Norway

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Has anyone skied in Norway before?

Have booked flights to Oslo for mid February, as I wanted to try Norway rather than Alps or USA for a change.

Will be cross country and downhill skiing. Was currently thinking of Lillehammer or Geilo.

Any advice very welcome. Will be just me this trip, as children will be with their Dad, so any lone traveller tips welcome in particular. But if I liked it, would return with DS11 and DD9 another time.

Thank you !

I went 20 years ago.

Remember liking it, but the thing to remember is that it gets dark early there. So it's a short day.

Cross country skiing fab.

I've been to Geilo twice. It's great for beginners and young children. Really quiet wide slopes and no queues for the lifts. I wouldn't go again though, as now we are all more experienced it isn't challenging enough.
We went in the Feb half term and there was enough daylight to ski until 4.30 - 5.
Very cold! Take plenty of layers and hand warmers!

Went to Geilo last year. Great fun, nice people superb skills area. Despite initial reticence, we spent all week (gingerly to begin with) doing jumps, rail slides, steps half pipes etc.

Wide, empty pistes. Trees. And the Hoth scenes from Empire Strikes Back were filmed up the road.

Brilliant kids’ club / instructors. Will probably go again.

Full disclosure; I’ve worked a lot in Norway and like it there. Also unusually for where we live (northern Scotland) we can get direct flights to Bergen / Oslo then the stunning train journey to the resort.

Be aware- alcohol is VERY expensive!

Like- £9 for a small beer, and bottle of wine from shop starts around £15.

We took ours with us (there are restrictions so check)

Food is also not cheap.

No queues for lifts. We have been to Geilo, and the more experienced skiers found there wasn't enough for them. Fine for beginners.

Skied in Norway years ago and had a great time. Very beautiful and a much quieter atmosphere than skiing in the alps. Depending on the resort there may be floodlit slopes which extends the skiing hours at it gets dark so early. We went self-catering in cabins attached to a hotel but if doing it again would go half-board as everything was so expensive, especially the alcohol.

It doesn't get dark THAT much earlier in Feb than the UK.
Geilo is smaller than Hemsedal which is close to it, same train stop I think.
We went at Easter once though it was quite icy (just after a big Norwegian holiday and it didn't snow till half way through the week) and I think there's also a ski half term in Feb so do check dates.

Be aware- alcohol is VERY expensive!
Shops are only allowed to sell alcohol at certain times. Anything with a high alcohol content can only be bought at the government-owned Vinmonopolet.

When you arrive in Norway you'll notice a lot of people going into the duty free at arrivals. Follow them! It's hard to find anything other than beer in the shops, and bars are very expensive.

Booze prices aside, I love Norway. I've been to Hemsedal in early March. Lovely varied slopes, huge expansive views, you get a proper 'on top of the world' feel that I haven't experienced in the Alps. It wasn't particularly quiet, but people are considerate; no-one is tearing up the slopes. You can easily book via skistar.com, we went for 5 days midweek which was enough. Don't stay in the Hemsedal Cafe though, unless you enjoy rave-reverbrations while you try and sleep.

We have just got back from Trysil in Norway.

Pros: good resort for beginners and intermediates, lots of tree-lined, wide and quiet runs. As my favourite type of skiing is pootling along a gentle tree-lined run it was great for me. The queues for the lifts could be lengthy, but the slopes were generally quiet. There are also some black runs for more advanced skiers, although they are perhaps more like a red in the Alps (the 45 degree slope being one exception). If you like cross-country skiing there are lots of tracks although I didn't manage to do any this holiday. It's much smaller in scale than the Alps, so you can get round the whole resort in a couple of hours. Everyone speaks good English.

Cons - it was very cold (down to -10C). My body was OK, but my hands and feet got very cold and it was harder for the children, who weren't used to those temperatures. The adult group lessons were good. I would have preferred a better adult-child ratio in the children's lessons (there were about 10 in my son's group, age 7-9). Non-skiing activities (husky dog sledging and horse-sledge rides) are great fun but very expensive.