Whistler weekend

I'm having a bit of a change of pace - I finished up at my job on November 30th. It was definitely time for a change and to do something different. I don't have another job lined up, I'm just taking a break for a bit, and will start looking for something new and exciting early next year.

This means that I now have every weekend free! One of the reasons I quit was that I needed some balance in my life - Andrew and I were both sick of not having enough time together. And the first weekend in December we took off up to Whistler for the night. There was actually about 12 or so of us that went up. Saturday morning we stopped in Vancouver to rent snowshoes - it was a GORGEOUS day - perfect blue sky, and Vancouver was looking amazing with the snowy mountain backdrop. Then it was up the highway to the mountain. It's about a 2 hour drive from Vancouver, so it's not far.

We got up there and met up with some others for lunch, and then three of us went snowshoeing. It was our first time, so we stuck to groomed trails and it wasn't too bad! We ended up going right around Lost Lake, about 3km in total, not bad for a first effort. You have to lift your feet up higher than normal, so it's a good workout - imagine even more so if you're walking in more ungroomed trails. We had pretty crappy snowshoes, so it would be interesting to see how it would be if we had decent ones. We'll be giving it another go I'd say!

We checked into our hotel and relaxed for a bit - we were staying at the Fairmont Whistler Chateau - a real alpine style hotel right at the base of Blackcomb. We got upgraded to a slopeview room, which overlooked Blackcomb slopes and the pools and hot tubs - pretty cool! We'd bought some wine, and had complimentary chocolates waiting for us, so we were set for a while. You can see the view from our hotel room on the right here.

Our other friends had rented a couple of apartments, so we walked over there and hung out and had some drinks. Everyone was pretty tired, a lot of people had been boarding that day, but we had plenty of laughs. One of the Aussie girls leaves on Wednesday, so it was the last time we'll see her for a while, so it was nice to be all together.

The next morning was pretty leisurely, we checked out at 11am and wandered down to the Village in search of food, and then headed back home. The Vancouver Santa parade was on, so we got stuck in the street in our car not being able to get to our building! 20 minutes later it was OK though and we finally made it inside!