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Published: January 15th 2008
Andorra
A great backdrop for skiing
After a whirlwind few days back in Cardiff where we unpacked, washed, and packed again, we were off on another trip. This time our destination was Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains famous for skiing and tax-free shopping. To get there we were up in the middle of the night, drove with Jason and Kirstyn to Bristol airport for our flight to Toulouse in France before getting on a coach for the 3-4 hour journey to our resort, Arinsal. We sorted out our equipment and had the obligatory meeting with our holiday rep to get our ski passes before a pretty early night.
We were rearing to go early the next morning and after a sturdy breakfast headed up on the gondola to the ski slopes. Kirstyn gave Jason some instruction on snowboarding while Karen tried to remember the long-ago ski instructions to help Mick who’s never skied. Jason did pretty well and was able to get up and down the beginner slopes by lunch. Mick had a few wild runs but once he worked out the snow plough was able to control a bit better! After lunch we tested our skills on the chairlift without any major
catastrophes and skied/boarded the longer runs without too many problems.
That night we headed out for a pub crawl organised by our tour company which was pretty tragic with a few games for the singles but where everyone mostly sat in their own little groups. The bars were alright though.
After our late night we had a much easier morning and skipped the beginner runs which were absolutely packed with ski school groups, skiing the longer easy runs and later testing our skills on the higher runs further up the mountain. We stayed on the higher runs for the rest of the week, with Mick and Jason improving fast.
On Wednesday Karen gave snowboarding a go and, while able to balance and slide down the mountain, there was no chance of getting up off the ground without help. Will have to give it a try another time and do some practice stretches and exercises!
By the end of the week we were challenging ourselves and heading down some steep slopes. It was also getting pretty icy as we didn’t get any fresh snow until Friday afternoon/night. We didn’t have too many incidents although Mick did manage
Arinsal
The resort where we were staying to lose one ski on a chairlift and they had to send it up with the next skiers.
On the Friday night one of the nightclubs hosted a massive 70’s party. We headed out for dinner first and while we were at dinner the snow started to really come down. By the time we got out it was a true winter wonderland! We ran around like kids and threw snowballs at each other on our way to the 70’s party. It was huge and pretty funny as the reps from all the tour companies dressed up and danced to 70’s classics. We didn’t stay too long and instead had a massive snowball fight with some random guys before making ourselves a snowman and snow angels and generally playing around until the early hours.
We had a slow start on our last day but it was still snowing when we got up to the slopes. There was powder everywhere and we had a good day despite the crazy blizzard-like winds! Kirstyn got pole-axed by some stupid kid on skis who ran straight in to her and left her winded but she soldiered on for another run. For our final
night we found a nice little pizzeria/cafeteria for dinner which had yummy food. Our bus back to the airport arrived at 4am on Sunday morning and our plane was delayed at Toulouse which was not fun but we eventually made it safe and sound.
Since getting back we’ve been packing up and sold our lovely little car Vicki to a kiwi guy in preparation for our next adventure - Western Europe!
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