It seemed apt...

...to start our new life as husband and wife on a snowboarding holiday. Why? Well, because that's how we first met! So there were 23 other people on the trip as well (although we only knew two!) and that made a quite crowded post-registration honeymoon.

Our day started our bleary-eyed, after waking up at about 330am for a cab to Stansted together with Ray-man and Mega-man (Mega-man is a lady by the way, there's a reason why we call her this) who kindly allowed us to sleepover at theirs the night before. Once we checked in and dropped out bags, we headed for a fortifying breakfast.

Bacon and cheese roll, anyone?

Once we touched down at Grenoble, we had to wait another 3 hours before we could take the bus transfer to UCPA Les Deux Alpes. Why? Because the other two flights were delayed! Grenoble has one of the worst arrival hall conditions - cold, disgusting toilets, ugh. Anyway, when we finally got all 25 people together, we boarded a bus all to ourselves!

Our new friends.

Our holiday was full-board i.e. food was provided, so there was no real reason to hunt out good restaurants in Les Deux Alpes. Having said that, there are just some food you must partake off, whether necessary or not, and in this case, delicious CREPES!! The name of the restaurant, in case you ever venture there, is called Crepes A-GO-GO. Dodgy name, but the best Tartiflette I've ever had.

Festive decorations outside Crepes A-GO-GO.

Chocolate Banana Crepe on our first day.

Sugar, Butter and Cinnamon Crepe on our last day.

Rayman and Megaman enjoying Viennese Chocolate and Tartiflette.

UCPA has always been sparse but functional and clean; this was no exception. Four of us shared two bunk beds and a shower but had to be content with using the communal toilets.

Lounging around before dinner time! This quickly turned into serious card games of Bridge and Chor-Tai-Di.

Our next few days were glorious ones, boarding down the slopes and enjoying the mountains! We had half day lessons which were tiring and the other half of the day, we spent time exploring the different Greens, Blues and Reds (Rayman and Megaman explored some Black slopes too!). You will be happy to hear that I no longer crash like I used to and flats no longer frighten the heck out of me (well, maybe a little). However, there's still a lot to learn!

The piste map. Weirdly, the kiddy Green slopes close to the bottom are interspersed with treacherous Black ones. Talk about extremes!

Look at the background!!! Amazing views.

Megaman breaking Rayman's stranglehold.

Posing with our boards. I changed the angle of my bindings to 15 degrees (left) and 9 degrees (right). It took a bit of getting used to!

*Chiu* *Chiu* Megaman in destruction mode.

Megaman, Rayman, 2 Ninjas and Mingman.

Boarding 24-7 meant that our unfit bodies were screaming with agony by the end of Day 2. I had trouble looking left as the right side of my neck was sore. At one point on Day 6, I thought my left leg was just going to give way and I wouldn't be able to even walk! Perhaps some training beforehand would have been the smart thing to do. Ouch!

Besides snowboarding, we had a lot of food during lunch and dinner, buffet-style! Here are some snapshots I managed to take while wolfing down insane amounts of food.

The "Smiley" -

Rum and Raisin, Strawberry, Waffle drizzled with chocolate sauce and almond flakes.

The "Death by Choc" -

Chocolate Ice-Cream and Chocolate Sauce on a bed of waffle and almond flakes.

Fish fingers, chocolate brownie (mixing dessert with mains!), crepes with cheese filling.

As you can see, dessert was the main feature for me!

Mmmmm....I'm not surprised I put on 1kg when I got back despite all the snowboarding.

On one of the nights, we managed to drag ourselves out of UCPA for a spot of ice-skating. Not sure what ice-skating does to tired out snowboarding muscles but it sure was fun. Another night activity we quite fancied but decided against was night-boarding. Some of the Green slopes were lighted up at night and you could board for free, unfortunately, it's a lot colder AND icier at night as well.

Rayman's expression caught on film as a passer-by flounders around.

Faster than the speed of light!

Most nights, we were much too tired to join in the shenanigans of the "young" people outside our room. Some of them were partying till 2am in the morning, making lots of noise (screaming, singing, puking, the works). We usually played Bridge faithfully every night before bedtime! I know, I'm an old fart but I'm proud of it! Give me my sleep!

On our last day, the slopes were extremely icy as there hasn't been any snow during the week. Still defiant, we strapped on our boots and boards and boarded (very carefully) down. Oh, one thing pretty annoying about Les Deux Alpes is the fact that you sometimes need to take a bus or walk across town to get to certain chair lifts. Connections were pretty poor!

No idea what that was!

Icy, icy, icy!

A pair of lovely St Bernards (*correction, refer to comments posted below). Not related to snowboarding but hey I saw them when I was wandering around town.

Can't wait to go snowboarding again, probably earliest in 2012. My Husband (how strange is that?) has some great video footage of the Border Cross and natural half-pipe that we all attempted (well, I did the Crawl of Shame one too many times if you ask me!) and I'll update them on the blog when he's done the editing.

Tired but happy! Looking forward to more boarding in the near future.