Nigel Cooper from UNITED KINGDOM writes:
Good value resort for beginners/intermediates.
Went 27/1/2008, stayed at Rive Campo Smith Apartments. Has a great time. Last week of low season so great value (£1250 for family of 4 incl flight, tuition, lift pass and kit - Thomson, booked November).
Apartments: Great location on slope next to ski school. Clean and comfortable. Great views of slopes. Excellent 5* restaurant on site but v.expensive. 15 minutes walk to nearest SPAR type shop! But on free ski bus route. However, most shops only open at 4pm and bus stops at 5:45, so plan your shopping. Apts have lockers on site. English style pub opposite apts with good restaurant and ambience.
Resort: Smallish resort, v. quiet in low season (dead at night generally), but looked like it would get very busy in high season. Not particularly pretty, but not ugly either, and relatively quiet/traffic free during week. Carnival on Saturday night with excellent fireworks and fancy dress candlelit descent - do not miss! Good raclette meals (melt your own cheese at the table) a speciality.
Skiing: Good number of blue and red pistes, uncrowded during week, but busy at w/e when locals arrive. Nothing much for experts. Nice picturesque wooded runs on generally wide pistes. No snow while we were there and warm, so it got icy, but the runs are high enough so that they're not too bad. Plenty of cannons to help as well. Good friendly ski school, excellent for kids, good English, and technically excellent, but most don't have conversational English, so can sometimes get confused when you ask them questions. Blue slopes are STEEP for blues and can be tricky in comparison to other resorts, especially if icy. Lifts are good and appear to have been modernised since 2006 Olympics. 2 4-man chairs take you to the top of the Mt Colomion, or 1 in Melezet.
Location: 1.5 hours from Turin and no hairpin roads - access straight from the motorway. Turin airport too small for the amount of traffic, so long check-in/security queues (2.5 hours just queueing on Sunday am), but clean and modern. Well connected to local area for sight-seeing by train/car to Turin etc.
Summary: We had a good time there, the kids loved it, great value off-season, we'll be booking again for next year.
2008-02-06 |
