Scuol<\/a>, in the Inn Valley where you would have thought it would be the easiest thing in the world to extend the railway towards Innsbruck, but no, the line stops just a few kilometres shy of the border. My own theory is that the Austrians didn’t want the Voralbergers to get too cosy to the Swiss and avoided making it easy to pass between the Voralberg and Switzerland. Around the time of significant expansion of rail and road networks the 80% of the people of Voralberg did actually vote to become part of Switzerland, but were prevented from doing so. They still speak an Alemmanic dialect more like Swiss German than Austrian German. The Arlberg ski resorts are not all in the Voralberg, Lech and Zurs are, but St Anton is in the Tyrol.<\/p>\nAnyway, I digress. if you do want to take the railway from Switzerland to St Anton, there is a direct service from Zurich which takes from about 2 hours 20 minutes. The train runs 5 times a day, and there are other times you can travel, but you need to change trains. The earliest train is at 8.40am, and the earliest train for which you do not need to change is 10.40am. Certainly makes St Anton do-able for a long weekend if you can find somewhere to stay.<\/p>\n
And why would you you choose to go to St Anton, you may ask. The answer is that it is quite simply the best ski resort in the world. Not as extensive as the large French circuits but bags of variety and plenty of off-piste. The nearby resorts of Lech and Zurs used\u00a0to be connected to the St Anton pistes, but in recent years that run can only be done off-piste. Not sure why, it was one fabulous circuit when it was in place, but\u00a0neighbouring resorts\u00a0are still easy enough to get\u00a0to by bus or taxi. Where St Anton really scores over the French resorts, however, is the nightlife. Not as wild as it used to be, and not as crazy as Mayrhofen or Ischgl, but still pretty good. A few beers at the end of the day in Taps, the Krazy Kanguruh and\/or the Mooserwirt (which reputedly sells more beer than any other bar in Austria) \u00a0followed by\u00a0a crawl around \u00a0Base Camp, Underground on the Piste, the Piccadilly and\u00a0the Kandahar makes for a great night out.<\/p>\n
![\"Crazy](\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7041\/6985409885_a284a86058.jpg\")
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Of the Swiss resorts, probably only Grindelwald, Verbier and Zermatt can match St Anton for\u00a0range of\u00a0slopes, scenic setting\u00a0and\u00a0decent apres ski. Zermatt shades St Anton for fine eating,\u00a0\u00a0and nothing compares with the splendid views of the Matterhorn that dominate Zermatt, but it is more expensive and not as good for beginners. For me the main advantage of Verbier is it is French-speaking, and is probably the best of all the resorts for hard core off-piste. Grindelwald has a quieter\u00a0(but reasonable)\u00a0night-life and apres ski scene and fewer challenging off-piste runs, but is blessed with the awesome North Face of the Eiger dominating the town and its slopes.<\/p>\n
Finally, on the subject of driving to ski resorts in Austria, Lech is about the same journey time as St Anton – you exit before the Arlberg Tunnel. Ischgl is probably easier\u00a0to get to than Samnaun, the Swiss resort it shares the Silvretta Arena with, and takes about another half an hour to get to after you pass St Anton (turn right at Pians – it is clearly signposted).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some old friends from the Hellfins Scuba Diving Club have been on a week’s ski holiday in St Anton, so\u00a0I thought\u00a0I would pop across to see them. Surprisingly it is quicker to get to St Anton by car from Basel than it is to get\u00a0to some resorts in Switzerland. The road trip is a doddle, … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “St Anton”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1078,"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oatridge.co.uk\/nic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Above](\"http:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7042\/6985408777_83107433b2.jpg\")
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