Courchevel

Courchevel is what the Alps look like when the Alps decide to dress for it. The 1850 village sits at the top of the world's largest linked ski area, and the line of ski-in-ski-out chalets above the Bellecôte run is a list of names you'd recognise from somewhere else. The Michelin density is real — La Saulire, Le 1947, Le Strato — and the boutiques are the same ones you'd avoid on Bond Street, only here you avoid them in salopettes.

We fly here because Courchevel is the only resort that doesn't pretend it's anything other than what it is. Because there are weekends for restraint and weekends for the opposite, and the second kind deserves an honest setting. Because the most beautiful run in the Alps starts forty-five minutes from the runway.