Review of Vars

7th March 2013 by AngieJc 

We visited Vars for the first time in January 2013 and have now fallen in love with it. It has lots of great red runs to choose from which was great for us. It has a couple of black but they really were no more difficult than some of the reds. It is intermediate heaven. That said, it does have some good beginner areas and blue runs back down to the village too. Some of the lifts are ready to be replaced, it’s true, but the lift system is better than this site’s review suggests. There are one or two tricky drag lifts around but you don’t have to use them to get about.

Our favourite area was Le Peynier on the opposite side of the village that is one of the links to St Marie; it has a great restaurant at the top and the black (which is red really) was skied by us over and over, the lift was a bit slow to the top but worth it. All the lifts from Les Claux and St Marie to the main ski areas where good and fast, and there is a fast gondola too. We did spend a day in Risoul but decided Vars was the better resort for us. The links to and from are fairly good too, although I would try and avoid the TS Mayt lift on a very cold day as it’s quite exposed and a bit long and slow. At the St Marie end of that area (opposite the Rochette and Peynier drags, yes the only way back to the Peynier area) is a fantastic restaurant, Le Mayt, and the food is top notch, not cheap but not hugely expensive and fantastic. We took our skis off and walked to the main TS St Marie after eating here (5 mins).

Vars is well served by plenty of excellent mountainside restaurants, as are the villages by small bars and eateries. We stayed in Hotel Les Escondus, which was ski in/ski out with newly refurbished rooms, a lively bar with live music on a couple of nights a week, and good food. We did think the bar might be a noise problem but it turned out not to be at all.

We will definitely come back next year and perhaps stay in the cosy St Marie village simply because we like cosy, but Les Claux is up there with our favourite places to be. It is a little gem and not hugely frequented by Brits because of its distance from Grenoble (3 hours). Heaven, right there in a ski resort.

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