Las Vegas & our wedding

We managed to get a great deal to Las Vegas, so decided to pop down for a weekend. We flew down on Saturday morning - it's only a 2 1/2 hour flight - so we were there by lunchtime. Time for a spot of shopping before we checked in to our hotel, the Excalibur, on the strip. Not a flash hotel, but the price was right! The Excalibur is done up like a castle, with turrets and things. I hunted out the Mr Cashman slot machine and promptly lost $5.

A couple of our friends actually booked the same weekend in Vegas, and they arrived Saturday night. We had a few drinks in our room, thanks to the cheap American alcohol (I may have mentioned that before?!) - a bottle of Jim Beam for $11.99, thanks very much! They came and met us and we went out to a fantastic piano bar in New York New York. There were two grand pianos set up, facing each other, and they took written requests. These guys could play anything! They were fantastic. We stayed there for a while and then headed over to the Irish pub, also in NYNY, where they had a great Irish band playing, and even a woman doing a jig! Andrew and I called it a night about 12.30 or so, as we'd been up since 6am that morning, and the others stayed out.

Sunday morning Andrew and I got up to get ready to get married! We only decided the week before to do it, it was a good opportunity since we were going to Vegas anyway. We wanted something really low stress, and this was it! It was just the two of us, so it was really nice and personal - we picked our own music, we had Lionel Richie "You Are" (you are the sun, you are the rain.....) at the beginning, and then Marvin Gaye "How Sweet It Is" at the end.

Afterwards we went and picked up the girls and went to the Las Vegas sign for some more photos - the quintessential Vegas wedding photo! Then Andrew and Kerri wanted to go on the rides at the top of the Stratosphere tower, so we drove up there, and Lindsey and I decided to grab a drink while we waited. I hadn't even had any water since we left the hotel at 11am - and now it was about 1.30pm. Parched, we walked up to the bar, me still in my wedding dress, and ask for two glasses of water, and Lindsey ordered a beer. Next thing you know, the bartender is refusing me a glass of water (after pouring it, made a big show of taking it back and tipping it out), as I don't have any ID on me! I know he was doing his job, but he didn't have to be a bastard. He could've still been polite, but chose to take the other route - not nice. Needless to say, I wanted to get out of there, but had to wait for the others to finish their rides.

By the time they met up with us I wanted out of my dress, so we went to the hotel, got changed, and then out for lunch - to one of my fave places, The Cheesecake Factory! It's the third time I've been (San Francisco & Seattle) and it's always good, and they have such a huge menu that it's easy to please everyone! We all had a great meal, with cheesecake to take out, and then relaxed back at the hotel for a bit before going to Mandalay Bay for the Lion King. I've seen it twice on the stage before, but none of the others had - it's so good! So well done, the make-up and costumes are amazing. Timon, Pumba and Za-Zu are fantastic - they're my faves! Afterwards we had a quick flutter at the Luxor before heading to bed.

Monday morning and it was time for a bit more shopping and then some people watching along the Strip - Vegas has the best people watching in the world I think! There are so many different types of people, it's fascinating. We met up with the others for an early dinner before heading to the airport - we went to T.I. for their buffet - it was pretty average and we didn't feel it was worth the money. There are much better buffets to be had in Vegas, so we'll remember that for next time! By the time we landed in Vancouver it was midnight, and we were welcomed by - you guessed it - rain. Ah, home again!

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!