BazH

Wanting to go away over the New Year period for some R&R. Would prefer some snow (never skied b4) and decent boozers/restaurants. What woud you guys recommend?

Cheers

Account deleted by request

Val D'Isere
St Anton
Verbier

or the daddy of winter breaks is Banff in Canada, good size town with plenty to do, lovely shops & skiing. It is a superb place.

HTH

chop

Brendan Hughes

And if you've never skiied before, at Banff they'll actually show you how, rather than at the French resorts where the "instructor" will be too busy posing for the girlies and acting frustrated that you can't instantly copy his olympic-winning style just by following him for five minutes.

Ecole du Ski Francais - 3 levels for group lessons. If there are less than 4 people in the group, it's disbanded and you get bumped up or down a group

Canadian ski school - 8 levels for group lessons. If only one person turns up, it goes ahead, and you get a private lesson for the price of a group one

thundertiger

get 7 mates to book it and not show!!!! {disclaimer: i wouldn't condone such behaviour myself!!}

or if you were PS Lewis, you would have to book it yourself, under 7 bogus names!!! LMFAO

Brendan Hughes

But Dazza, you don't even need to book it. They have enough instructors that they are committed to teaching each level every day, end of story. It's like the French are paid per student (so three isn't enough), whereas the Canadians are paid per lesson; one cares about the number of students, the other simply doesn't. I don't think it actually works like that, I've a suspicion it's more to do with the sue-for-negligence culture in North America, that they daren't risk putting a medium in an advanced group, unlike the f**king ESF who made me pay, left me to rot on a mountainside, and then sent a reply to my complaint from London which said "we offer you one free lesson in compensation". Like I was going to travel all the way back to the Alps for that "privilege". Tossers

BazH

Any recommendations on particular hotels in Banff or good places to get deals on holidays there?

Account deleted by request

There are loads of hotels in Banff, anything from Best Westerns to some luxury hotels...I don't know any to recommend though.

chop

Brendan Hughes

This map is fantastic:
http://www.discoverbanff.com/Maps/Ci...Banff_Map.html . Drag it to see more.

Tip - Town centre is the brown area bottom left. When looking for a hotel/motel, look along Banff Avenue (the main street), don't go up further than Red Carpet / Irwins. (I've stayed at Irwins 3 times and would go back - very simple, fine for me. Others might want more luxury). These are already a 10min walk into the town centre, if it's -20C in the evening you won't want to go further.

Two words of warning about Canada. 1 - it's a looong flight and jetlag, 10 days is much better than 7. 2. It can get coooold, -20C is not uncommon during a bad patch, do NOT expect to go skiing in a t-shirt or getting a tan. But if you're serious about learning to ski, or enjoying yourself, it's absolutely great.

BazH

Good stuff guys, cheers