In February 2024 we made a big step as a family: we took our first snowboarding trip with our son. Happily, it was a fantastic success.
Becoming parents and moving out of Austria had severely limited our ability to snowboard as regularly as we had once done so it felt wonderful to be back on the slopes and back on a snowboard. I had missed it so much and even though in the last five years I have introduced my son to longboarding, he is so good that he is actually now far better than I am, there is nothing quite like being out on the mountains with a board strapped to your feet, gliding through the powdery snow.
Happily, the little boy took to the slopes and the snow instantly and by the end of the week was a bonafide snowboarder. Thankfully, this means we are now set to be a family of snowboarders, all three of us on the mountain together.
If you are interested in snowboarding with children, here is a quick guide to planning a car-free family friendly ski/snowboarding holiday in Innsbruck.
Travel
We travelled to Innsbruck from Berlin by train. As we were fortunate enough to be able to purchase first class tickets this was an incredibly comfortable journey with just one transfer in Munich. The entire journey took just six hours and, with the beautiful views out of our train windows and stacks of books and games, went by very quickly. It is best to book seats in advance so you can ensure you sit with your group. As we travelled during the school half term it was very busy on our train and I felt so relieved to know that our seating was sorted.
Accommodation
Staying somewhere cosy and comfortable is so important on a ski/snowboarding trip because you will be out in the cold all day and be so grateful for a cosy place to bed down in the evening. On this trip we had a brilliant stay at an Airbnb which had everything we needed whilst also being just a ten minute walk through Innsbruck city centre to catch the city bus each morning up to the slopes.
Innsbruck Welcome Card
This will enable you to buy various forms of ski pass to enter the slopes around Innsbruck. We opted to stick to just one location on this, our first trip with our child so we opted for Muttereralm which research had told us was a family friendly resort.
Innsbruck City
In the evenings, once we had come down from the mountain we really enjoyed looking around the beautiful city of Innsbruck. It is ancient, and picturesque and I highly recommend taking a trip there at least once in one's life. One evening we celebrated my husband's birthday with a beautiful dinner in Das Schindler.
On the way home from Innsbruck to Berlin we stopped off in Munich for a few days of exploring the Bavarian capital. Notes on that trip will come in a subsequent post.