“This is ridiculous!”
Ridiculous was the only word I could find to describe what was happening around me. But it was the best kind of ridiculous.
I was halfway up a French mountain at 3pm, drinking champagne and dancing on a table in my ski boots while snow fell on my beaming face.
I’d been told about the legendary après ski bar La Folie Douce before I arrived in resort. In fact, when Brendan chose our ski holiday destination, his major deciding factor in picking Val d’Isère was this very bar.
But nothing prepared me for how much fun it would be, and how totally crazy the whole thing was.
I’ll try to describe it for you.
La Folie Douce is located in the middle of nowhere – basically, a hut on the side of a snow-covered mountain. You have to ski (down a particularly mogully and horrible part of a ‘green’ run, I might add) to reach it. Things kick off at about 2:30pm, so you can get a decent day of skiing in before you arrive.
Once there, you dump your skis somewhere out the front and push through the crowds in the hope of finding a table (AKA dance floor). If you arrive too late, just find any patch of space, preferably close to the front, order an overpriced drink and wait for the craziness to begin.
image source: La Folie Douce Facebook page
They call it a cabaret, but it’s really just a dance party led by an eclectic crew of singers, musicians, dancers and DJs. They’re everywhere: on the tables, on the roof, and right next to you in the thick of things.
The music is mostly cheesy Europop, with a sprinkling of remixed power ballads…basically, feel good singalong tunes. And sing along you must.
Don’t be shy about clambering up onto a table to boogie – sure, it’s tricky in your ski boots, but you don’t actually have to move a lot. Just don’t try to fit more than four onto a table, or a stern looking security dude will come and tell you off.
image source: La Folie Douce Facebook page
Occasionally, red smoke will billow from the La Folie Douce sign, champagne will be sprayed into the crowd (what a WASTE) or transported in a glass cage over your head to the VIP area, but in general, it’s just a lot of bad dancing and decadent silliness.
image source: La Folie Douce Facebook page
And that’s pretty much it. At 5pm, after everyone has belted out the Folie Douce ‘it’s time to say goodbye’ song (guaranteed to stick in your head for at least a week), the crowd tries to remember where they left their skis and attempts to get down the mountain in one piece.
Thankfully, there’s a gondola for those (like me) who don’t even want to ski all the way down before champagne – but be warned – the queue is rowdy to the point of being annoying, and trying to get a bus home at the bottom of the mountain may put you in a very bad mood.
Still, it’ll probably go down as one of the most fun afternoons of my life, so I could deal with a few drunk seasonnaires at the end of the day.
The best part about this whole afternoon of mountain shenanigans? We were back at our chalet by 6:30pm, ready to go out for dinner. It’s ideal (especially if you’re old, like me).
Just to give you a bit more of an idea, because photos really don’t do it justice, here’s a very short, clearly not professionally-edited video I made while I was there:
Have you been to La Folie Douce? Did you love it as much as I did?
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Looks like fun! It’s a good incentive to get my non-skiing friends out on the slopes!
As an unenthusiastic skier I can confirm it’s a great way to get skeptics out on the mountain :-)
This sounds like a ridiculous amount of afternoon fun!
Honestly, you’d love it. It’s amazing!