Skiing in Switzerland

Living in Barcelona, we are not too far from the Pyrenees mountain range. Many people frequent the mountains to ski in the winter. While we have thought this sounded like fun, Devin has never skied before, and Rachel has not skied since high school. Before we committed to bringing all of our winter gear over to Europe, we wanted to give it a test run to see if skiing was something we were really interested in doing. What better place to do it than Switzerland?

We flew to Switzerland to meet up with Sarah and Peter, and let them show us the ropes. We drove to Airolo to hit the slopes. Since Devin was brand new, we thought it would be wise to get him a lesson. Unfortunately, the instructor only spoke Italian. Between broken English, and a lot of demonstration, they made it work. The weather on the mountain was BEAUTIFUL to look at, but it didn't create great ski conditions, as it snowed heavily all day. When skiing, this means that your goggles are covered, your layers are soaked, and the mountain is so white that it is hard to see anything. With the challenges presented, we managed to make it through a good few hours of runs, and laughed at ourselves a lot! At the end of the day, we really enjoyed it, but were ready to get warm!

The professionals

Near Lugano, there is a large facility called “Splash and Spa” . It is as cool as it sounds… it has multiple pools of different temperature, a swim up bar, four different waterslides, and a whole spa area. A big group of people from TASIS met there for the evening, and it was the perfect way to treat our bodies after a day of skiing! (Unfortunately, I was too busy relaxing in the water, so I don't have any pictures!)

Sunday morning we were able to relax, walk around the river, and make gluten-free pancakes before heading back to Barcelona.

It is weekends like these that make us so thankful to have family nearby to spend a weekend with, and for budget airlines that make it possible!