The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! (Soldeu)

Name: grahamt

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Product:	Soldeu
Date:	18/01/02 (801 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good skiing, Very cheap

Disadvantages: Long transfer from airport

In recent years the certainty that a skiing holiday would be an enjoyable experience has been less and less assured. Blame "Global Warming" or whatever, we have suffered our (un)fair share at various European resorts, mostly those in France.

You really do take pot-luck. Either you take a chance and book early to get the accommodation and resort you want but take a chance on the snow and the weather or you book late and take what comes but with a better idea of the likelihood of enjoyable skiing.

This year we left it late, went with a new (to us) travel company (Inghams) and went not only to a new (to us, again) resort but to a country we had never visited before.

My brother-in-law and his family skiied as beginners in Andorra some 17 years ago and loved it. I have no doubt that the Andorra he knew then is very different compared with the Andorra of today, especially Soldeu, our destination this year.


The journey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We flew with Monarch from Gatwick to Toulouse, a large French city close to the foot of the Pyrenees. The journey out was more or less on time and uneventful. We have flown with Monarch before and have found them efficient and certainly no worse than the majority of the popular charter carriers.

Having recovered all of our luggage, including ski bag and boot bags, we boarded our coach close by in the coach park in front of the terminal. Shortly we started our journey. I have to say that this was the most unenjoyable part of the trip to Andorra. The transfer is over 4 hours. Fortunately we were promised a break half-way!

Up until recently the roads from Toulouse to Andorra have been little better than fairly average A or B class roads, strange in view of the length of time that Andorra has been a popular destination. At least the French have now constructed a motorway from Toulouse in the direction of the Pyrenees that covers about half the distance but unfort
unately for us it doesn't open until the Spring. It will certainly shorten the journey, probably by about an hour, from next year.

The stop for a break unfortunately turned out to be one that just about every coach used. It resulted in a 30 minute break and a rugby scrum for a drink. Fortunately we had taken some food with us.

Eventually we started the slow climb up into the Pyrenees, slow because the roads became less coach-friendly, with steep climbs and sharp hairpin bends.

We first entered Andorra at the largest of the ski resorts, the town of Pas de la Casa, a resort which is advertised as sharing its ski area with Soldeu, but more of that later. The final climb above the town eventually takes you over the top and down into the valley in which is found Soldeu. This takes another half hour. A tunnel is being bored through the mountain that will dramatically shorten this journey but this won't be completed for some time.


Soldeu
~~~~~~~~
Soldeau is a very different place compared with Pas de la Casa. Barely deserving even the designation of a village, a hamlet (no, not a small cigar) is probably an accurate description. But for such a small place, the amount of new development is astonishing. I doubt that there are many buildings over ten years old, most were probably been built in the last five years.

Strung out over about 400 meters along the road through the resort, it consists mostly of hotels, restaurants, bars, ski equipment shops and a couple of small supermarkets. There's even an Indian restaurant. I'll get to some of those later. A few other such buildings are set away from the road along with a number of apartments.

Soldeu is built on the south-facing slope of the valley with the ski slopes opposite on the other side of the valley. Being north-facing does mean that the ski slopes remain relatively cold but, of course, it also means that the snow is more reliab
le.

Soldeu can be a very noisy place in the early hours. The bars and clubs are open very late and are clearly popular. Sadly most of the rowdies were British, by the accents we could hear. Why they feel it necessary to roll down the street shouting and screaming at the top of their voices at four o'clock in the morning beats me.

I was astounded by the number of Russians in Soldeu. I might be wrong but it seemed that every other person was Russian. Sadly they were hardly the friendliest of people. Maybe language was the problem! Indeed, unfortunately, on the slopes they also tended to be somewhat aggressive and arrogant. We kept out of their way as much as possible.

The visitors were predominantly Russian, Irish and Brits.

Andorra is a tax free zone. Inghams had arranged a visit to Andorra la Vella, the capital, on Saturday afternoon for a shopping expedition, if you wanted to. We resisted the temptation as we would probably have ended paying excess baggage and wasted all the savings. The prices in Soldeu itself were exceptionally cheap anyway. A 1 litre bottle of Moskovskaya Russian Vodka for £3.50!


The hotel
~~~~~~~~~
We were staying at the Himalaia Hotel. The hotel offers mini-apartments and standard twin hotel bedrooms. We had the latter, mainly because that was all that was left when we booked.

The hotel is very modern and of a very good standard of accommodation. Our room was excellent, of more than an adequate size and spotlessly clean.

The only real disappointment about the hotel was the quality of the food. Although we were on half-board we chose to eat out in the evenings and substitute a packed lunch for the evening meal.

I have done a full review of the hotel which, if you want to know more about the hotel, you should read.


The skiing
~~~~~~~~~~~
Soldeu has 90kms of pistes and covers 850 hectares, the largest ski area in Andorr
a. The slopes rise up from Soldeu, from the next hamlet down, El Tarter and from the lowest hamlet, Canillo.

There are 52 numbered pistes, classified from green through to black. Most would be considered challenging enough to be enjoyable. Many carried classifications that were difficult to understand. We came across blue runs with very difficult steep sections and red runs that posed no real difficulty. However, in that, this resort is not exceptional.

Despite there having been no fresh snow since Boxing Day, the slopes were in good condition for the time of year. This is mainly due to the extensive snow cannon system, which was used throughout the week and was an adequate substitute for the real thing. Not all slopes are covered so there were still a few areas that were a bit threadbare. 95% of the pistes were open and 100% of the lift systems.

Access to the slopes from Soldeu is by a modern eight person high-speed gondola. This gets very busy from 9.00am when it opens but the gondola teams have loading passengers down to a fine art and so there really isn't too much of a wait. It opens at 8.30am on Mondays. Alternatively you can walk across the bridge over the stream and take the two seat lift that goes up to the same place. This is, however, much slower.

This area is called Espiolets and consists of a couple of restaurants. It is also where the ski schools meet and where the nursery slopes are. The majority of the skiing is to the right, down to the Riba-Escorxada area. However, our favourite start was to the left and down to the six seat, high speed Solana del Forn chair lift. This took you up to the wide, rolling Duc and Os green runs, back to the bottom of the same chair lift, an enjoyable lung-opener although also popular with the ski schools.

From the top of Solana del Forn you can also get down to Riba-Escorxada by more challenging red and black runs, as well as blue. An alternative is to
drop about 400 metres down the Duc run and then turn off right on the blue Fura run down to the Solanelles four-seat chair lift. This takes you up to what we called "The Ridge", the blue run Serra de les Solanelles which takes you down to the bottom of the fast six-seat Pla de les Pedres chairlift.

This area is as far left as you can go in the Soldeu ski area before you reach the Pas de la Casa ski area. Indeed you can ski down on the Pas de la Casa runs but cannot use the lift systems.

A lot of thought has gone into the layout of the ski area and the lifts are well placed. We found queues for the lifts to be generally short or non-existent, a dramatic change from the usual rugby scrum that is the average French lift queue.

A very nice touch, certainly one the rest of Europe could do well to learn from, is the placement of rope tows at uphill sections. Inevitably there will be short stretches where an uphill slope is not steep enough to warrant a full lift but by the same token is too steep to make trekking an enjoyable experience.

Anyway, who goes on a skiing holiday to walk uphill? OK, I know, there are those that enjoy cross-country, I just don't happen to be one of them! The tow is very simple and probably not expensive to install but makes a hell of a difference. It's simple a couple of gantries, up to 200 metres apart, with a rope that runs between the two at about walking pace. You simply ski up alongside and hang on. I've seen this in the UK alongside dry slopes.

If you are a snowboarder (we aren't) this place is just made for you. Probably a good third of all were snowboarders. You can tell which ones they are easily, they are either sitting down, falling over or walking carrying their boards

Between Espiolets and Riba-Escorxada has been built a special snowboard park. It contains a full half-pipe, plus three jump ramps and various trick events such as bannister s
lide and pipe slide. When we were there they were having a sponsored competition.

Further up the hill a moguls park has also been built. It seemed to be being kept in good condition although we didn't see a great number of people using it.


Ski passes
~~~~~~~~~~~
The issue of ski passes is probably the one area where these otherwise excellent ski resorts let themselves down badly. You may have read that recent developments in lift systems have enabled the Soldeu and Pas de la Casa ski areas to be joined. In my view these claims border on false advertising.

Oh yes, you can indeed reach either ski area from the other. What they fail to mention is that there is a petty squabble going on between the two resorts. It is undoubtedly over the competition for customers. I suspect that Pas de la Casa feels that Soldeu is getting too big for its boots.

The end result is that the two lift systems are incompatible. That in itself would not necessarily be a problem but for the additional fact that Pas de la Casa refuses to sell Soldeu lift passes and vice versa.

You either have to arrange with your travel company to purchase two full lift passes, one for each area or else you buy one for one area and obtain day lift passes for the other when you need them. However, in order to do this you have to get up at the crack of dawn to catch the 8.05am bus to Pas de la Casa, along with all of your ski gear, to buy their local pass. Then you can ski back from Pas de la Casa to Soldeu and ski both areas for the rest of that day. If you wish to do it another day then you must go through the same rigmarole all over again.

COME ON, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The Apres-ski
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soldeu has an abundant choice of restaurants and bars. In a week we were only able to try a few of them. The Internet seems to be a big thing in Soldeu. From Slim Jim's Internet Cafe to th
e C@pit@l Bar (geddit?), Internet terminals are everywhere.

Our favourite restaurant was the rather excellent Fat Albert's. It was that good we ate there twice. I warrants a review all of it's own so I've done one. If you want to know more you should read it.

The Traveller
----------------
This Bar and Restaurant is part of the Sport Hotel Village and Gondola Station complex. It occupies the right-hand corner of the entrance to the ramp down to the gondola. It is designed in the style of an Anglo-Irish bar. It is quite large and on some nights they have live entertainment.

There is limited seating for meals and it's wise to book although we did manage to get the last unreserved table the night we ate there. The service is a bit flaky. At time it seemed that they had forgotten we were there.

Having said that, the food, when it arrived, was actually quite good. For starters I had a Spanish Omelette and my wife had smoked salmon. We both had the Indonesian Fish Hotpot for the main course. It was excellent, spicy and full of seafood like mussels, tiger prawns, fish (probably cod) and baby octopi. The waiter recommended their house wine, a rioja under the brand name of Cune. It was OK but we weren't that impressed.

The meal for the two of us came to £40.

Another evening we had a drink there before our second evening at Fat Albert's. Their range of drinks are fairly limited, pretty much the standard list, including the local (for Spain that is) San Miguel and the ubiquitous Budweiser (yuk), not the real stuff (Budvar) unfortunately.

Fontanellas
---------------
This is an Italian restaurant that is part of the Ahotels Soldeu Hotel, opposite the Himalaia Hotel at which we were staying although I don't believe it is actually the restaurant of the hotel itself.

We ate there on our last day. We nearly didn't bother. The restaurant doesn
9;t open until 8.00pm and you can't even book until they open, nor do they accept bookings more than one day in advance! Unusual for an establishment in Soldeu, none of the waiters seemed to be strong in English.

The menu consists of exactly what you would expect of an Italian restaurant. When it's on the menu, I judge the quality of the restaurant by their Carpaccio of beef. If they know how to do that right then I can be fairly sure the rest will be OK. Their's was good although they did go a little overboard with the shavings of Parmesan.

Once again the service was not really up-to-scratch however. Rather than have a waiter for particular tables they seemed to be organised with waiters for specific courses! Unfortunately they didn't seem to be able to co-ordinate themselves. No sooner had we finished the starters than another waiter came along asking us what we wanted for dessert!

When we did get to dessert it was a bit of a disaster. Despite clearly pointing to the item my wife wanted, she was brought something completely different. It wasn't even as though it was an easy mistake to make. The item they brought was at completely the other end of the list!

They did acknowledge their mistake, didn't charge us for it and we got extra drinks afterwards, free. The whole meal came to £30.

Colorado
-------------
This is the Mexican restaurant which is situated above the Aspen Bar. Our one visit there was as a part of tone of the events organised by the Inghams rep. Only seven of us chose to go on this night out.

I don't know if I got a fair impression of this restaurant. I would think that the meal was pre-decided as part of the "package". Certainly we got all the usual dishes, tacos, fajitas and so on but there was no choice, they just kept bringing food and wine.

What they did bring wasn't bad but by no means the best Mexican food I've
had. I would have liked to have found out what it would have been like had we gone simply for an individual night out.

The Aspen Bar below was typical of most bars in Soldeu. Seating was grouped in alcoves with a central table, seating about eight. Problem is, of course, that if only two people take up an alcove, several seats are wasted, unless you want to ?butt in?.

Piccadilly Bar
-----------------
This is in the Sport Hotel (not the Sport Hotel Village but further up the road on the other side). Similar in style to the Aspen Bar but more lively. This is where we had the inevitable Quiz Night! They also have live entertainment. Quite enjoyable but very noisy.


Conclusion
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Despite the mixed experiences we very much enjoyed Soldeu. At the end of the day we went there for the skiing and on that count we had a great time. There is no to-the-door skiing but nowhere is very far from the gondolas. The Himalaia was just 150 metres away.

If you are a beginner then you will probably find this place paradise. I heard nothing but praise for the quality of the ski tutors. I can't give any first-hand experience as we are not beginners and so didn't take any lessons.

If you are, like us, your average run-of-the-mill skier then you will also love Soldeu. There is enough skiing to satisfy most levels of expertise. It probably won't suit the real expert. There are some very challenging black runs but sadly, due to the lack of real snow, many black runs were closed.

Finally, you MUST visit Fat Albert's.

Summary: