I remember the moment when the penny dropped: we really were never going to be able to do Méribel on a budget. I had naively assumed that when a menu listed a cheese fondue at 30 Euros, that this included ALL the cheese and ALL the bread. More fool I. Of course, this was the price per head. And what I thought was going to be a 50 Euro family lunch for four on the slopes ended up at three times that amount. This was a few years ago and, inflation being what it is, you can now pay as much as 85 Euros a pop in one of the resort’s swisher establishments.
I have learned since then that the knack with Méribel is to let the expense go hang. Just inhale the sheer exhilarating beauty of a winter destination that has, aesthetically and architecturally, never strayed off piste from its Alpine beginnings as a traditional high pasture hamlet of wood, slate and stone. That unsullied chalet look is still enforced by a strict building code drawn up more than 70 years ago that has kept concrete and ugliness completely at bay.
