With regards to skiing, Val d'Isere surpassed all my expectations.

It's quite clear why Val is ranked amongst the world's top ski resorts year after year, the quality of the lift accessed off-piste is superb; the person or persons responsible for planning Val's lift placement had a lot of heart and soul and obviously love skiing with a deep passion. As well, for two weeks in mid-March the longest lift queue was maybe 5-7 minutes and that was in the obvious places. 80% of the time it was a matter of skiing straight onto the lifts.

I would say that apart from village returns for novice skiers, the skiing is almost perfect for all levels.

Of course, Val is not flawless, it's crazily expensive at times, the drunk (mainly British) kids are an embarrassment and the pose factor in the village is laughably high but for the smart and creative it's easy enough to circumvent these.

If you really like actually skiing and especially if you want to really get into the off-piste, you owe it to yourself to visit Val d'Isere at some stage.