First week skiing as a family ever, in Passo Tonale, Italy with Crystal ski. Days before children we used to spend most of our holidays skiing, usually 2 weeks a year, Christmas and again end of season and a weekend too, so we were pretty good skiers. The last time we went as a family our eldest was 4, she’s 17 now and small boy hadn’t been born so that’s a 13 year gap. Why? School fees, we are in 11+ territory and school fees ate up our ski money. There have been times when we have questioned our sanity here but they all passed are in the local grammars, small boy being in year 7 and at last we are starting to get our life back.
We decided that we wanted to share experiences with our children and our love of skiing was one of them so here we are. Apart from the odd lads weekend ski trip for Pete and a lasses snowboarding trip 8 years ago the most skiing we’ve done is Milton Keynes
Snodome for birthday parties. We both have dodgy knees – from skiing accidents, anterior cruciate and medial ligament tears for me and similar for Pete. Mine deteriorated to the state that I have arthritis in my kneecap meaning that I cannot do any form of impact so running is totally out. I still manage to tap dance and cycle. So we have both been questioning our ability ski, an hour at the snow dome is a bit different to 6-7 hours a day for 6 days. We will never learn!
So when and where do we go? Has to be school hols and after much discussion ends up being New Year. Now where? We’ve always stayed in chalets, but there were no flights to chalets that could sleep 5 (4 weeks before travel) apart from really expensive chalets so it was hotels. We needed somewhere that accommodate non skiers as Small Boy was dead set against skiing, down to Wengen (fab resort, loads to do if not skiing but hotel didn’t have en-suite facilities and looked pretty basic) or Passo Tonale in
Italy (never heard of it, posh hotel, great beginners ski area and gala dinner on New Years eve, plus swimming pool, sauna and fitness centre. Ski pass a fraction of the price of Wengen or the big ski areas so high price for hotel and less for ski essentials and we booked with good old Crystal. I know they are owned by Thomson but we’ve been with them so many times in the past they’ve always been great so we opted for them again.
Wahoo we are going skiing for the first time in 8 years, now we’ve just got to convince the kids that this is a good idea ….. And our knees.