Andorra après ski. What it's really like.

Arinsal après ski is welcoming, family-friendly and unpretentious — the bars in the village centre fill up with skiers and snowboarders fresh off the slopes, the prices stay reasonable, and acoustic guitarists are pretty much guaranteed at some point in the week.

It's one of those resorts where the ski schools end up filming their own end-of-week parodies in the bars, and where pub crawls, karaoke nights and quizzes pull together everyone staying in the village. Easy to find your group, easy to make new friends.

Soldeu après ski has a more relaxed, lived-in feel than the bigger resorts — small enough that you'll bump into the same people across the bars over a week. Table football tournaments, quiz nights, live music sets and the odd resident-instructor band are all part of the mix.

El Tarter, a couple of kilometres down the valley, is home to L'Abarset — Grandvalira's headline outdoor après venue, with international DJs through the afternoon and into the evening. Worth a stop if you fancy a proper party setting at the foot of the slopes.

Pas de la Casa après ski is the liveliest in Andorra by some distance. The bars right at the foot of the pistes get rolling the moment the lifts close and many of them keep going into the early hours — Pas is the resort that genuinely runs from late afternoon through to dawn.

It's the place to head if you want themed nights, on-slope parties and a bit of mischief. Plenty of the bars are decked out with the obligatory pairs of skis and snowboards bolted to the ceiling — a Pas après tradition that never gets old.