Hotel Amelie, Brides Les Bains, France

Myself and a friend stayed for a week at this hotel earlier this year. All I can say is that the staff were wonderful, warm and welcoming. The rooms were clean and tastefully furnished. We stayed half board, and breakfast and evening meals were excellent. The owner of the Hotel arranged a wonderful special 5 course new year meal and band in the bar. A very nice hotel, highly recommended. I would not hesitate to stay at this Hotel again. It is also very close to the ski lifts, shops and the local spa : )

Gerald

Hotel Amelie is possibly the best bargain in the alps with great, spacious rooms, good facilities and food and access to the world's largest ski area. However, Brides Les Bains is not everyone's cup of tea being a small working French town/village with rudimentary leisure facilities and not a great deal of bon-homie. It does however have a nice gritty French cafe feel to it and its couple of bars are reasonable if a bit quiet. The lift up to Meribel was put in for the Olympics some years ago and takes a ludicrous amount of time to rattle you up the hill to Meribel before you can get on a lift which will get you onto the slopes. I timed it at 25+ minutes each way. This wears very thin by the end of the week and I'd not choose Brides again on this point alone. It also restricts your time on the slopes as the lift opens at the same time as the higher resort lifts so no matter how fast you act - you'll never get first tracks on a powder day. You could do a lot worse though and if you just want a quiet week with access to guaranteed snow cover then I'd thoroughly recommend it. The price is a bargain compared to staying in Meribel and Amelie is a superb little hotel.

Apres Ski: 1/5

Iain Greenhalgh