I'm in a total (alpine) skiing mood!!! :-)
Since our skiing trip to Geilo end of January my passion for skiing is back. I haven't been skiing now for nearly 10 years after having regularly spent our Easter holidays with my father in the French Alps rushing down the mountains. Well, it's not that I lost that passion, but I never had the occasion to go again during the last past years.
Geilo was a first time now again and I liked it again so much that I wanted to do it again somehow here in Norway. The winter will still be long here!
So I organised another tour, this time to Hafjell near Lillehammer. A pretty good date seemed to be the last weekend of March, 25th to 27th. However, it was just Audrey and me this time. Jana isn't too much into alpine skiing, Tim already had other plans, Sarah was too far away for coming all over again and Germain didn't find the financial means for another weekend of this kind.
But where to go this time? There are some smaller and some bigger ski resorts around here that can be reached from Oslo and we wanted to try something different from Geilo.
There is Trysil, but we don't have ANY contacts or contracted hotels over there, so we wouldn't be able to get good rates for our overnight stay.
There is also Hemsedal. We do have a hotel under contract there, but we don't use it very often so why should they make us a good offer? Furthermore, Hemsedal isn't that well accessible. We would either need a rental car again (which in two ends up being pretty expensive) or go by train and change in Gol to a bus. All together a pretty long trip.
A very good alternative seemed to be the alpine centre in Hafjell, some 15 km away from the '94 Winter Olympics host town Lillehammer.
I heard it about it from a colleauge who had already been there twice now. So I asked her, Lisa, about the ski resort, her opinion and previous experiences. She said is was great and liked it a lot and furthermore, that she would go there again now for a third time skiing. When I asked her when, I figured out she planned her next ski tour also end of March, right the same weekend that also Audrey and I had on our minds.
As I usually get a special agent rate at hotels from the chain Choice, I initially thought about booking us a room at the Quality Hotel & Resort Hafjell. Lisa advised me though, that the Clarion Collection Hotel Hammer in Lillehammer would definitely be the better option. They stayed directly in Hafjell the last time, but it was kind of "in the middle of nowhere". Nothing going on at all. This time they'd sleep in little more populated Lillehammer. From Lillehammer there'd be direct shuttle busses that regularly bring you from Lillehammer to Hafjell and back. And how often during the day would one have to take this 20-minutes shuttle? Right, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
Thus Audrey and I followed Lisa's advice and book us as well at the same hotel as my colleague and her boyfriend.
On 25th of March the big day came and we all met right after work at the Oslo central station. At 17:37 we took the train which brought us in little more than two hours to Lillehammer. We walked to the Clarion Collection Hotel Hammer, quickly checked in and benefitted from the light evening buffet which is always included in the Clarion Collection hotels.
After a busy week at work we were all pretty tired and went straight to bed after dinner. We had agreed on meeting at 9 a.m. in order to take the 09:20 shuttle over to Hafjell.
After a good breakfast in the morning we were ready for another weekend on the pistes. Lisa and her boyfriend brought their own equipment along. Audrey and I though, we first had to rent out skis, sticks and boots. But soon we were ready to start and to explore another ski resort :-)
We quickly figured out that we were more or less equally good skiers. Steve, Lisa's boyfriend was actually snowboarding, but we were kind of on the same level, especially regarding speed. That was really good so we actually did all runs together in four. And we found together our favourite ski run: piste number 8, a black one! All the way down from the top. It didn't only have the best snow conditions, it was also the most fun to rush down :-) So we commonly took this track down several times a day without anyone of us getting fed up with it.
I was so busy skiing that I didn't have much occasions to take pictures if I didn't wanna make the other ones wait for me. So I can only post really a few photos. But I think they are enough to give you a rough idea of the place we were and how it looked like :-)
Right after the closure of the ski lifts at around 5 p.m. we hurried to get back to the hotel as quick as possible. The reason being the free waffles between 4 and 6 p.m. Like the light evening buffet, also waffles are included in Clarion Collection hotels' prices.
After a day full of skiing we thought be definitely deserved them and enjoyed more than only one of them :-)
In the evening, after dinner, we met another colleague in Lillehammer. Lisa's and my colleauge Orijana from the accounting department also went skiing in Hafjell that weekend. However, she and her boyfriend Reidar stayed in Hafjell directly and came over to us for a drink in town. We went to the Haakons Pub right across the street and had some nice chats together.
Happy that the night wasn't too short, we got up again pretty early. We had another day of skiing on the programme. Unfortunately the weather wasn't as beautiful and sunny as the day before, but still nice. We tried some more new pistes, but now and then always returned on our black number 8 :-)
Like the day before, we stopped again at the Gaiastova restaurant for lunch. This time we also met Orijana and her boyfriend there. They were not skiing with us, because they are not on our level.
We finished the second day of skiing again when the lifts were closing, quickly returned our equipment and headed back to Lillehammer.
At the hotel we just had some couple of minutes to get changed and to ensure to benefit from the waffle offer before we had to grab our luggage and proceed to the station. Our train back to Oslo was leaving Lillehammer station at 18:11.
Totally dead from this weekend, we slept nearly the whole way back on the train. I think I only opened the eyes once in a while to take some pictures of the nice, snow covered landscape :-)
I really enjoyed also this trip. It was so nice with Lisa and her boyfriend. And together with Audrey we were really a nice, homogenous group that had fun!
I'm so much looking forward to skiing again... whenever this may be...
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