Andorran Skiing

My latest skiing adventure was only the third time I’ve gone skiing and it just seems to get better and better. I’m a little bit worried though that this time we were so spoilt that it might make skiing back home less enjoyable. Overall the trip was fantastic and made even more fun since we went in a nicely sized group of eight. You can check out Stickfly’s review and Gerrod’s discussion to find out some different views.

There are many reasons I think we were spoilt on this particular holiday. The hotel we stayed in, the Sports Village Hotel was extremely nice – the rooms were big, the bathrooms very nice and the whole place was in a perfect location with the ski lift gondola two floors directly below our hotel. As a result it was extremely easy getting up the mountain in the morning. Better yet, at the end of the day you can ski right down the mountain (as fast as you want) and ski directly underneath the Gondola a few more floors down, keeping your commute time down even more. Attached to the hotel was a three storied sports wellness centre full of saunas, pools, spas, heat beds all of different heats. It was a must for every single member of our party at some time during the week and well worth the €30 for the three hours to drain the aches and pains of the week.

On top of that, despite the “worst season Andorra has ever seen” we managed to get two days of fresh snow, giving us a few days skiing on some lovely powder snow. Admittedly a number of the other days were painfully windy and slightly icy, but I think we were lucky with the snow that we did get.

I was happy that on my first day I managed to survive a red run since on my second time skiing, it took a couple of days to get my ski legs back on. By the end of the week, other than the fact I was extremely physically exhausted, we even had a small go at a few jumps and tried learning how to spin around skiing backwards and failing dismally at turning around facing forward again.
Amazingly despite the adventurous nature of some of our party members, no one came away with any major injuries with the most a bruised inflamed rib, and maybe a few sore shoulders, arms or legs.

Andorra is a great blast for people skiing though I can’t recommend it for a cultural trip since it seems to cater mainly for English tourists given the number of pubs and perfect resemblance of a high street, and for the Spanish and French locals with all menus pretty much in their native languages.

Thanks to Ben for organising it all and everyone else (Michelle, Gerrod, Kristy, John, Kirsten and Matt) for the fabulous company and great skiing/boarding.