I took this in March, 2011 on a digital camera.

he had better weather

I’ll put more detail up later but here’s a taste of the holidays:

We went to Basel for Fasnacht.

We helped out with an amphibian conservation effort, where I met hypnotoad.

We took a day trip to Italy on the Bernina Express.

We went to Lucern to recreate a photo my uncle and grandfather took in 1960.

And we went up a mountain (Saentis)

Montpellier is a lovely city, with beautiful architecture and clear signs of a Roman influence.

There are plenty of parks in the city – which leads to wonderful sights like people practising tightrope walking!

If it’s raining, or even if it’s not, the aquarium is well worth a visit.

The fountains must be lovely during the heat of the summer months.

We were fortunate to be there for the start of the Christmas lights.

We spent a day and a half in Paris. We did not climb up Notre Dame!

The Christmas lights were switched in Paris on the night we were there. The whole Champs Elysses is bedecked with lights, and a brillliant Christmas market.

So, realistically can you just use a mobile phone as your camera on a trip?
You tell me! I’ll do another blog post with the quirks and things to watch out for when using your mobile phone as a camera.

You’d swear you were on the continent already!

We made a last minute booking online, and the package we chose, through Topflight was half board in a 3* hotel in Aurach, just outside Kitzbühel itself.  We did the usual checking on tripadvisor and found the hotel was a bit outside the town, but that didn’t see a problem. We booked a weeks worth of snowboard hire, a week long lift pass and 3 days of snowboard school.

We flew out of Cork with Tyrol Airlines, in a nice old Fokker 100. The flight left early, and arrived early which was great. We were due to arrive at the hotel at 22:20 so arriving earlier was very nice.

The Topflight rep met us in the airport concourse, and we were ushered onto a bus. The bus dropped us in Kitzbühel, having dropped people in along the way. This took a little over an hour. We met our Kitzbühel rep, got our ski passes, transferred to a taxi and went on to our hotel. The hotel is 4 or 5 km outside Kitzbühel, but there’s a bus from a stop about 5 mins walk away right to the centre of town. If you’ve a ski pass it’s free to travel on the bus, you just pile in the back doors.

The hotel itself is grand, nothing too special. The rooms are small, as you’d expect from a 3*. It’s clean and the facilities are good. The breakfasts aren’t great, but the evening meals are good. You all sit down at assigned tables at 7 ish, and they serve everyone at the same time. There are typically 2 evening meals on offer, and you choose them the previous night at dinner. It’s simple but filling food.

For the first morning Topflight had arranged a lift from the hotel to the ski hire shop, so all we had to do was get up and be outside the front at 08:15. The lads in the ski hire shop were great and if you’ve a weeks rental you can leave your gear in the shop overnight for free.

Kitzbühel itself is a small town, with two main skiing areas – the Hannenkahm (Honeycomb) and the Horn. There are two gondolas up to these areas and there’s a ringbus that operates within the town, doing a loop around the town and dropping off at both locations. This bus is also free with your skipass.

The snowboard school is located at the foot of the Horn, so you take the ring bus there, head over to the shed and meet your instructor. They change instructors around each day, and change classes too, so you might have a few different instructors. The two lads I had trying to teach me were brilliant – thanks Nils and Arno. You head up to the ski area with them and then to go the beginner area or the slopes depending.

There’s a handy restaurant at the top station on the Horn, with some spectacular views.

Lunch is simple but will replace the lost calories, and runs about €12 per person. Drinks are €2-€4 for water/soft drinks. You can get beer too, or anything up to champagne.

It’s quite nice to relax here and catch some sun. Just make sure you’ve plenty of sun block on – there’s no shade at all up here.

Once ski school is over, you’re on your own. The ski pass will cover all the lifts and busses you want, so you can just go ski or snowboard anywhere in the valley you like.

The apres ski stuff starts at about 4 in the afternoon and continues right into the night. I didn’t do much of this, as I found the snowboarding hard enough without a hangover.
You can do a bit of shopping in Kitzbuhel itself, but I’ve 2 warnings for you. Firstly, it’s ludicrously expensive. Don’t buy ski gear there, it’s about a third the price at home. There is one cheap shop right down the bottom of the town if you really need something. Secondly, most of the shops close for lunch, from 12:00 until 15:00! They close for the evening at 18:00, so make sure you get the souveniers early enough.

Would I go back?
I’d definitely go back. It’s a great break, and if you do take a package like we did it’s really really easy. You barely have to think for yourself
I’m quite keen to try the cycling/mountain biking in the summer too. One thing I would change is I’d like to be in Kitzbuhel itself next time. Even though it was really easy to get the busses in and out, it would be nice to walk around the town at night.

One final video – flying out of Innsbruck.

This time around, we decided to upgrade to a 4 day mini cruise. This means that you leave at 18:00. on a Wednesday, arrive at 10:00 on Thursday, have all day Friday, and sail back as before at 18:00 Saturday. This gives almost 2 full days for sight seeing as well as one day for shopping. We upgraded our cabins on the boat too. Normally we’d get 2* outer cabins, but this time we upgraded to a 3* outer for the outbound leg, and a 4* outer for the return. The main difference in the 3* is a wider cabin – well worth the extra cash.

The 4* has a minibar and a telephone, but this is not worth the cash. Unless you really want to prank call your fellow passengers or something.

We decided to base ourselves in Roscoff, so we booked two nights in the Best Western in Roscoff. The hotel is modern, clean, has free wifi and a great waterfront location.

Roscoff is a tiny little town, and the hotel is located about 3 minutes walk from the main restaurant area. There’s free on street parking and the town is safe out. Dining wise, there’s great restaurants within walking distance, where you can get amazing meals:

We took one long ish drive to go see the Point du Raz.

Shopping wise, we shopped in the Geant in Morlaix and the Red Bus in Roscoff.
We saw a number of people buying for weddings, and some who were just buying a lot of wine and beer.

I kept the amount I purchased fairly small as I’ll be heading over again next May.

Money wise you can save a fortune if you’re buying high-end or in bulk.

All in all it was a great trip. I really enjoyed the extra time to plan and sight see that the 4 day mini-cruise gives you. The sailings were lovely, the new boat (the Oscar Wilde) is a real step up up from the old Normandy. We’ll do another 4 day cruise next year!

You could do this trip with kids – the boat is manageable, and the drives can be as short as you like. Roscoff itself is small, there’s a public playground and plenty of beaches nearby for the kids to go nuts. Equally, you can make it a short holiday, or just a shopping trip. You see all types on the boat.
What we don’t see as much of any more, is cars returning with the car scraping the road. I guess the recession is making people cut back. Shame, it’s fun spotting them in the carpark and wondering can they make it up the ramp onto the boat.