Les Deux Alpes family holidays and breaks

Together with Alpe d'Huez known as the Grandes Alpes, Les Deux Alpes offers plenty of easy and intermediate terrain over 225km of piste. As a place for family holidays, it has its drawbacks – mainly that while there are some very gentle nursery slopes below, the ski-school meeting place is a gondola ride up at the Crêtes area, and there’s morning mayhem as you try to get the kids there on time. Then the easiest lifts are chocka for most of the day, and there’s only one easy run back to town – a snaking path that’s like the M25 at rush hour. You can head all the way up to the glacier, but it gets crowded, and the skiing back down is narrow and busy. But if you can deal with these drawbacks, you will have fun: there’s lots of good off-piste, especially the runs down to La Grave off the back of the glacier. A real town, Les Deux Alpes is also France's second-oldest ski resort.

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Flying Time	2 hours
Timezone	GMT +1

What to do

Take youngsters to the easy and readily accessible Pied Moutet area. There's also a crèche, a kindergarten and a children's ski school (ESF). Note that a 6+days ski pass includes 2 days in Alpe d'Huez and one in Serre Chevalier in the Hautes Alpes.

Head for the freestyle snowpark, one of Europe's biggest and best, with beginners', intermediate and advanced areas, new features added every season and plenty of competitions.

Enjoy the good toboganning terrain, the ice-rink, the kids’ quad bikes, the indoor pool and the bowling alley.

Visit the pretty village of Venosc, accessible by gondola.

Take a scenic helicopter ride to Alpe d'Huez.

Where to stay

Accommodation in Les Deux Alpes is never too far from a lift. We particularly recommend Club Med's Les Deux Alpes resort.

When

The ski season in Isère lasts from December to April. However, Les Deux Alpes is one of the last resorts where you can ski in summer, on Europe's biggest skiable glacier (lifts open mid-June to end of August and some dates in October in addition to the main ski season).

How

Les Deux Alpes is just over 1hr by shuttle bus from Grenoble; Grenoble Isère airport is served by budget airline from London Stansted and Dublin throughout the year, and in the skiing season by budget and and other airlines from a variety of UK airports. The area is also within easy reach of Lyon international airport and Geneva in Switzerland. See our flight deals page.
For more eco-friendly family holidays, there are frequent TGV trains to Grenoble from Paris (3hrs), in turn accessed by Eurostar from London.

It’s a 8hr 45min (940km) drive to Les Deux Alpes from the Channel ferry/Eurotunnel terminus at Calais, almost entirely by motorway.

Eat

Les Deux Alpes is excellent for eating out on family holidays, with several good-value creperies among its 50-or-so restaurants. L'Etable is particularly recommended for its pizzas. The mountain restaurants are rather run-of-the-mill. For more on eating in the region, see our French Alps destination guide.