You should visit La Folie Douce on top of the Daille Gondola particularly if you like to party. It is also a nice place to stop for food (with a range of different price options). The main town also has plenty of food options if you were wanting to take a look around. If you did miss the last lift back to Tignes there is a bus that runs late in...

The ski area is very nice, but unfortunately the atmosphere sometimes suffers from it's touristic popularity (too much unfriendly personnel to blame it solely to those individuals). Some slopes are not very snowboard friendly, especially if you're not familiar with them (uphill slopes behind slow-down warning signs). Also the connecting lift towards Tignes is often closed and the free skibus to Tignes doesn't have convenient operating hours. "Luckily" paying busses also stop at the skibus stops, which makes it feel like the ski pass has hidden fees and the connected areas aren't as much connected as advertised; I actually lost a part of my binding because those busses aren't equipped to transport ski gear and all gear gets thrown on top of each other in one compartment. I would recommend the mountains and area itself but there are a lot of other areas which have a much more...