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Pogledati punu verziju : Our Holiday report!



no_snow_in_swindon
29.01.2007, 17:41
Hi everyone.

Here's my report (ramblings!)

Started off the week by travelling down to Gatwick on the Saturday afternoon and booked into the Gatwick Europa hotel. Although the hotel was a bit shabby in a few areas it was a nice start to the holiday as we didnt have to get up early and travel down all in the one go. The hotel had a pool, jacuzzi, gym etc. All pretty good for the price of £130 for two twin rooms, parking for 8 days and transfer by bus. (as opposed to a cramped mini bus that you get from some hotels)

Got to the airport about 3 on the Sunday morning to meet some friends that had travelled up from Eastbourne to join us for the week.

Flight was fine, even though the film they showed was pretty boring (The Invincibles. Due to a good tail wind it only took about 2 hours, twenty minutes.

A nice journey up on the coach took us 2 and a half hours and we were given loads of information from our crystal rep.

As was mentioned in another thread, we wearn't very impressed with being asked to disembark in the carpark and trek upto our hotel (Club A) This wasnt an easy task with suitcases, ski bags and boot bags!!

Hotel......
Club A....... Very clean and tidy, we had a triple room as my son was joining us for his first skiing holiday and the room was more than adequate for us. The food was excellent and there was loads of choice for both breakfast and evening dinner.
Only two (very minor) gripes... Damn it was hot!!! We didnt have the radiator on in our room at all for the week and it was so hot. (Rather that than it being freezing cold!) and they only had bottled beer at 140 dinars each. I was quite happy with this until we have a drink in the grand where we had draught beer for the same price, but twice the amount.

We had a couple of lunches in the grand hotel and the pizzas were excellent. The most expensive being only 500dinars.

Skiing........
Monday and Tuesday wasn't a particuly enjoyable experiance with regards to the piste conditions. The whole resort was in desperate need of snow as there were bare and icy patches everywhere. It was a great relief to pull back the bedroom curtains on Wedneday morning to see a huge dump of snow had occured overnight. I'd had a text from a mate saying that 5cm was forcast for the Wednesday. Well more than double that must have come down in the early hours of the morning. It then skied on and off for the rest of the week including another largeish dump on Wednesday night.

The Fog made it very "intresting" at times especially when we travelled up to the top on the "Pancic Express" chairlift on Wednesday morning. You couldnt see the Chair in front of you! Myself and a friend decided to take it slow and as there wasnt anyone else around at the time that we could follow, we took the run down under the lift. Well... We think it was a run, but it soon became apparent that it hadnt been pisted and it was great fun hacking down on our blades through a foot of powder!!!!

Favorite run for me?..... The Black number 6. Great snow conditions later in the week although it wouldnt be a black in many resorts i've been to in the past.

Ski School......
Three of our group booked into ski school and every single one of them had a great time.

My son was the only beginnner out of the three and actually had two instructors. Marco for the first two hours and Dragona for the second two hours.

He went from total beginnner to being a confident parellell skier in only six days!

At the Ski School party on Saturday evening it was great for him to get an "A" on his diploma!

The others went into intermediates classes and they said that the instructers improved thier techneques immensly as well as giving them good knowledge and stories of the local area, geography etc. (Alex was one of the instructers, cant remember the name of the other)

Apres Ski....
As we were away as a family we didnt do the pub/club scene so cant comment on that side of things, but we did go out on the Skidoo evening. An evening that turned out to be rather intresting. We spent nearly an hour whizzing around the locals mountains in near blizzard conditions with my son on the skidoo with me. My Mrs and her mate were on the skidoo two in front of me and a we were nearing the end it very nearly ended up very nasty.

As we were slowing down to go over and few humps and through some tress, she slowed her skiddoo to get through the pisted section and she managed to get her front ski over the edge of a ditch and managed to roll the skidoo into the ditch and into a tree with the skidoo trapped on top of them. Everyone hit the stop switch on thier skidoos and myself a friend managed to pull it off of them whilst they scrambled out.

Luckilly they were both ok (apart from a few brusies) and after the skiddoo was pulled out they carreid on til the end.

We were booked to go on the Quiz night but the Mrs went down with Flu so we gave that a miss, but the rest of the group went and had a great time, and came second.

Sledging was also fun in the evening.

To sum everything up, we all had a great time, and wouldnt hesitate to go back again.

If anyone wants to take a look at our photos, here's the link......
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=s16ik2r.9sdl6rlr&Uy=c5ju7c&Ux=0

Just hit the "play" button to start the slideshow.

Anybody whose off soon and has any questions, just ask.

Marc

svetskigigacar
29.01.2007, 18:36
Man this is great!

Photos are great, too!

kop
29.01.2007, 18:46
Very nice photos ! :)

Thornleya
29.01.2007, 18:51
Thanks Marc for your 'report' - great to hear that you all had a good time - had been reading the posts of the '21st-ers' over the past few weeks and was looking forward to hearing about the trip when you all returned.

Looking at the webcams last week there seemed to be loads of fog most days, must have been quite tricky working out which way to go! Seems to have suddenly gone much colder recently too - I may yet need the balaclava which I bought in the sales recently!

We're going to Kop on Sunday 11th Feb (half-term) - myself, my husband + 7 year old son Ben - his first skiing trip was to Kranjska Gora in Slovenia last year, which he really enjoyed.

Please could you tell me what the hours were of the ski school which Leigh went to? (Not sure of the logistics of the three of us meeting up for lunch before afternoon lessons....)

Great to see your photos - thanks

no_snow_in_swindon
29.01.2007, 19:15
Thanks Marc for your 'report' - great to hear that you all had a good time - had been reading the posts of the '21st-ers' over the past few weeks and was looking forward to hearing about the trip when you all returned.

Looking at the webcams last week there seemed to be loads of fog most days, must have been quite tricky working out which way to go! Seems to have suddenly gone much colder recently too - I may yet need the balaclava which I bought in the sales recently!

We're going to Kop on Sunday 11th Feb (half-term) - myself, my husband + 7 year old son Ben - his first skiing trip was to Kranjska Gora in Slovenia last year, which he really enjoyed.

Please could you tell me what the hours were of the ski school which Leigh went to? (Not sure of the logistics of the three of us meeting up for lunch before afternoon lessons....)

Great to see your photos - thanks

Fog was a problem at times but we just took all as part of the adventure! Nothing you can do about it! lol

The brochure said that the lessons were 10-12 and 2-4 everyday, but this is incorrect. The times are actually 9-1 with a half an hour break around 11 at various cafes on the mountains. We always met at the bottom of run number 7 before getting off to our chosen lunch venue.

It did get much colder as the week went on and both myself and my son bought a balaclava during the week. When we left at 8am on Sunday morning it was -16! Much colder than ive skied in before.

You'll have a great time, and if you think of any other questions feel free to ask.

-JC-
29.01.2007, 23:50
Great holiday!

http://www.infokop.net/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=9923

^ some of my pics, if i get time I'll upload more and link a few off piste video's :dziveli:

Hotel Grand

Comfortable rooms, friendly staff and more cleaners than guests! I wasn't as impressed with the food as swindon, it cost a little more to eat out but I thought the food was of a higher standard.

Boarding/Skiing

A beginners/intermediates paradise, I spent most of my holiday venturing off piste (which could be very scary with the thick fog; I got lost several times) - but it suited my abilities perfectly... I haven't had so much fun playing in trees since I was 12 years old.

Rakija

I wasn't too impressed with the apres ski, but after a few glasses (sipped slowly) of this tonic I soon forgot that the resort was deader than disco after 5pm ;)

I would deffinatly go again, the serbs were incredibly friendly, the snow was great (after the first 2 days of agony - those rocks punished my board), the food was delicious, the off piste was great and the pistes complimented my abilities.

Cafu
31.01.2007, 22:51
JC - NSIS

Some nice pics there fellas, there's a lot more snow on the trees than we saw during our stay. I've read your comments about the first couple of days, I did wonder how the next group would get on after we left as there was as little as 8cm in some places, also some of the larger rocks were poking through.

All in all though it sounds as though (despite all our worrying) we all had a good time, I really enjoyed the resort it was ideal, just need to try and persuade the missus to give it another go next year but she's been looking at Slovenia so will have to wait and see.

Take it easy. :ok:

ps. Happy hols to all who are yet to go out there.

Thornleya
01.02.2007, 00:07
JC - NSIS

Some nice pics there fellas, there's a lot more snow on the trees than we saw during our stay. I've read your comments about the first couple of days, I did wonder how the next group would get on after we left as there was as little as 8cm in some places, also some of the larger rocks were poking through.

All in all though it sounds as though (despite all our worrying) we all had a good time, I really enjoyed the resort it was ideal, just need to try and persuade the missus to give it another go next year but she's been looking at Slovenia so will have to wait and see.

Take it easy. :ok:

ps. Happy hols to all who are yet to go out there.

CAFU - we went to Slovenia in mid-February last year, stayed at the Kompas in Kransjka Gora. Had a good time, however it was quite mild weather and really low cloud for most of the week, hence the snow was melting + we couldn't see the beautiful scenery properly!

Slovenia is a lovely country, the people were very friendly. I would recommend that people give it a go, however the resort is much lower than Kopaonik, and has suffered (as a lot of resorts have) with not much snow this year, relying upon the snow cannons which they have until there was a decent snowfall last week which has improved things.

We head out to Kop on Sunday 11th February - really looking forward to it - reading this forum and looking at the various photos is building up the anticipation!

Cafu
01.02.2007, 20:10
Helen,

Thanks very much for the Slovenia info, I'm keen to avoid low altitude resorts as a result of all the worrying this years weather brought on us all, we'll just have to wait and see how it all pans out I suppose. It's more for the gauranteed kids care that the boss is looking as there was nothing in Serbia.

Enjoy Kop, I'm sure you'll have a blast it's a great place.