Sun, Sea, Snow, and Sand - this is Vancouver

After spending all morning walking through the streets of Vancouver to get to the Sikh festival on Main and 45th Street, we arrived to a crowd of over 100,000 people, all colour coded in Orange and eating the fabulous free Indian food. Pushing through the crowds to get our own helping of the food, we almost felt as if we had been teleported back to India. We watched the parade and as we were standing there, met a guy from London called Neel. He was an Indian himself and was holidaying in Vancouver for 2 weeks as he was thinking of relocating. He invited us to join him on a day trip to Whistler the day after and we accepted.

Whistler is one of the biggest ski resorts in British Columbia. The drive from Vancouver to Whistler is also rated in the top 10 of the best drives in the world. We woke early, jumped onto the skytrain (the new line built just for the olympics) and walked down Robson Street to meet Neel and his friend Angela. He had opted for a nice, comfy black car (typically girl have no idea what type) but we were off on our day road trip. We drove by mountains and lakes, forest and fields and were all excited by the landscape. The mountains were enormous and overpowered us as we passed by. We stopped off at the designated, 'viewpoint' signs and took in the magnificent scenery.

We parked at a waterfall sight and walked through to see a waterfall and then made our way to Whistler. Whistler is a very typical ski resort town, wooden lodges and room for your skiis to stand outside the local MacDonalds. It was home to the Olympics and you can see why, it was amazingly beautiful as a resort, clean and spacious. We touched the snow, which seemed strange to do so considering we were really hot by this time, we played snow angels and considered going up the gondola. It worked out way too expensive for the 4 of us so opted to do a short walk and a slow drive back to Vancouver, via a secret lake view point Angela knew about.

We stood on the edge of this lake and I felt like Pocahontas ready to talk to the animals. No joke, it was really moving, looking out at the sheer volume of snow cap mountains, the sun beaming on my face and the lake below me reflecting the grandeur of what was above it. Truly the Canada I had imagined.

We drove to see the sunset over English Bay, a beautiful palm tree lined beach. We reflected on the amazing day we had, with the ability to see snow and sand in one day. There aren't many places in the world where you are able to do that.

Vancouver is a beautiful place to live, nobody litters here, nobody drops chewing gum on the ground, no graffiti, just a fresh, clean and generally happy place to be.

Today is decision day, deciding whether we are going to take the leap and stay in Vancouver or move back to England. We realised we need to up skill to be able to really understand who we are in the business world. Terry is going to study his project management qualifications and I may study event management. We just need the jobs to match now and we are currently working out where we can get these jobs to compliment the study. Life never stops being interesting ay.