pros / cons -- vail valley

Here are couple of things for you to know if you ever come to visit the beautiful Rockies. 

PROS

+ Really nice people. Everyone wants to get to know more about you since you're not from here. You're kinda exotic here.
+ Au pair community is little, but on the other hand we are really close to each other and everyone knows each other well.
+ Weather (unlike Finland, Colorado is very sunny and relatively warm)
+ Active community, as in everyone is very active, sports is very big part of everyone's lives (especially skiing in winter, hiking & biking in summer)
+ Healthy living!!! Love it. If you wanna stay in shape or even lose weight like I have, come to the Rockies. 
+ International community ! Again ... LOVE. You meet people from all over the world because they come skiing or work here. I've met people (other than au pairs) from Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Australia and Canada just to name a few. 
+ Absolutely beautiful scenery. Can't imagine how it is to go back home since I love these mountains.
+ A lot of people here during the ski season which makes it more fun at the bars, on the slopes, everywhere. Just on Sun I met a ski instructor in Vail who was half Finnish and he spoke Finnish to me. WHAT!!
CONS

- The valley is so small, there is not much to do.
- Distance between my home and Vail / Eagle is big, you always need a car. The transportation is not good (only in Vail Village / Beaver Creek ski resorts have a working transportation)
- Most of the nice people that you meet here are from somewhere else, and it sucks. If you really like someone then you find out that he lives in NYC or someplace far away, it's so sad.
- Weather (pretty bad snow storms sometimes, makes everything worse, and it can be very unpredictable). The highway will be closed on a bad weather, and if you had to go somewhere, you can't , just have to wait. 
- Distance from the nearest big city is kinda too much. It's about 2h drive on a good weather. If you have a car, that's great but if you don't there's only a couple buses running to Denver everyday.
- Vail-Eagle airport is close but it's about double the price to fly from there than from Denver.
- Vail is expensive. That's what they say but I don't even notice it too much anymore. 
- Getting here makes you little out of breath. It's common since we're on a very high altitude, and any sports you do, you'll get tired earlier if you're not used to this. Took me a while to get used to it, and still sometimes on a treadmill I can't run as much as I could back home. 
- During the off-season (after closing before summer) this place totally dies. The hotels close for a while and everyone's gone, that's a good time to have a vacation someplace else. Been invited to Texas and DC already but we'll see.


If there's any questions about this, just leave a comment! And yes, this is just my opinion of this place, everyone gets to decide wheather they like it or not : ) Hope everyone has a great day today !! I'll have to start writing some stupid school stuff ..... KMN.