Two Excellent Accommodations

I am not easily pleased and love to have a moan. However, I could find little to moan about on my two ski trips with Crystal in the 2013/14 season. This ski season was unusual because I was able to book late and I was able to be flexible about my travel dates.

My first trip was during the first week of the season just before Christmas to the Hotel Eidelweiss in Cervinia. I have skied in Cervinia many times enjoying the certainty of snow, due to the Glacier and the extensive ski area that includes Zermatt, in Switzerland. The skiing in this area is excellent with a wide variety of different runs and difficulty levels to suit all skiers. As with all ski areas visibility and weather conditions will have a significant impact on how well you ski and how much skiing you can do.

If you want to see the football whilst on holiday there are some excellent bars to watch matches in; the Yeti Bar has two large screens and serves food as well as drinks. Other places to eat include the excellent Linos on the piste side of the road. This specialises in pizzas but also does an excellent cooked English breakfast that comes with a mug of tea and a glass of orange juice. This may not be what the 'Tarquins', 'Ruperts' and 'Jemimahs' are looking for but these factors add to the enjoyment of my holiday.

Prior to the holiday I had made a mental note not to book into the Hotel Eidelweiss as it was a couple of hundred metres from the lifts and I hate walking any distance with my skis. However, the hotel ran a free daily mini bus to take you to the slopes. This was part of the excellent service that the hotel provide. The food was excellent and the head waiter was possibly the best head waiter that I have ever come across. An example of the attention to detail provided by the hotel is the kettle provided at breakfast that allows you to boil the water for your morning cup of tea. The hotel has a spacious lounge area and nice bar. My only criticism of the hotel was that I found it a bit too hot but I am built like a walrus and the thermostat in my house is set at 12 degrees C, so I expect normal people will find it an agreeable temperature.

You had to fly from Gatwick to ski the week before Christmas. This is not good if you live up North. However, it avoided one of my criticisms of Crystal. There was no need for the buses to wait for other flights to arrive before the buses could leave Turin for the resort.

I also went with Crystal to Courmeyer in March. I primarily booked because of the excellent price and this is the only time that I have been to this resort. This trip did involve hanging around the Turin coach park waiting for other flights to arrive (about an hour even though all flights landed on schedule within 20 minutes of each other).

The day that I arrived Liverpool were playing Man Utd and so it was essential that I found a bar to watch the football soon after I arrived. There was a super bar called 'The American Bar' on the main street in the town where the food was excellent and there was a good choice of beers. The afternoon was made all the more enjoyable as Liverpool thrashed Man Utd in a fully deserved win. I returned the following Saturday to see Chelsea beat Arsenal 6-0. The food and drink was excellent in this bar, only surpassed by the excellent service provided by the staff at the bar.

Whilst I was in Courmeyer conditions were very sunny. In these conditions there is not really a week's skiing for more experienced skiers as the lift to a linked French resort was shut. However, I enjoyed the skiing here and would return in future. The excellent Crystal Reps in this resort organised a trip to Pila for 25 Euros, their bus picked me up from the hotel and my Courmeyer lift pass gave me a day skiing in Pila too. this seemed like an excellent resort and I would like to ski here again. A bus runs from the bus station to Pila for a small number of Euros and this is worth knowing if your hotel is close to the bus station, my hotel was not. You can travel cheaply to other local resorts from the bus station too.

Normally when I book a hotel I try to book one close to the slopes. I booked the Dei Camosci blind and it was a long way from the slopes. However, most of the hotels in this resort are a long way from the slopes. My advice is to book a hotel that runs a free mini bus service to the hotel, like the Dei Camosci. There is a regular morning mini bus that picks you up from the slopes at the end of the day too. I think it runs every 30 minutes.

The food that I had at this hotel was some of the best that I have ever eaten. It was not all to my taste because I am quite fussy about what I eat; for example, I do not eat most vegetables and whenever I have tried to eat peas they have made me sick. However, the food here was brilliant as was the service provided throughout the hotel. For example, I rested on day 3 as I had tweaked a knee. I was sitting in the sun, on a bench, in front of the hotel and a member of staff came out to offer me a deck chair.

The accommodation was small and comfortable which is fine as you only sleep and shower there. The hotel has a huge lounge area on the ground floor with free wifi for those people that cannot survive for a week without their electronic devices.

It takes about 20 minutes to walk to the main centre from this hotel but I did not find that burdensome and there is a cheap supermarket 2 minutes in the other direction so that you can top up on drinks and snacks for the week.

The enjoyment of a ski holiday will always depend on ski conditions and good weather but the vast majority of the 'controllables' were right on both these trips.