In which Layla and Roz travel by train, ski lift, paddleboard and trampoline

By Layla

After a frustrating 3 hour delay at the train station, finally we were off! Champagne glasses clinked in the observation car as our overnight VIArail train from Jasper to Vancouver started trundling through the Rockies. Roz and I both dream romantically of long distance train travel so we were fizzing with excitement. First lesson: people don't sit on their allocated seats but rather in the glass observation car or coffee car, where the views of the mountains were very cool. Second observation: there are drinks and snacks aplenty. Third: try not to get the late seating for dinner unless you want to eat at 10pm. Fourth: if you go to bed right after dinner, and are placed next to a snorer, there may be no sleep for you. Essentially, we had a fabulous time on the train. The views of the Rocky Mountains were spectacular, and we loved the novelty of sit-down meals on the train. Shame about Roz's lack of sleep. In the middle of the night she apparently stumbled from her berth to an empty cabin to escape the snorer... Only for a poor crew member to climb into that cabin bed in hope of a quick nap! It was not a restful night for her, and the arrival to Vancouver was a bit delayed, and it took ages to get our bags, but soon we were off on the Skytrain for a mad dash across town to the pick up point for our bus to our next destination: Whistler! (To add to the excitement, I'd failed to book it in advance...)

Whistler turns out to be less than 2 hours away by bus and we found it a surprisingly delightful little town. While Banff and Jasper felt like trading posts set up to tend to the adventurers passing through, Whistler is a town built with intent. The main business is skiing - though mountain biking is big. The town itself centers around an attractive pedestrianized shopping/restaurant precinct called the "Village Stroll", from which hiking and biking trails spread out, and a gondola sweeps you to the top of looming Whistler Mountain. After dumping our stuff in our pleasant hotel, we leapt in a taxi to Wayside Park, on the banks of pretty Lake Alta, and hired paddleboards. Next up: a delightful hour of paddling along a sunny lake surrounded by mountains. Followed by guacamole and chips on a golf club patio. Hooray. 

We had a tasty Indian meal that night and finished up with a jacuzzi which inexplicably was right next to our hotel room bed! An excellent introduction to Whistler. Then to bed - much appreciated after Roz's train sleep fiasco. 

The next morning we hired bicycles and set off along the Valley Trail, 40km of paved-ish walking and bike trails from Whistler. It was really lovely. We cycled past lake after lake, under the scenic mountain skyline, and stopped for lunch on an extremely scenic restaurant patio overlooking Green Lake and lots of mountains. After lots more cycling we rested at a little beautifully manicured park/beach area and watched the locals frolic in the sun, before cycling back to town, returning our bikes, and getting on a bus to what seemed the middle of nowhere. 

When we got off at a deserted roadside I admit I had my doubts about Roz's planning... But then we turned a corner and found ourselves far from touristy Whistler, at two great attractions: Whistler Brewing Company, and the main focus of our expedition, Bounce! A quick fueling at WBC (and a game of Battleships), then we entered what can only be described as a trampoline extravaganza. We were admitted to a huge, high-ceiling end room with padded walls and about 10 trampolines. Little ones. Huge Olympic-ish one. Ones angled on the wall at 45 degrees. It was sort of set up like a skateboard thing, and clearly many of its customers were skateboarders. Luckily for the first hour we were its only customers and we bounced up and down and around with delight. Then proper people arrived and showed us how it was really done, flying through the air, leaping from trampoline to trampoline, running along the vertical walls like they were in a video game, and essentially being rather cooler than Roz and I whose main daredevil trick was a seat drop (bouncing on one's bottom...). 

We loved watching the cool kids, and eventually I was able to drag Roz away (having not done fun stuff like this as a kid, her delight and attention span for these things are virtually unlimited!). We returned to the lovely bar for beer tasting flights and copious packets of crisps, before returning to town for tacos, Netflix, and weird in-room jacuzzi to avoid trampoline-induced muscle pain...

Said pain was of course inevitable, but regardless, the next morning we set off up the mountain. Whistler has tons of gondolas and ski lifts for ski season, and during the summer you can go up for views and hiking and restaurants at the top of the mountain. The first gondola took half an hour, enclosed and pretty, and we had a mini-hike at the top before taking a second lift, this one a proper ski lift, to the very summit of Whistler Mountain. We both found this inordinately exciting, feet dangling as we climbed high above the glaciers below, before stepping out to 360 degree views of beautiful snow-capped peaks. 

We decided to do a little hike to the absolute peak. Halfway through what turned out to be a bit of a chilly rock scramble, Roz pointed out that her sprained ankle hadn't magically recovered, and we made it back to the ski lift without doing anything too crazy. On the way back down our ski lift malfunctioned and we had an exciting few minutes dangling immobile in the air before the power returned, we made it back, and headed on our next lift: the peak to peak gondola between two mountains - apparently the longest of its kind. We soared across the sky, with fantastic views. Then, noting the time, decided to skip the hiking options and head down the mountain on two open air and equally exciting chair lifts. What a really cool experience. 

We had lunch at a delicious restaurant, Elements, before dashing to the purpose of our hurrying: all aboard the Rocky Mountaineer from Whistler to Vancouver! We'd extravagantly splashed out on this train experience, essentially the posh version of VIArail, and were unimpressed by it in terms of poshness (plastic cutlery and aeroplane food did not dazzle) but the views were an absolute delight, moving from mountain scenery to forest to a huge sparkling lake to the beautiful Vancouver skyline. We sat in the outdoor observation car and loved it. 

By 8pm we were ensconced in our Vancouver home - a very cool apartment on the 32nd floor of an apartment block with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city. And from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to the cool Gastown area where we settled down in a fab hipster wine/cheese establishment called Salt for wine flights, cheese and dessert. And a horribly inconvenient suspicion that we want to live in Vancouver!