Chamonix Apres Ski Report: 24th December 2010

Holidays are coming! With all the lifts open and town gradually filling up it's starting to feel a lot like Christmas! Good luck to all those travelling and hope they make either home or here.

It's good to see Munster back open and still serving cheap beer, €3.50 a pint every day! Le Vert also got off to a cracking start with Finger Lickin' Records last Thursday night. It proved to be a busy one and there was a fair few of us stumbling home somewhere around 4am!

South bar's opening was also special, a new mixture of French, Scottish and Dutch people behind the bar we soon put them through their paces. The Christmas beer was especially tasty, a few bars round town are serving it, Biere Noël, a sweet tasty dark larger, be careful though it is stronger than usual! South Bar bought with it the first appearance of the Pistey Boys, a combination of some familiar faces from around town, Rich, Chris and Doug. Together they make for some cracking cover tunes. New this week South Bar are also offering cheap drinks with season passes €7.50 pichets and €2 shots, all day every day.

On the cheap drinks front if you plan your crawl around town there are some excellent deals available, La Terrace have been chucking out the jaeger bombs at €2 a pop between 22:15 and 22:30 every day and before that don't forget to hit the legendary Chambre Neuf for their excellent 2 for 1 cocktails between 8pm and 10pm.

The start of this week saw a heavy filled Tuesday night with both the first full moon party at La Cantina and the return of the notorious winter sessions at Le Podium. Winter sessions gave us ‘The Nextmen' headlining and then there was Joe Volpeliere and crew in the back room, it was an excellent night. Time just flew by and I couldn't believe it went the lights come on at 4am and we were being pushed out. They have split the main room this year into three sections, the front for the stage, a middle chill out area and then the bar, this worked really well! I hope you all got in there early and bought the wicked season pass that was on offer, New Year's Eve is fast approaching, featuring Jon Kennedy and the full Winter Sessions crew.

A few other bars had their opening nights this week, although Jerry has hot footed it to the Le Vert this winter O'Byrnes is still operational and opened on Sunday with live music from ‘Forse'. They have some great offers on too with €5 cocktails!

Don't forget you can always start the après up in Argentiere after a day at Grand Montet. The Rusticana is back open now serving some great bar snacks. Make a stop at The Office bar, The Slalom and The Savoy and you will probably find you end up staying quite late. There are a few excellent restaurants as well, with Le Stone bar serving some very tasty pizzas. The buses are running all evening now as well so it is still easy to make it back to Cham.

Rightio off to make some pre-Christmas preparations, vin chaud and mince pies hhhmmmm, merry Christmas everyone!

Don't forget to keep an eye on the What's On Calendar for a full list of events over the winter season. You can also find full Bar and Restaurant listings in the Dining and Going Out section of the site.