Messages posted by : AllyG
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Hi Ashman,
It's a pleasure to meet you :D. I hope you make some new friends on here and find something interesting to read. Ally |
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Sm4sh, I had a look for you on the First Choice website. They have a holiday to Mayrhofen on your original date (15th Jan 2011) for about £400 per person including flights from Gatwick, transfers, and accommodation in the B&B hotel Obermair (which seems fine - I checked on Trip Advisor). Total price with the beginners learn to ski package is £726 per person. The admin charge to change your resort is £35 per person (as Snowbandit said) which makes a total extra of £108 per person compared with your original holiday to Borovets. I phoned First Choice to check what was in the beginners learn to ski package in Mayrhofen and it was 6 days ski and boot hire, 6 days tuition 4 hours per day, but they tried to tell me lift passes were extra at £162 each. This I do not believe. I looked at prices of ski school in Mayrhofen and the skiscule-mayrhofen only charges 169 euros for beginners lessons including ski hire. So I suppose if First Choice continued with this ridiculous price you could sort out lessons etc. yourself. There are masses of ski resorts with First Choice you could switch to. I just picked Mayrhofen because it is a world class resort and it has a very lively apres ski scene (which I had a feeling was one of the things you were after!). It is good for beginners, but not excellent, but still much better than Borovets, I am quite sure. I have never been to Mayrhofen but plenty of other J2skiers have, and it sounds like a great place. It is obviously up to you and your friends whether you decide to switch or not, but I know I would. I only went to Borovets 7 years ago because I had a ridiculously cheap price - £820 for myself and my 2 children including flights, accommodation, ski hire, lessons, and lift passes. But Borovets is not particularly cheap any more. Ally |
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Well,
What an interesting sub-topic this has turned out to be! I have had a quick read through the on-line literature on altitude sickness this morning. There is quite a lot of it. I think the most helpful phrase was 'the causes of altitude sickness are not fully understood'! It seems to be partly due to the dryness of the air, increasing the likelihood of dehydration and nose-bleeds, and partly due to the drop in air pressure resulting in a drop in the actual number of oxygen molecules available to us in each breath (although apparently the percentage of oxygen in the air remains the same up to 70,000 feet). I have observed the drop in air pressure by its effect on things like my roll-on deodorant (the ball fell out), pre-packed food in the shop where the plastic bag hugely over inflates etc. Less oxygen available makes the heart work harder, increasing one's pulse and respiratory rate. I have noticed this myself. Running up the stairs in the apartment in the resort makes me quite out of breath. And presumably it is the reduction in oxygen that causes the mental confusion. What I didn't know, though, is that altitude can cause swelling of the face, hands and feet and a weight gain of 4-12 Lbs. I also didn't know that it can affect the medication you take - for example, warfarin and other blood thinners may be more active at high altitude. There are a number of other effects listed as well, like insomnia (I tend to wake up in the middle of the night), drowsiness (another problem I have in the evening), and then rather frightening more severe reactions (which I hope only occur at very high altitudes) like fever, vomiting and even death :shock: I think myself the nosebleeds are caused by a combination of the dry air and your heart working harder. Apparently there is a high concentration of blood vessels just beneath the lining of the nose, which can bleed relatively easily. The general advice to reduce the symptoms of altitude sickness is a) Acclimatize yourself gradually to the altitude (not really practical on a ski holiday, apart from ski-ing the lower runs first) b) Cut down on your alcohol intake. c) Drink plenty of water throughout the day - at least 6-8 glasses d) Use a humidifier in your room, or find another way of increasing the relative humidity of your room (like drying things on the radiator I suppose, or boiling saucepans). http://www.answers.com/topic/altitude-sickness Ally |
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I hate to give you more bad news, but that hotel is pretty awful as well. A friend of mine stayed there last year, and she found it so bad she couldn't even describe it because she couldn't bear to think about it. Mind you, she is used to staying in 4 star hotels in the U.K. :D We stayed in the hotel Mura, next to the Samokov, a few years ago and it was pretty bad. The blankets had holes in, no-one apart from us ate any of the food (we were really short of money and quite interested in native Bulgarian food made mainly of potatoes and cheese) and one was supposed to put the used toilet paper in a bin in the bathroom (which was next to the bedroom). Of course the Mura may have improved since then. What I am trying to say is that I'm sure there are much better places around which don't cost a lot more. If all you have to pay is the admin charges Snowbandit was talking about, to change the resort if you stay with First Choice, then I think you should at least consider other places. Ally |
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The altitude definitely increases the chance of a nose bleed, but I don't know about the effect of moisture. When I was in Zambia, which is on a plateau 6000 feet up, several people had nose bleeds. Tony, even in the resort one is usually at a higher altitude than when at home in the U.K. For example, I live only about a mile from the sea, at 100 metres, whereas many ski resorts are at 2000 metres or so. I think the altitude while ski-ing does affect one's ears, and as well as that, so does the aeroplane on the way out there and back. Flying with a heavy cold is really not a good idea unless you take a powerful decongestant first (we used to use otrivine nose drops). Kate, I don't think manflu is caused by ski-ing at altitude :D, but it is amazingly annoying when one gets ill on holiday. Ally |
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Well, that's much better than the 1 euro = 1 pound situation we had before |
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Snowbandit,
Sm4sh said it was First Choice in the other thread on 'what if there's no snow?'. |
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A snow plough is the upside down V shape you make with your skis (in the shape of a plough - if you know what that looks like). It is pretty much universally used to teach people to ski - to learn how to stop and turn, before you move on to more complicated ways of stopping and turning.
Ally |
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