We’re spending three months in Barcelona with a few mini trips squeezed in! You can see our Barcelona posts here, Paris posts here, and soon we’ll have a few more Chamonix posts.
We don’t stay at hotels often, but let me tell you about this one that has now ruined us on all others.
After our visit to Paris, our original plans were to take a train to Berlin or Amsterdam. Unfortunately, those plans were quickly squashed when we realized that it was nearly impossible to get last minute trains for some legs of those journeys.
Being the lazy planners that we are, there was nothing to do but pivot and come up with a different itinerary. In the end we settled on a trip to Chamonix. It turned out to be the perfect decision, but more on that in a future post.
Rocky Pop Hotel!
With our destination finalized, we booked four nights at the RockyPop hotel, and I’m really so glad that we did! This is a hotel that’s built for fun and hanging out with family and friends.
There are games everywhere you look, from foosball and pool to table tennis and a giant connect 4… and two free video game machines in the lobby/bar with 100s of games!
There are certain times when traveling that we open the floodgates and let everyone indulge. This was one of those times. The boys wanted to play video games first thing in the morning, in the afternoons when we returned from hiking, and in the evenings before bed. We didn’t stop them, and it made for such an enjoyable stay for all of us!
Ok, it wasn’t just the video games that won us over. The small rooms for four were designed in such a fun way! Granted, there isn’t much space for just hanging out in your room, but that’s what all of the awesome public spaces are for.
Then there were the refreshments; espressos machines and carbonated water on tap were available 24/7 in the lobby. I enjoyed the happy hour specials, and a few times we snacked on fries while staving off those pre-dinner hanger (not hunger) pains.
Fall in Chamonix
What else? RockyPop isn’t located in the village of Chamonix. It’s about three miles away in Les Houches. We had a car for this leg of our journey, so it was easy to drive back and fourth, but from what I understand, you can also access the buses for free.
Our visit was in mid-September, which I would think is the off-season for this region. Winter has skiers, summer has mountain biking and hiking, so we expected things to be quiet. We definitely got what we considered to be an off-season rate, coming in at less than $100 per night. That said, the hotel was hopping! It definitely made for a more enjoyable stay as we’d be hanging out in the lobby and seeing backpackers, families, and tour groups, coming back from the day’s adventures.
What did we get up to during our time in the mountains? I’ll get to that in a future post!