Hi
We are staying at chalet xantal in soldeu el tartar for two weeks over christmas. Has anyone stayed there on here?
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hello, hope you had a great holiday. We are staying in Chalet Xantal for a week this sunday. How was it for you?!
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Its a great place!
We had no problems at all, the chalet is clean and warm plus has a balcony which catches the sun nicely.
Gav the chalet host provided by Crystal was great, had a bit of a problem the first week with some guests who expected military precision in bed making which was blown out of proportion.
He has since left so you may possibly get scouse Lee from the hotel or a girl with black hair who cooked for us one night who%26#39;s name escapes me but both were very good. I guess it will depend if they have managed to replace him yet.
ITs a bit of a walk to the gondala, but not unpleasantly so.. takes about 20 minutes and the good thing is that the hotel xantel has a locker room where you can stow your gear which we ended up doing for the whole two weeks when the el tarter station tried to charge us 13 euros per day for storage.
There are a couple of good bars on the main road, Mosquito is mainly spanish but is great (say hola to Tonio, short black hair) and Stone bar is cool, does food and has great staff (say hello to Lisa with red hair and Sam from Anthony, Estelle and Greg)
Shopping is pretty limited, there is a small store on the main street and a mad super market on the road towards andorra if you walk past the last hire shop in the car park, opposite the garage. This is one of those mad places you can buy boar, hams, sausages and strange booze. Watch out in particular for the little black haired lady who dishes out the promotional drinks and is usually half cut and incomprehensible.
Best close shopping is in Soldeu itself, try loaded for boarding kit (Hello to Tyler and Sam) but i think Pas de la Casa is better if you want to get the duty frees in.
Hope the snow gets there for you, by the second week things were icing up quite a lot though plenty of blues and reds were easily workable, but on hard snow with ice. the teams are doing a great job keeping it going with the snow cannons, plus if you ski out one area you can easily use the granvalira ski pass and bus to get to Pas or one of the other areas.
We plan on going back in April for the end of season if the snow arrives.
Enjoy!
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Hi
We are travelling out this Sunday and are staying at Chalet Xantal. Thanks for all your info - really helpful. I%26#39;m wondering if you could answer a few more questions for us? We are going for the first time and are not really sure what to expect.
Did you have to pay to leave your things in Hotel Xantel and did you leave your ski%26#39;s and boots there overnight?
We will have six children with us, and we%26#39;re worried that they won%26#39;t manage the 20 min walk (at least not later in the week anyway!). Do you think that we would be able to easily arange a taxi / mini bus ?
Also, can you remember whether or not there was a video / dvd player there, and did you have access to any sort of fridge to keep your own drinks in?
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Hi
We are travelling out this Sunday and are staying at Chalet Xantal. Thanks for all your info - really helpful. I%26#39;m wondering if you could answer a few more questions for us? We are going for the first time and are not really sure what to expect.
Did you have to pay to leave your things in Hotel Xantel and did you leave your ski%26#39;s and boots there overnight?
We will have six children with us, and we%26#39;re worried that they won%26#39;t manage the 20 min walk (at least not later in the week anyway!). Do you think that we would be able to easily arange a taxi / mini bus ?
Also, can you remember whether or not there was a video / dvd player there, and did you have access to any sort of fridge to keep your own drinks in?
No worries, sorry i didnt reply earlier...you may have found out already or discovered the Andorran internet in the hotel ;-)
Leaving your kit at the Xantel locker room is FOC. Its a little dingy but it does the job.
Taxi%26#39;s are a pretty rare beast in El Tarter, or at least they were in the week before christmas, picked up in line with the holiday season. I dont think there is any easy way of getting hold of one, they just appear.
To make the walk easier you can cut through/around the Xantal complex and then up a long but more gentle slope which brings you out at %26#39;Vintage%26#39; Bar/Club next to a little chapel, you just go left and then right. On the road below the chalet the last left, which takes you upto where they are building the chalets in front of Xantal, there is also a stairway that cuts up to the top road. so its a bit of a shortcut though beware as the bottom flight has no rail so could be dodgy with kids.
There is a dvd player which we managed to link up into the chalets sound system. this will make a change from the tv that is there as it is French and Spanish. Ok if you can speak / understand the language but i imagine the kids wont be too pleased ;-)
Fridge wise, there is one in the kitchen which you can use but remember you will lose access to it when the chalet host is out of the building , which can be most of the day. After one week we were pretty well in with the host and he was easier hanging around at the chalet, es-pecially on the christmas week as he was very busy looking after us, and a little home sick., so we had more or less the run of the kitchen.
I think the company rule is %26#39;no access%26#39; unless with the host as there were issues at the start of season with people taking stuff that was budgeted for the rest of the holiday (and in some cases the season) so it was decided to play dead on the rules.
It all depends, i guess with there just being yourselves there they may be more flexible.
Anyway, hope that helps. Have a great time and say hello to everyone from Anthony Estelle and Greg
Cheers
Anthoyn
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Thanks for the info. We%26#39;re looking forward to it, especially as there is some snow forecast for this week! Will say hello to everyone for you.
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