Ski Weekend?

A snowHead

I have been buttering my parents up to look after our girls so that we can have a weekend away together without chidren in Jan / feb time.

I was remembering spotting a thead about skiing for a weekend but I havent a clue where to start as I have only done week long holidays even when I have been DIY all the accomodation I was looking at was for a week.

Can you give me any pointers? Thanks

A snowHead

hi
we have done MANY ski weekends, normally your biggest challenge is finding accomodation....... my tip is try lesser-known resorts, and you will probably be ok. The big resorts are very reluctant to take short bookings for obvious reasons!

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Can you recommend any resorts - short transfer times being pretty much the only criteria I am worried about if we do this. Thanks

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NickyJ, Where will you fly into? You'll need to establish that and then post a request up on www.chaletsdirect.com Winter Solutions Room. Give your dates and stress that you want to be within an hour or so of the airport you are flying into. This will give you a huge choice - Geneva offers parts of Portes du Soleil, Grand Massif, St Gervais for example. You'll then get owners posting up what they can offer for your dates - giving a budget is always helpful too. If you ARE going to France, try to avoid from 11/2 for the next four weeks as these are the main half term holidays, but before or after then you should have some good options - good luck Very Happy

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

NickyJ, Innsbruck have deals with hotels for ski weekend breaks.

You'll need to Register first of course.

WE do any day arrival short breaks throughout the season in Les Coches, and 3 & 4 night set day breaks in Tignes - detials here : www.mountainsunltd.com/short_breaks . Our prices (ranging from £99 - £259 per person in Les coches for 3 night break) includes catered accommodation and Geneva transfers.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

I'd agree with ALQ, if you fly into Innsbruck, you're just minutes from the Airport to the lifts.

After all it is free

Engelberg, Chamonix, Kitzbuhel and St. Anton are well catered for for weekends. There is a good choice of accommodation for different budgets, but if you don't mind a hostel style or 2 star hotel more choices open up. I've listed a few we have used and enjoyed, but if you want to go 5 star fancy hotel then the world is your oyster.

http://skilodgeengelberg.com/ -Zurich and Train
http://www.piltriquitron.com/ -Zurich and Train
http://www.verthotel.com/ -Geneva and minibus transfer

Zermatt is also possible, but is better accessed if you fly in to Sion so limits the flight options to Snow Jet (i think)

It seems lots of places are anticipating this trend this year.

I'm getting emails and brochures from places in the Ski Amade area offering weekends, 3, 4 and 5 night stays. This is the first time I've seen this in all my years in the region.

All within an hour of Salzburg Airport with very easy transfers by train. The hotels pick you up from the station as a rule.

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We have done trips to Italy, flying into Turin for pila, la thuille, bardobeccia - all those resorts are very used to weekend visitors......also into Milan bargamo for madesimo and chiesa, but that transfer was about 2hrs....

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NickyJ, We have availability in our B&B in January for W/e's 14 & 15th and 21 & 22nd or arriving on Sat 28th for a few days.
Please have a look at the site in the tag below for all the information. Mention snowHead

's if you make contact.

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Thank you all. This is all really great info and options. We really dont care where we go as long as it is cheap TBH. I was wondering about innsbrook who flies into there?

Easyjet fly in to Innsbruck from Liverpool and one of the London ones. There's also Austrian, BA and Lufthansa that I can recall off the top of my head.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I have looked and looked and I can't find any evening flights to innsbruck, which is a shame. As my daughter is in school, we would need to drive my girls over to my parents at the earliest straight from school (finishes at 3pm). My parents are at best 2hrs away, but are close to Gatwick airport. We would need to get back Sunday evening to get back home in time for her to be in school on Monday morning.

Any body know of any destinations with ski resorts close by that fit that do evening flights out and back? I suppose I could lie to the school about her being sick or something but that seems to be taking my selfishness in doing this too far.

A snowHead

NickyJ, there are late easyJet flights to and from Geneva from Gatwick, though they can be pricey - still obtainable for about £150 but that price will rise.

Chamonix is an easy drive from Geneva (for a weekend, hiring a car is the best bet), as is Flaine. If accommodation is difficult you could stay in the Ibis hotel in Sallanches and choose your destinations - plenty of choice within an easy drive, including Chamonix, St Gervais, Les Contamines, Combloux/Megeve.

I could probably find an apartment for you for the weekend near our place - Bisanne 1500/Les Saisies, but that's a fair bit further to drive. I'd suggest Sallanches, though the only thing you'd need to book right now is the flights out of Gatwick.

A snowHead

Easyjet fly from Gatwick to Geneva at 19.55 on a Friday evening then return at 18.45 (or later) on a Sunday.

You could stay at the Ibis hotel in Sallanches (about 75 minutes drive from Geneva) and ski at Chamonix, Megeve, Combloux, St Gervais, Les Contamines or Les Houches. Rooms are usually available from about £60 per night (vi accorhotels.com).

Or (on arrival or departure day) you could ski at Le Crozet, which is a nice (but small) ski area only 20 minutes away from Geneva airport. Enough to keep you entertained for a day however.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Ideal ski weekend or short ski break close to Bergamo (Milan) airport only 50mins transfer....

you stay in a 3* Hotel....... half-board and inc ski pass.....

ski Piani di Bobbio ski resort,details on http://m.bellaskiitalia.com

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Bergmeister, great minds think alike! though I'd say Sallanches is less than 75 minutes from Geneva. An hour, even taken fairly sedately.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

You can fly to Turin on Friday evening return Monday am with Ryanair ~ £80 rtn. Sauze d'Oulx is 1h15 by taxi (eur 120) or hire car. Weekend hotels no problem.

You'll need to Register first of course.

I hesitate to disagree with the comments above, but sadly these days the main limiting factor for a short weekend is flight timings - as you are discovering, there are many fewer evening flights in and out of the smaller resort convenient airports such as Salzburg, Turin, Innsbruck etc. The days of the 7pm flights into Salzburg, return at 9pm seem to be over - not sure why, as the flights always seemed to be full when we used them.

This means either eating into your skiing time (we do an annual w/e trip to Selva in the dolomites, flying into Innsbruck first thing on Thursday am and leaving afternoon Sunday with Easyjet, for example - allows us to be on the slopes by 12.30 on the arrival day, ski all day Fri and Sat and a half day on Sun - just 1.5 hours drive), or flying into the larger airports that are more business orientated and which therefore have more evening flights. The obvious candidates are Geneva, Zurich, Munich, Milan and Venice. All of these have several ski opportunities within about a 1.5 -2 hour drive, which is about the limit for a cheeky weekend, in my experience.

Geneva probably has the greatest choice. This link is useful for identifying resorts near airports:

http://www.j2ski.com/ski_resorts/Airports/

Finding accommodation for 2 people in low season for a weekend is generally not too difficult. The only place we had difficulty was St Anton, but even there somthing eventually freed up - hotels will be reluctant to commit much in advance, but you will find something as the time gets closer, wherever you choose. The local tourist board websites are generally a good first step - many allow you to send out a batch of availability requests to hotels.

Personally, for a weekend, I'd want to be based in resort and not faffing around driving each day.

As an idea, I would recommend Ski-2 in Champoluc, Italy - no connection, but have used them and been impressed. They will do any date/duration and will pick you up and return you to the airport at Milan (transfer time is on the edge of the limit, though).

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

rg1, spot on. Most limiting factor is flights. Find times that suit first. Then find nearby resorts with acceptable cost/convenience of transfer. Accomm is never a signif limitation unless you are particular about where you stay.

kfh51 sadly the turim flights are out of stansted and on a friday evening I am not going to be able to get from nr Gatwick to there in time, rg1, thankyou that is a really useful post.

Is train possible via Eurostar?

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NickyJ, a couple of posters above have mentioned easyjet flights to Geneva. There are loads of resorts near there within a couple of hours where you could get accommodation.

For £105 return you could do Easyjet to Munich but you would need to be able to make a 18:30 flight out.

For £90 return you could do Easyjet to Zurich but you would need to be able to make a 18:10 flight out. Lots of options from Zurich
Also for £90 return you could do Easyjet to Milan. Better timed flights to there.

For £75 return you could do Easyjet to Barcelona and drive up to Andorra. The Friday flight out is quite late though, so you might have to stay overnight in Barcelona rather than in resort.

For £60 return you could do Easyjet to Nice but you would need to be able to make a 18:00 flight out. Isola is reachable from Nice. If that is too early, BA do LHR to Nice return for about £120 leaving at 20:25

Cheapest alternative would be flights to Glasgow, £55 return for a weekend, then car hire to one of the 5 resorts. Skiing in Scotland can never be guaranteed though and you might end up with a walking weekend rather than a skiing one.

All prices based on w/e of 27/29 Jan flying from Gatwick.

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Ray Zorro, that is a brilliant post, thankyou. I was also wondering about scotland as we havent been there before.

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Scotland is a bit of a risk from our neck of the woods. I had two weekends booked to Scotland last season. One weekend was great and we had good snow and good skiing but all the ski areas were closed on the other weekend I'd booked to go up due to heavy snow and high winds and I ended up not going and we just gave up the flights.

One advantage of flying to Geneva is that Easyjet do a very late flight home which allows you to ski a full day before returning.

Scotland it is best to make a last minute decision when you hear the Snow and weather reports are good. The areas are small by alpine standards but lots of fun can be had.

You know it makes sense.

I usually fly at 0700 to Turin, get to the slopes by 1230 local time, ski 2.5 days back on late Sunday/Monday flight. However there seem to be less late flight back by Ryanair this winter 8¬(

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Had a great ski weekend two years back. Managed to get flights with ryanair where the prices just about outweighed the discomfort and picked up some pretty cheap gear from snowrental. For the accomodation, rather than stay in a lodge as we perhaps would have done if we'd stayed longer, we found somewhere really nice on , all in all a really great long weekend Smile

A snowHead

The main problem may be finding somewhere to stay on just the Friday and Saturday nights, as cbowls30 said.
You could leave on Friday evening by Eurostar and go overnight to Bourg St Maurice. (Personally I would change stations in Paris to get French couchettes, rather than sitting up all night). You arrive early in the morning (6.30 0r 7.00) and catch a local bus. This allows 2 whole days of skiing at either Tignes, Val d'Isere, La Plagne, Les Arcs, La Rosierre or St Foy and then returning to the train on Sunday evening - though taking the earliest Eurostar to London you would barely get back in time for work even if you work there. You could take a train right after skiing and catch an early evening return which is not overnight but I doubt you could return under the channel any earlier. If you stayed in Les Arcs 1600 you don't even need a transfer bus, you just catch the cog-railway up the mountain. In fact you could stay in Boug St Maurice which might be both cheaper and easier to stay for just a weekend.
Flying to Geneva on Saturday you could get a very early flight and be on the slopes of Chamonix or Flaine etc etc by about 12.30, or going out on Friday evening you could manage to ski the whole day Saturday. You could ski till about 5.00 on the sunday, returning by a late evening Easyjet flight. Or can you get an extra day off - in which case add another day.

Help!!

Ski Weekend?

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