Skiing in Andorra

Sunday, February 03, 2008
Arinsal, Andorra
We left home at 4am and whizzed around the M25 to Gatwick, got parked, bused to the terminal and checked in really swiftly and went for a delicious (hmmmm, not sure that's the right choice of words) Maccy-d's sausage and egg muffin and a cup of the worst coffee I've ever tasted!!
Our flight left at 8.15am on the dot, we landed at around 11am (1hr forward) at Toulouse airport, then all the women queued to use the 2 loos at Toulouse!! (well, there were actually 4 loos - but who's counting?!) For the size of airport, it was ridiculous!!
Anyway, we got on the Inghams coach and headed to Arinsal. A journey which took us right the way across Andorra, through some of the other ski resorts - beautiful!
So, finally, at 3.30pm we arrived at Hotel Solana in Arinsal.....10.5hrs after we left home!!

What a journey! ....but the hotel was OK, the resort was pretty nice, the snow was great and the weather was fantastic all week so worth the looooong journey to get here :o) The evening meal and breakfast were included in the price which was lucky - everything there was sooooo expensive!! Two drinks here cost 9euros!! It seems that this applies to any two drinks....in any bar!! Unfortunately the dinner was being served in the hotel betwen 8pm and 10pm which was rubbish!! A couple of the days we went for a sauna / steam / swim between skiing and dinner, other days we were forced to go for a couple of drinkies to fill in the time....  
One evening we took the half hour bus ride to the capital - Andorra La Vella. We were surprised how big the town seemed, but it was really just full of booze, ciggarette and perfume shops which was a bit dull. 



The first night out we went on was the obligatory 'bar crawl' organised by the reps - it started off really quite tame and we thought it was gonna take ages to get going, but after a couple of free shots everyone went a bit bonkers!! There were no games in the first bar, then in the second and third there were drinking games, then in the forth bar there were some more ridiculous games - go fetch a condom / a bra / switch clothes with a member of the opposite sex etc type stuff, then in the fifth bar it was a sexual positions game....and there is no more memory after that - still neither Chris nor I can remember where the 6th bar was!!! ...could've had something to do with the extra shots we kept nicking!! ha ha
All the other nights out were a bit less crazy, but on Friday night there was a 70's night and some of the male reps did the 'full monty' on stage which was quite impressive.....we didn't think they would actually do it...but they did!!

We ended up on a bit of a routine - one major night out, go to bed late, get up late, go skiing, have an evening in, watch Eurosport, early night, get up early, go skiing, big night out, got to bed late etc etc....it worked really well!!

Eurosport and CNN were the only channels in English so we didn't have much choice, so one evening in we watched snooker, then another night it was show-jumping, and then African Nations football. Chris also managed to find a fabulous German cooking show and German X factor....great!!


  



Anyway, the skiing was really good - our passes covered Arinsal, Pal and Arcalis so there were enough runs to keep us occupied for the week. It was a half hour bus ride to Arcalis, but the skiing over there was really good. On the week days the slopes were really empty - we had some runs to ourselves and we never queued for a ski-lift which was amazing :o)

We left again at 5.30am on Sunday.........and I arrived home at 4pm......nicely exhausted :o)
  
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