New Tradition?

As Christmas was approaching, Travers and I made our holiday plans. We decided this year we were going to take two trips over the Christmas holiday. The first was to go skiing in Gstaad, a small village in Switzerland. We woke up early on the Saturday before Christmas, grabbed our suitcases and ski gear and headed to the train station. After just a few short hours through many scenic areas, we arrived mid-morning in Gstaad. Stashing our things in a locker, we immediately hopped on the ski bus that would take us to the base of the mountain so we could ski for the rest of the day.

The weather wasn't too great this day, a little overcast and towards the end of the day it got colder and visibility got worse, but we got in about 4 hours of skiing and really had a great time.

At the end of the day, we waited for the bus to come pick us back up. It had started rain/snowing but we had such a great day skiing that we didn't care.  We got back to the train station then walked into town and did our Après-ski at an outdoor bar that was set up in the middle of the town. It was great to see so many people huddled under the awning, drinking vin chaud and chatting away.

As it was getting dark and time to think about getting to our hotel, we grabbed our stuff and headed to The Steigenberger Hotel, where we were staying three nights.  We checked in easily, and headed to our room. We were still a little frozen from our day's activities, so we immediately headed to the pool and sauna area to warm ourselves up.  We then went to the lounge/lobby area where we enjoyed a glass of complimentary prosecco and listened to someone sing and play the piano. Then we decided to have dinner that evening at the hotel's restaurant Halte Beiz.  We had some delicious risotto as a starter, then each got huge entrees of veal and rosti covered in different sauces. Needless to say, we were stuffed afterwards and exhausted from our day that we hit the hay soon afterwards so we could do it all over again the next day.

Sunday we woke up relatively early, had a large breakfast at the hotel, then grabbed the hotel shuttle that would drop us off at another ski resort nearby. And this day we lucked out because the weather was just absolutely gorgeous. The sun came out and the snow was great and we had even more fun than the day before!









We skied all day long, covering a lot of ground, even stopping to film each other coming down the mountain so we could see how good we are at skiing and snowboarding.





























And at the end of the day, we were exhausted, so we found a bar on the mountain to do our Après-ski and have the sun shine down on us before it set behind the mountains.









After cleaning up at the hotel. we headed into town that night for dinner. We had an apertif at a place called Rialto's, then headed to chose a nice italian restaurant called Basta, where we indulged in rich pastas and a delicious dessert. After dinner, we strolled the streets a bit then hopped in a cab back to the hotel as the day's activities had worn us out, again!

Our last day in Gstaad was Christmas Eve. We decided to sleep in and relax and leave the ski slopes alone today.  We had a nice breakfast, then hit the pool and saunas again for a bit. We decided to catch an afternoon train, so we packed up our things, checked out of the hotel, then headed into town for a bit to see what daytime in Gstaad was like.  We saw horse-drawn carriages, with a golden retriever on one. And we stopped at our favorite outdoor bar for a last vin chaud. We walked around the town, checking out other restaurants we had thought about going to and seeing all sorts of shops and vendors. It was another gorgeous day and we were sad to be leaving, but we had an amazing time in Gstaad. The skiing could not have been better, and we decided that we should do this again next year and make it a tradition to go skiing around Christmas time.  So we hit the road, caught our train and headed home so we could unpack then re-pack as we had an early flight to Vienna, Austria the next day!