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Regions of France

The Alps

The roof of Europe, the biggest ski domain on earth — and refuges where the bread still bakes at dawn.

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The region

Everyone comes for the snow. The mountain keeps its best for the few who ask.

You can buy a lift pass anywhere. You cannot buy the run a guide has been saving all week, the palace suite the concierge holds back, or the three-star table that was full a month ago. Above 2,000 metres the Alps stop being a resort and start being a private country — and we know the guides, the chefs and the pilots who hand you the keys.

4,808 m — the roof of EuropeChamonix, 1924 — the first Winter Olympics600 km — Les Trois Vallées15 AOP mountain cheeses
The red Chamonix cable car against the Mont Blanc glaciers
Two centuries — measured in altitude

History that climbs.

Mont Blanc was first climbed in 1786, back when "impossible" was the official word for it. Chamonix hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924. In between, one valley taught the world what mountains are for.

We walk it with the people who live it — a dawn ride up the Aiguille du Midi before the queues, a refuge guardian who bakes at 2,400 metres, guides whose family names are carved on the valley's monuments.

A fondue set on a warmly lit chalet table
Cream, fire, and no apology

The mountain table.

You don't eat at altitude. You earn it.

Melted cheese lifted from a fondue pot

The melted & the shared

Fondue savoyarde
Three cheeses, one pot — no shortcuts tolerated.
Raclette
Scraped from the wheel, never served from a tray.
The caquelon rule
Lose your bread in the pot, you buy the next bottle.
Tomme wheels ageing on wooden cellar shelves

The cellar at altitude

Beaufort d'alpage
The prince of Gruyères — copper vats, summer pastures only.
Tomme de Savoie
The farmer's cheese, grey rind and honest.
Reblochon fermier
Born of a second, secret milking — hidden from the taxman.
A baked cheese in its wooden box with bread

The hearty & the honest

Tartiflette
Reblochon, lardons, onions — a dish invented to be finished.
Mont d'Or au four
Baked in its own spruce box, eaten with a spoon.
Crozets
The buckwheat pasta the valleys kept to themselves.
Hands cradling a glass of vin chaud with orange and spices

The warm & the wild

Vin chaud
Après-ski done properly — by the fire, not the DJ.
Génépi
The herb picked above 2,000 metres, distilled below.
Miel de montagne
Honey that follows the herds up in summer.
Alpenglow on snowbound peaks above a sea of clouds
Every Alps we design is different

No two of our journeys are the same. Tell us yours.

Speak to Marie
A farm chalet at night in deep snow, lantern glowing
The high valleys, after dark

Snow falls. The lights hold.

A farm-chalet at 1,800 metres, bread in the oven, snow to the window sills — the Alps the lift queues never see.

A sketch of what we\'d build you

Journeys we've made here.

Six we've designed here. Open one to see how it goes.

A skier throwing powder beneath a craggy face
A father & son
First tracks, before the lifts wake
See the journey
An ibex resting on rocks with the Chamonix aiguilles behind
A quiet encounter
The ibex that didn't move
See the journey
A wildflower meadow beneath layered alpine peaks
A summer return
The meadow above the world
See the journey
A glacial lake beneath a hanging glacier in the French Alps
A day on foot
The lake the glacier left behind
See the journey
The red Chamonix cable car against snow-plastered crags
A proposal
The cabin above the clouds
See the journey
A mountain-restaurant terrace above a vast blue valley
A long lunch
Lunch at two thousand metres
See the journey
0104
Marie Tesson, founder
A travel house — not a tourism office

Why us.

A tourism office hands you a map. We hand you to the people who are the Alps — the guide whose grandfather cut the first routes, the refuge guardian at 2,400 metres, the fromager whose Beaufort never leaves the valley. Twenty-five years of friendships open doors no brochure can.

iTwenty-five years of real relationshipsNot suppliers on a commission — friends who open their own doors.
iiAround fifty journeys a year, never off-the-shelfEach built from nothing. We turn most inquiries away.
iiiMarie reads every inquiry herselfA real conversation, and a reply within two days — or nothing at all.
Start a conversation
Begin here

Tell us the Alps you want to feel.

First tracks at dawn, a refuge dinner at altitude, a Beaufort cellar older than the lifts.

Marie reads every inquiry herself and writes back within two days.

No itinerary · No brochure · A real conversation
Write to Marie