Breuil-Cervinia Valtournenche, Italy

Andrew Downes from UNITED KINGDOM writes:

We used Cervinia as a base to ski all over Zermatt and it was awesome! Great scenery, the highest cable car in Europe and generally amazing lift infrastructure. Cervinia itself is a lovely resort but a little quiet for a lads' holiday (which is what we were on), though there is one fantastic night club and several decent bars, the pick of which for us was the Dragon. Restaurants are plentiful but very similar to each other and the traditional dishes are on the pricey side - I would recommend a half board deal for some good value variety of food. Thomson put us up in the 2* Hotel Gorret, which was basic but very friendly - great weather reports and run recommendations from the guy who does breakfast! The worst snow base for many years meant basically only 2 routes down the mountain were open in Cervinia, though each was made up of several runs many kilometres in length with lift points to go back. For the extra few euros the international lift pass was excellent value for money, opening up hundreds of runs and a great snow park on the Swiss side. We ate in Switzerland every day - take Swiss francs for best value, though they will accept euros. The shortest route back to Cervinia was a tiresomely long drag lift, though you can go a longer route via a cable car. The payback was not paying Swiss prices for accommodation. A great find, and a resort I would like to go back to.

2006-02-17