Tignes in Spring

The thoughts of the French Alps in May was rather idyllic-- cool mountain streams, some snow at the highest elevations, but ability to walk near meadows awakening from the dead of winter. Wrong, dead wrong! We were coming from Switzerland and had difficulty getting there since Le Petite Col Du St. Bernard was closed. Only option was the long way around. OK, fine. We arrived in the evening on May 17th this year, only to find that the entire town was close. No restaurant to eat a meal. Seems that this happens during shoulder season. They shut down virtually the whole town and reopen it around June 21st. So, we went back to the room, scrounged some cookies/crackers from amongst our belongings and also found a few tea bags we had carried along and made some. That was dinner! As if that wasn't bad enough, the rooms (size of a small European hotel room) were awful-- badly in need of renovation, but still serviceable. Nothing charming to them-- our college dorm rooms had more charm and were larger than these. So we decided then and there to pack up the next morning and leave. I was truly devastated, but to drive clear down to Bourg St. Maurice and back on those roads (narrow with many potholes) and with inclement weather (rainy) in a hard mountain area seemed out of the question. We spent 3 nights in Annecy and 3 nights near Belfort en lieu of continuing in a dismal area. Moral of this story: if you are not there for skiing during skiing season, you are headed for disaster. Don't know what summer would be like, but if considering it, I would check it out thorughly before considering. Shoulder season, especially mid-May when we went-- just forget it, unless you plan on hauling up all your own food, having plenty of books to read and don't mind being holed up in the middle of nowhere with nothing else to do and ugly ski runs in disuse to look at!