I've been less active online than usual over the Christmas period and that has largely been due to me being away from home. My Christmas day post gave a hint at where I might be. I was actually in the Swiss ski resort of Wengen. We had some family events to celebrate and we did this by all going on a skiing holiday over the festive week. This is a bit of a luxury as it's not a cheap holiday, but we don't ski very often.
View from our room
We stayed at the Sunstar Hotel, which is conveniently located on the main street and close to the cable car that takes you up the mountain. The hotel was great for us with friendly staff, a nice swimming pool and great food as well as a lounge bar where we could chill out in the evenings. We're not ones for going out clubbing and Wengen doesn't seem that sort of town anyway. It's even quieter than most as there are very few vehicles there and most belong to local businesses.
We got there via a flight from Gatwick airport to Geneva. You may have heard that the airport was shut down for some time due to sightings of a drone. Whether there actually was one or not we had some concerns about whether we would be able to fly, but in the end it was okay. Then it was a long coach trip to Lauterbrunnen and then by train to Wengen itself. The railway has been there for over 100 years and uses a gear and rack system to allow it to climb steeply. It runs right up the mountain and is used by a lot of skiers to get up there. Use of the train is included with the ski pass.
One thing I love about skiing is the scenery. There's nothing like being up in snowy mountains. These peaks are particularly rugged, but there are load of ski runs. Above Wengen it's mostly intermediate red and harder black runs, but there are more blues for beginners at neighbouring Grindelwald (yes, like the JK Rowling Fantastic Beasts villain).
Here I am under the famous north face of the Eiger that has challenged many climbers.
We were generally lucky with the skiing conditions. It was cloudy, windy and even rained on the first couple of days, but we still got out there and the rain turned to snow higher up. The lower runs were topped up with the numerous snow cannons, so you could ski right down to the town. Christmas day was glorious and I skied a lot that day with my brother in law and his son. The rest of my family are not such good skiers, but the kids gave it a good go and my daughter did some challenging red runs.
Wengen hosts a world cup race on the famous Lauberhorn run. This only opened after we had been there a few days and I didn't actually ski it all, but I did do part of it as part of a long blue run back to Wengen. There was a lot of work going on to prepare for the race next month when about 60,000 people will be in town. This is a less steep part of the course, but it has a great view.
As I only ski every few years I will probably never get better than intermediate, but I had a lot of fun and we all avoided injuries. I'm happy to let better skiers zoom past me, but I recorded a couple of runs out of interest. Endomondo had me doing 50 to 60 km/h at times, which feels quite quick enough.
There are other things to do there. I saw lots of people just walking and there are some great sledging tracks. We had a try at that. It's fun, but it scared me more than the skiing :) There was also a glühwein festival on our first evening with lots of varieties to try. The hotel organised various activities that included a torchlit walk around the town and some music evenings. One of those was of traditional music with the obligatory alpenhorn.
The hotel has a hut out back with an open fire were you can have fondu or racklette meals (varieties of melted cheese). We had a great meal in there one evening. The food in general was amazing. Three course breakfasts and four course dinners can be bad for you, but we were burning off plenty of calories each day. I just need to get back to regular life now I'm back home.
It was a great holiday and a wonderful way to spend Christmas with the family. I hope everyone had a good time.
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