Vancouver & Whistler

While Chuck's mom, Pat,  was here, we decided to take a little trip up to Canada. She really wanted to see Vancouver and we were excited to explore the city a little more!

We left early on Saturday morning with no real plan except to sightsee at Stanley Park (like we did when we took my sister up there) and potentially drive the Sea to Sky Highway depending on the weather.

Around noon we finally arrived in Vancouver and found our way to Stanley Park using only our memories, as we couldn't use our phones without getting charged a whole lot for data usage. This is when we discovered it's really difficult to get anywhere without GPS and that we are basically helpless without our phones.

Anyway. We were pretty hungry so we followed signs to a restaurant that I now can't remember the name of so we'll call it the Stanley Park Restaurant. It was really nice outside so we sat on the deck and had some delicious burgers and fish & chips. We also discovered that Vancouver serves only sweet tea unless you ask for unsweet. This became a whole ordeal for us, as we had advised Pat earlier in the week that in Seattle, there is no such thing as "sweet tea" so therefore no reason to order "unsweet" because the waiter will be confused. So Pat kept getting sweet tea brought to the table, thinking it was unsweet and therefore adding Splenda to it, making it twice as sweet. We laughed pretty hard. All this to say- is anyone besides us surprised that Vancouver serves sweet tea, just like the South?! I didn't know Vancouver had such a sweet tooth. We felt right at home. :)

 

Next, we rented bikes from the same place as last time and took off on the 6 mile ride around the park.  Pat couldn't remember the last time she'd been on a bike but she picked it back up pretty quick and rode like a pro!

 

Unfortunately it was pretty cloudy but it was still a nice ride with some nice views. After the ride, we returned the bikes and made a Starbucks stop before we headed to the Sea to Sky Highway, also known as Highway 99.  Everything we read about the drive on Trip Advisor said this was a must do and I'd have to agree. Although, again, it could have been a little better without all the clouds.

As we drove, we made stops whenever we saw a sign that said "Point of Interest ahead." One of our stops was at Shannon Falls- a waterfall only a short 3-5 minute hike from the parking lot.

 The road kept going and we kept following it, all the way to Whistler. We had heard of Whistler before as some of our friends discussed taking a ski trip up there, but we had no idea what to expect.

 Whistler Village was a pleasant surprise and was totally worth the long drive North of Vancouver. Whistler Village was the host mountain resort for the 2010 Winter Olympics and hosted a lot of the events nearby.

 The Village was so cool- shops, restaurants, hotels, and it all looked brand new. There was a Tough Mudder event nearby earlier in the day Saturday so the place was packed with young people who had come up for the race. We also found out the next day that a friend of ours, one of Chuck's LGO classmates, Jane, was also at Whistler Village at the same time! She's living in Portland while working for Nike on internship but had driven up for the weekend to go skiing. Cue: It's a Small World song.  Chuck and I were bummed that we didn't know at the time because it would have been great to meet up for dinner or drinks with her!

Instead, we found an Irish pub in the Village that was going to have live music and decided to eat dinner and have a couple of drinks. The food and atmosphere were pretty good and the band was awesome. They played mostly country, like some John Denver classics, which was kind of weird for an Irish pub but also awesome.

After our long day of sightseeing and driving, we decided to find a hotel and stay the night in Canada. (We had packed overnight bags just in case.) Whistler was completely booked, so we drove south towards Vancouver. Well, after stopping at about 5-6 different hotels and finding out they were all booked, as well as getting a little lost in Vancouver (again, no GPS = helpless Americans) we decided to just drive back to Seattle even though it was already 1 am. Luckily we had the Super Moon out to light the way home.