Venabu Fjellhotell

family run hotel with delicious food and lots of hot water. Excellent guides for learning to x country ski. Amazing location. Beautiful place. Open fires. Ski in and out. Sauna. Yoga. Everything fab. Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

We stayed for a week at Venabu recently with family and friends, and had a wonderful time. As a group, we stayed in 2 cabins rather than in the hotel, and booked everything directly. The first thing to mention is that our flight to Oslo was cancelled at the last minute, and we had to take a later flight the same day. We ended up arriving at Venabu very late, after midnight. All the staff we contacted at Venabu, for advice, were super helpful, and someone stayed up late to show us to our cabins. We were also left provisions in the cabins - milk, bread, ham, cheese etc - as we'd missed dinner and the supermarket had closed hours before. It was really appreciated and made a big difference to the start of our holiday. Our cabin (Haugbu North) was cosy, warm and comfortable, with a well equipped kitchen. There were some minor flaws like a shortage of wardrobe space and the lack of any mirrors close to a plug socket (other than the bathroom), but these were just details and didn't affect our stay. Also perhaps the cabin would have benefitted from an additional bathroom - our cabin was for 7 people with one bathroom - but again that wasn't really a problem as there were only 3 of us! This was our first experience of cross country skiing and we really enjoyed it. The set up at Venabu is great and the trails start very close to the hotel. We had a private lesson on the first day, and did our own thing the other days. We also rented snowshoes from the hotel and had great fun exploring in the deep snow! Although we stayed in a cabin, we used some of the facilities at the hotel - the atmosphere felt very relaxed and every member of staff we encountered was so friendly. We loved the special Norwegian dinner on the Wednesday evening! Venabu is in a beautiful setting, and we came home feeling very relaxed and refreshed. We'd definitely like to return again in the future