Andorra, Snowboarding on a Shoestring! (Pas de la Casa)

Member Name: monkeyking

Product:	Pas de la Casa
Date:	29/10/01 (7140 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Great apres ski, Good lifts

Disadvantages: 3 hour transfer

Andorra is one of the smallest countries in Europe and lies between France and Spain, in the middle of the Pyrenees but I wouldn't be surprised if you had never heard of the place, let alone know where it is. However for a snowboarder, or skier, especially one with very little money Andorra, and in particular Pas de la Casa, is heaven. Andorra, being a tax-free country, is the place to go for a bargain holiday so my mate and I booked and so began my week of delight.

We booked a four star, half board hotel in Pas de la Casa and paid for everything like boot and board hire, and lift passes for a week at a cost of £502 each, which is really good when you consider the cost for the same holiday in other countries, and just couldn't wait to go. So when the 17 December finally arrived we were slightly excited.

After flying to Toulouse, it is a three and a bit hour bus journey to Pas (probably one of the only down points about going there) but if you can stay awake on the journey it is well worth it for the fantastic views. When we made it to Pas, which is on the boarder of France and Andorra the Reps, from Crystal (who we booked with) took us to our hotel, which was clean and smart. By the way the Crystal reps were absolutely brilliant. Check out www.crystalholidays.co.uk for further information.

As we both live in a village in England and knew village life is boring we thought Pas, being a village too would be pretty crap with little to do other than snowboard. But, you guessed it, we were wrong. Pas has more shops than my local town, somewhere between 100 and 200. It has a number of restaurants and bars and a few nightclubs as well. Wow, we thought, if only our village back home was a ski resort. The types of shops ranged from your average supermarkets; surprisingly there was about five or six, to your expected winter sports shops. There were also a number of electronic shops and jewellery/perfume stores. The types of resta


urants ranged from the expensive all the way down and yes, a fast food restaurant, in the form of Burger King.

So, to the slopes and with boards ready and boots on we clambered for the first time onto the chair lifts. In Pas the lifts, which are in the main two or four seater chairlifts, are all at the same place, in one centralish area and the skiing area for Pas is on the same slope as what the lifts go up. The designated area carries on down the other side of the mountain into Grau Roig a hamlet, and on after that up and down another mountain, so there were more than enough slopes to cover during the week. We found the area going into Grau Roig the best for boarding, although skiers may have a different opinion. There was a variety of terrain, wide flats, tree routes, steep and twisting and our average snowboarding skills were tested and improved. In all there are 100km of piste, 25% blue runs, 55% red and 20% black. There 33 lifts, of which 12 are chairlifts, one a cable car and the rest drags. Lift passes were £70 for six days and snowboard and boot hire about £60, ski and boots I think were about £50. There is also a board park and baby slopes which we didn't get chance to try.

We had some great days of snowboarding, some hilarious moments and some scary ones, and I think you'll love the boarding or skiing here too. By the way, if you want a scary ride try the two-seater chairlift up to Pas from Grau Roig on a windy day. It shakes like anything and is so hard to get on and off, with a board strapped to your foot because it is small and goes quite fast. And if you make it to the top, over the jagged rocks and random cliffs, when you go to get off make sure you don't fall back as there is a cliff edge two feet from the exit point.

One of the best things about Pas is the après ski. If you want they is something different to do every night, you can even bum-board down the closest mountain in the middle of
the
night
, under very poor floodlighting. There are some brilliant bars, the Milwaukee, like an English pub, the Underground Bar and Marseilles just to mention a few and the Billboard club is pretty good later on at night. The reps were able to lay on things to do all week, like trips to the capital city, bar crawls and the bum boarding. They also liked to party and often came out to the bars in the evening and some great fun was had.

Now for some tips and recommendations on what the best things are to do while there. Firstly bring as much money as you can. We took two hundred pounds each but wished we had taken much more. This is because things are so cheap, sounds odd, I know. But this is a great chance to buy everything you wanted in England but could never afford as well as your Christmas presents should you go before 25th Dec. There are some great clothes shops with amazing prices. I got a pair of Diesel jeans for £20, ones that had cost my brother £70 back home. I found a department store on our trip to the capital (which I must say is well worth going to) that had loads of winter sports stuff all at about half the price of back home and I picked up a Burton jumper for £40. In general everything is about half the price it is here. If you looking for a car head unit or speakers or maybe a camera they Pas has an amazing number of electronic stores with equally amazing deals, and check out the perfume stores as well, they have great prices (that was mums Christmas present sorted). If you want some great food at a reasonable price or you want a place to relax check out the Tupi Bar to the right of lifts as you look up the mountain. It has a kind of Mexican theme and the staff are great. The manager always gave us great deals like a free drink with a meal and so we soon became regular customers. As for the nightlife the best place is definitely ?The Underground Bar?. The manager, who 'works' behind the bar at the back, is i
n a word m
ad. Basic
ally he gets drunk along with you, how cools that, and just ask and he'll give you and all your mates a few free rounds of shots. He will also test his new concoctions on you for free and at times, usually later on when he has had a few, he will get up on the bar and poor bottles of anything and everything over his customers, I got Apple Schnapps.

What else can I say? It never really got too busy on the slopes, the place is easy to get around and everything is within walking distance. Oh yeah, they prefer Spanish Pesetas to French Francs though most places accept both, but it will all be Euros soon. I hope you visit, you will love the place. Great boarding, cheap everything, cool après ski what else could you want.

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