So we are now back from Bad Gastein, Austria where we had a great weeks skiing.

This year just Laurence , Dermot and myself went as Paul will be going with his son Adam to Bachera, Spain instead.

*** The rest of this blog will all change upon our return ***

The Flight and Coach trip to the Hotel.

we all met at Manchester’s terminal 2 at 6am for a 9:40am flight. Laurence had set off form Glasgow at 2am and he arrived at the airport for 5:30 am so he had lots of time. The airport was really busy and it took me quite some time to get through baggage, passport control and security.

The first part of their journey was fine and we flew from Manchester to Salzburg. At Salzberg they were greeted by their chalet manager ( Idan ) and then by bus for the 90 minute coach trip up to Bad Gastein.

The Tannenburg Hotel

The Hotel is of course run by Ski Miquel and we were looked after by the Ski Miquel team for the whole week.

This was my and Laurence’s second visit to the Tannenburg and it really had not changed much from my last visit. The Tannenburg chatlet offers a good degree of comfort but on this visit the decor looked a bit tired and slightly battered in appearence. The lounge area is comfortable but again could really do with some form of refurb.

The three of us shared a room ( room 7 ). The contained 3 single beds, some cupboards and drawers hooks for clothing. The bathroom was a bit cramped (small) and there was no towel rail nor radiator for drying towels in the bathroom area. Room 7 also came with its own compliment of cob-webs also.

So the room was adequate but not amazing.

The lounge area, bar and dining area were also adequate. Breakfast was as usual a selection of cereal, fruit & yog, toast and jams with a sprinkling of the unknown which was eggs on one day, porridge on another and even pancakes with honey on another which while not amazing is reasonably acceptable on this type of skiing holiday (I think ).

The Food

Ski Miquel normally provides good quality meals with a variety of menu but for me there was an issue with the quality of some of the food served and with the portions also.

The food was also ok ( not great ) and the guided skiing was also great with ?????? from Sweden leading the slow group. Dave had retired but Ski Miquel asked if he would go to Bad Gastein to assist and train a new Spanish manager named Manuel (Fawlty Towers) . Louise and Alex shared the same room which was fine. With Ski Miquel , breakfast and evening meals are all included as are the 4:00 pm cake and tea/coffee IF you make it down from the slopes in time.

The staff were delightful (as usual) and everything was fine. There is one evening in the week where the staff take the night off and here you have to fend for yourselves ( which again is no big deal ), here we went to an italian pizzeria named Angelos Pizzera where we all had pizzas which were pretty good BUT when asked by the waitress about the food we made one or two observations which were then taken onboard immediately and we received complimentary grappa and coffee ( a nice touch ).

Ski Hire

The ski hire is just a matter of 150M from the hotel with lockers included in the price of the ski hire.The resort was reasonably busy but the lifts were adequate and seem to accommodate everyone easily.

Guided skiing is again provided by Ski Miquel and this is all in the package with both a fast group ( espressos ) and a slow group ( capacinos ). I always go for the slow group because this usually has the least number of people and there is always the opportunity to move up a group if one so desires.

For the week that we were there we were able to ski with ‘Idan’ from Israel and ‘Nicole’ from Scotland both of which were good skiiers and knew the resort.