Forget about fancy ladies in raunchy fur coats and 1980s Bond movies, here comes Tignes! Which “Tignes”, first and foremost? Yes because, imagine this: the original petit village, in the folding of a charming green valley, was simply & forcefully evacuated in 1952 and then flooded, together with a big chunk of the same valley, to build a “lake”, the local tourism board will say, an hydroelectric basin, I will specify. But why a mini-Hoover dam in the middle of the mountains? Because there was going to be the need for a A_LOT of electric power. In fact after destroying the past the French Fries went on building the future: one of the most impressive ski resort there is, the so called “Espace Killy”, which is the joint of Tignes and Val D’Isere. PLENTY of skilifts, chairlifts, areoskis, underground train reaching mountain’s top and much, much more! PLENTY. Well, what’s the problem, then?! Ah, you felt it already, that there WAS going to be a problem. It’s blatantly simple: all this stuff costs an enormous, indecent amount of money. Think of building and maintaining heavy structures, massive structures, at 2500 mt. of altitude and for 6 months per year below zero C! That’s a lot of argent, too beaucoup, we might think. But, nope, the whole operation is structured for it: the place has plenty of pistes, plenty of uphill transport, what you need now is plenty of people to pay plenty of tickets, the infamous “skipass”. So you haul them here with cars, planes and traines (don’t take my word, check it out by yourself! http://www.eurostar.com/UK/uk/leisure/destinations/direct_services/ski_train.jsp) and where do you store them? Because it’s storage we’re talking about, here. Not “lodging”, nuh-uh, I told you on the first line: forget about those fancy movies. In stead of a small village at the bottom of the valley les Frogs have built A BUNCH of “resorts” (more on that later), most of them above 2000 mts, all of them with the same structure: huge condos (6 floors are pretty usual, usually multiplied by 4 or more times), stuck together around the beginning of the pistes, a bunch of shops selling all the same things (same ski, same boots, same jackets, same food, same postcards) and a few discos, bars, “cafe'” with one or two upscale hotels-cum-restaurant-cum-spa. I guess the total capacity of the resort I was in (Tignes La Val Claret) could have reached easily the 5,000 people, but for the 2010 Last of the Year party 25,000 people gather to dance on the snow at 2100 mt. with David Guetta deejaying. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s NOT my kind of fun. Sounds more like the rightful punishments for all my numerous sins. But that’s what the whole place is good at, and it works like a well oiled clock! In the Easter week we paid EUR 429 for accommodation and skipass (two adults, 6 nights sleeping and 6 days skiing), now beat that! No wonder that Tignes is, yes, the paradise of young skier who want to have some fun on budget but also of the cheapos par excellence: the Brits. Remember the “famous” food critic? “The portions were huge!”, well we’re in the same scenario here: forget about the quality, the portions are huge, what the heck would you like more? I have one word for that: TREES. I will articulate just a little more: LESS people, MORE trees. That’s a “resort” of my liking and that’s where I’m going next year with my beautiful snow queen. All the same, thank you Tignes for the good time, I skied a lot and that’s what we were there for, ate out only once and I am glad of it, and if we turn our head towards the right direction we could still imagine how beautiful the place must once have been.