Mijoux France

Exploring Les Haut Jura, France

December 18-20, 2011

For our Christmas break, we went in search of wintery weather and snow.  Our friends in Switzerland - bless their hearts - said we could come and discover how the Swiss live and even accompany them to the great ski area they've picked for this winter.  We couldn't pass this up! 
So we set off to Geneva.  Getting to the Gatwick airport was the first challenge.  It's almost an hour on the train to get there.  We left our house at 2:30 pm to get to Gatwick about 4:00 pm for our 6pm flight!! Although seamless, it was time consuming!
Landing in Switzerland, the kids commented that the voyage getting to Gatwick was longer than the airtime to Geneva!  Indeed it was!  The flight is only about 1.5 hours long.
For our first few days, we decided to explore the area of France outside of Geneva....

Arrival in Geneva! We picked up a rental car from the "French side" of the airport and saved lots of francs...it's a small corner of the Geneva airport that is actually located in France....Everything is more expensive in Switzerland.

The first night, we stayed at an uber-cheap Residhome "Le Carre D'Or", in France about 10 minutes from the airport.  It was extremely difficult to find.  Truly it was a large vending machine.  We put in a code to gain access to the parking, put in a code to access the lobby, a code to get our key from a lock box, and then a code to enter the building in which our room was located....NEVER once, not even at check out, did we interact with a real person!  However it was just for sleeping, and when we woke up the next morning, this was our view!

We weren't sure if there would be much snow.  We took some snow chains "just in case"....yeah...definitely there was snow, and definitely we needed the snow chains!

The drive into Les Haut Jura Mountains of France

How did we end up in Les Haut Jura??  To be honest, I looked on Google maps for the largest nature area outside of Geneva (we are nature deprived here in London!).  Going into France sounded fun too, and I knew it was more reasonably priced than La Suisse.  I looked into small hotels and saw that the area is a haven for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, and downhill skiing.  Sounded good!  Then I just used websites to find an interesting hotel, and one that could accommodate our family of five (always a challenge as most hotel rooms are for 2 people, so lots of places require us to get THREE rooms - no thank you!).

Downhill skiing...as soon as the kids saw les pistes, it was all over, no way were they going to do anything else.  I was surprised at the fantastic downhill skiing.  Certainly it is not the Alps, but for us Minnesotans, this is all we need.  

Lunch at Mont-Rond

Altitude 1540m

simple rooms but perfect for us

playing games in the lobby

Le Gabelou, where we stayed, is a family run bed and breakfast.  They can accommodate up to 40 people.  But while we were there, there were never more than 2 other groups there.  We had breakfast and dinner included in our stay and dined family style, home-cooked meals prepared by lovely Elodie.

The village, Mijoux, was adorable, and we learned that there are only about 100 full-time residents.  The tourist office told me we were the only Americans they'd seen in over a year.  I love that we were off the beaten path!!

le petit dejeuner

We celebrated Jonah's birthday in Mijoux.  Jonah celebrated by attempting to ski off the run...crashing and losing both his skis which took over an hour of digging to recover

View from the slopes

playing in the snow across from the hotel

Jonah received a Blackberry for his birthday

chatting in the lobby with an adorable Parisian family who were there (the woman had come to Mijoux as a child for vacations)

Preparing to eat RACLETTE....where you melt raclette cheese in little individual raclette trays which go under the heater, then eat it with potatoes, meats, veggies....YUMMMMMM

I loved this room.  It's essentially a mud room and drying room for ski and outdoor equipment...you can rack your skis against the wall, hang wet items from the lines above

We loved our few days in Les Haut Jura.  We would definitely go back again!!

Cheap vending machine hotel outside of Geneva airport:
http://www.residhome.com/uk/hotel-residence-aparthotel-prevessinmoens-192.html

Fantastic little family run hotel in Mijoux:
www.gabelouhotel.com

Ski rentals:
http://www.sport2000rent.at/en/en/shops/-c616?PHPSESSID=3075a4eaceab6e98e5cea0408c79ad7d

The Mont Jura mountain area info:
http://www.monts-jura.com/en/welcome/index.php