Tour
operator -Crystals
Hotel - Sport Village, Soldeu
Week - 29/1/2005 to 5/2/2005
The Journey (transfers) - Accommodation - Restaurants & Bars & Apre stuff - Ski School - Snow conditions - Safety - Shops - Tips
We flew into Toulouse to catch a coach to the resort, in the past this has taken about 4 hours. Not this time !! We arrive on time at Toulouse, only to be told that due to bad weather the airport was exceptionally busy and we would have to wait to disembark. We waited on the tarmac for over an hour, before being bused to the terminal, the one advantage of this is we got to see half of Wallice and Grommet - the curse of the were rabbit.
Once in the airport we waited for a further 4 hours before being told what was going on. Apparently due to heavy snow fall the coaches were having to go the long way round. We boarded our coach expecting an immediate departure, wrong again. We sat and waited for an hour in the car park before the coach driver pulled off. Yeah we were on our way .... nope, we drove round the car park and stopped again. We finally left 10 minutes latter.
Driving down the road we thought we might be on the road for a few hours, wrong again. After 30 minutes the driver pulls over at a petrol station and tells the rep to keep everybody on board.
He returns 5 minutes later, with a large sandwich in hand and preceded to sit and eat it, whilst telling the rep it's not an official stop and no-one can get off. Meanwhile a second coach from the airport has turned up and all of it's passengers have got off and headed for food and toilet break. (Did I forget to mention the toilet on board was locked and we couldn't use it. We later found out the reason for this was, this was where the driver had his bags)
Having had enough
of this nearly the entire coach load gets off and head for the services
and cleans it out of food drinks etc.
Finally we set off again.
To cut a very long story short we were on the coach for 8 hours, stopping twice more for comfort breaks (but no food available at either), also stopping for the driver to fill up with diesel, which was a very unnerving experience as we watched him light his cigarette and preceded to fill up the fuel tank of the coach, with his friend on the mobile phone next too him (smoking too) and us locked in the coach.
We got into Soldeu at just after 2 a.m. which was still better than some poor travelers, who didn't get to the resort until Monday afternoon.
We had booked again into the Sport Village in the centre of Soldeu. With a couple of friends staying in the Sport Hotel. Again the hotel was very good. Breakfasts and evening meals were included in the package and proved to be a very good buffet selection. The only problem we encountered was the lack of hot water on the Sunday morning we left, which appeared to be due to power outages. We'd had a 3-4 powercut on the Saturday night each for a few moments
The new Sport Spa had also opened since our last visit and proved a big success for the tired limbs. Costing about 30 euros for 3 hours
Soldeu is not renowned for it's shopping opportunities, but the ski shops do some good deals and if you are in the sport I think you can get a discount.
As before the ski school was very good, this year we had one total newbie boarder (Lee) who appeared to enjoy himself, as he had progressed to doing jumps by the Thursday. Rob dropped out of ski school on the Tuesday after a bad fall, joining Jon and Jim for some skiing. Private lessons are also a good tip and quite cheap round 30 euros, depending on the time of day etc.
The best we have seen in Andorra, over the past 3 years. Lots of fresh powder at the beginning of the week and the slopes were still in a good stated when we left, with only a few looking worn.
Think Lee enjoyed making snow angels and on more than one occassion was seen heading towards a snow bank (not sure whether to slow down or cool down)
The only downside of the conditions were it brouht out loads of people, with the resort being very busy and some queing for the lifts.
There was a couple of things to say here. Firstly be very, very careful on the skidoo run. We went on one in the afternoon, though trees, narrow tracks and fields. In all it was quite good fun, however, Sharon did have an accident when going up a slope and having to turn. She hit a tree and went flying over the handle bars. (She is ok, but was pretty badly shock up and bruised. I got her checked out at the medical centre just in case. Rob)
The other thing is check your insurance, we've now found out we weren't covered by the winter sport package for skidoos, even though skidoos aren't mentioned in the exceptions clause.
Once again thanks to the medical centre in Soldeu, there staff are great and really friendly.
Restaurants and Bars and Apre Stuff
We made the discovery that, the restaurant just below the gondola at Soldeu, was an excellent place to eat at lunch times last year, so decided that on Saturday we'd have a meal there. (Try their tex mex pizza - Rob )
It's worth noting that there aren't many places on the mountain where you can grab food and then it tends to be fast junk food, fries and the like. Though if you are blessed with good weather the staff at the Espoliets (next to ski school in Soldeu) with do the table dancing routine.
There are a few of bars in the evening, which we found fn , the t-bar, pussy cat, Villagers and the Aspen. The Pussycat had a live band which proved good fun, there's normally one bar in the village with a live band on. Though I don't think Lee ever got to try the skis on the ceiling on the T-bar.
In addition to the visiting of local drinking establishments, we did some skiddo driving and got to have a go at driving a 3 dog, dog sledged team. This proved a good deal harder than we first thought, with a combination of deep snow and hard work (plus Jim's dogs seemed more interested in each other that the route...). When we say deep snow we mean it, as Jon sank to his waist when he stepped off this sledge.
- Go on the dogsled circuit especially if the weather is good i.e. there's been a good fall of snow before hand. We had a great time this year as we were able to go out and about a bit more thanks to the fresh snow.
- Upgrade your ski pass to the full Grand Valira pass.
- check out these
website
- http://www.grandvalira.com/gv/home.aspx?lang=4 - this is the website for the Grand Valira area
- http://snowheads.com/ - an excellent web community / messageboard with a wealth of advice and views
