weekend at whistler

hi everybody

As promised this blog entry should be a little more exciting. You may recall back when we were in Germany we went to Freiburg to stay with Scott and Katinka (the scotts went to uni together), we have been repaying the favour. They are on there way to NZ to work for a year or so, and have a month to fill in Canada and the states on the way. They drove up from Seattle but hadn't considered being held up at the border, and then got a bit lost so didn't arrive till 11.30pm last tuesday. I showed them around on the wednesday but had to work on thursday and friday. Its been great Katinka absolutely hated the food in the USA and was dying to cook, so I didn't have to cook all week what great house guests!

On Saturday we all went to Whistler for the weekend. You may have heard of Whistler it is a ski resort town 2-2.5 hours north of Vancouver. It was a beautiful trip up, with the leave changing colour, and amazing scenery with the distant snow capped mountains, and smaller mountains/hills completely covered in pine trees going right down to the sea. As Whistler is where all the skiing events will be during the 2010 winter Olympics they are currently widening the road so it was road works basically the whole way which was a shame, they got in the way of some great photos. We stopped in Squamish on the way, which is about half way. Had a toilet stop, a coffee and a photo with the giant lumberjack statue. There are a few little clusters of lodges etc before you get right into Whistler village itself which was where we were staying. It is absolutely gorgeous up there! The Village is pedestrian only and looks like a little Alpine village you would see in movies.
In summer the mountains are used for mountain biking, which is why Marsden (the other scott not my scott) wanted to go up there. Unfortunately we missed the mountain biking season by a week, so the lifts weren't going and you couldn't bike on the mountain itself but other tracks were open. On arriving and seeing how beautiful it was we decided to stay an extra night. So on the saturday afternoon we strolled around the village, and that night we ordered pizza and got it delivered (not hotel room service) and watched the ice hockey on tv. On sunday the boys went mountain biking while us girls did some retail therapy (mainly katinka all I bought was a pair of socks as I hadn't packed enough.) While out riding the boys saw some bear poo near the ski lifts at the edge of the village, they didn't tell katinka how close it was because she would have freaked. They didn't see an actual bear, although some ladies walking that they passed said they had. It was kind of weird all the rubbish bins throughout Whistler are bear proof, we figured that they must come down into the village at night in search for food. The guy at the bike rental place said not to worry about the bears there as they are so used to people however feeding and patting weren't recommended.

We stayed at the Best Western Listel Hotel, it was kinda flash but reasonable as it is the low season. They folded the hand towels in the bathroom into a pocket and tucked the flannels in the pocket it looked quite cool. Scott and I have decided to go back up there for Christmas, as there will be snow down at village level then. Unfortunately it won't be as cheap then, and also really busy I finally managed to book us in to the Holiday Inn today. So we are going to have a white christmas wooohoo. So we better learn to snowboard or ski before then. I'm thinking snow boarding will be easier on the knees as as the boots are normal and not at an angle like ski boots. Also other people are less likely to lose an eye no poles.

Well that is probably long enough. I will add a few extra little entries for photos, so far have only sorted scott and katinka's photos, so must get cracking.

Catch you guys later.

love Monique and Scott