http://www.kelandjon.com/ en jon_wright@mac.com Copyright 2010 2010-07-18T20:42:16+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/an_alpine_sunset http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/an_alpine_sunset#When:20:42:16Z It’s very hard to do the sunsets over Whistler Mountain any justice with our rather woeful camera skills. We’ve tried our best with this view from our balcony, just as the sun disappears behind a distant mountain. It’s not perfect as it took a bit of fiddling with afterwards to bring some of the foreground details out, but it’ll do. This area of Canada is on virtually the same latitude as the UK, so the days are the same length, though the light always fades a little earlier up here due to the mountains. Home, Travel, 2010-07-18T20:42:16+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/alta_lake http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/alta_lake#When:19:35:27Z Alta Lake is one of three that surround Whistler Mountain. The walk around it is absolutely beautiful, with crystal clear water and clean fresh air, as well as stunning views. Some of the homes built around the lake made us green with envy! Most of them run into a few million dollars though. Kel took some really great pictures. Travel, 2010-07-18T19:35:27+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/summertime_snow http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/summertime_snow#When:09:57:47Z Time to travel to the top of Whistler Mountain today, taking the 25 minute long gondola ride up to the summit. The mountain tops in the area are still covered in snow, which is very unusual for this time of year. As usual wherever you go in the world these days the locals are saying the weather patterns have gone nuts. It’s been a very cold summer up until a couple of weeks ago and now the temperatures are reaching record highs. Accordingly, we were able to dress in shorts and t-shirts to visit he top of the mountains even though they were still deep in snow. See the picture of me looking like I should be freezing to death just to prove it :0) It was a little cooler up top and I doubt we could have managed more than an hour up there without getting chilly. Never the less we were still standing in the snow, above the clouds, dressed in our summer gear. Surreal. From Whistler Mountain we took the Peak 2 Peak cable car ride over to Blackcomb Mountain, Whistlers slightly taller neighbour. The most un-nerving statistic about the ride was that it has the worlds longest unsupported cable span. A total of 1.88 miles of cable with no towers! The views were stunning though. On the way back from Blackcomb we managed to catch one of only two glass bottomed cable cars. The picture above is of Kel’s feet through to the ground a very, very long way below. As always more pictures of the day are in our photo albums. Travel, Celebrations, 2010-07-17T09:57:47+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/warm_wonderful_whistler_mountain http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/warm_wonderful_whistler_mountain#When:13:21:51Z We’ve found a new favourite place :o) First on our list of things to do today was sorting out the extension to our stay at the Westin Whistler. When the original booking was made it was on a special offer, so we received an upgrade to a Junior Suite. Kel rang reservations and they told him we would have to pay full price to stay in our room for the additional nights. The rack rate was way to much though, so we had to find out if we could negotiate some sort of deal. In the end we decided to downgrade our room. The only difference between the ‘lesser’ room and the Suite we were occupying was not having a separate bedroom from the main living area. We nipped out to Starbucks to make use of the free WiFi and discovered a special offer on the Westin website - book two nights and get the third free - which would make the downgrade affordable. Armed with this information we approached Guest Services and spoke to a really helpful guy called Daniel. He showed us the room we would be downgraded too, which was better in many ways as it had a King Bed and balcony with lovely mountain views. We decided to go for it and extended our stay. Then another bonus, Daniel very kindly assigned us an Executive Suite! It’s bigger than the Junior Suite we started with, including a balcony and mountains views! Amazing. So in the end we finished up with an upgrade on an upgrade and paying less than we first started with. We have been lucky on the Canadian leg of this trip :o) So we moved our luggage to the new room and set off on a walk around Lost Lake. Several exhausted miles later we returned to the hotel for a sunbathe by the hotel pool. Later we ate dinner at Earls, absolutely beautiful meal on the terrace in the sunshine below the mountains. Travel, 2010-07-16T13:21:51+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/the_westin_resort_spa_whistler http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/the_westin_resort_spa_whistler#When:17:16:54Z As mentioned in my previous entry the Westin in Whistler is ruddy wonderful! We had another - not sure what’s going on this trip - upgrade, this time to a Suite. It’s like a London one bedroom apartment but with amazing views of the forest and mountains. The Hotel is a total and utter escape from the real world, we can only imagine what it’s like in the height of snowy winter. Our room even has a push button fireplace! We love it so much we hope cut down our final few days in Vancouver - which we had already extended - and transfer those dates to Whistler. Kel came here nearly a decade ago and it’s changed beyond recognition, no doubt due to the Winter Olympics held here earlier this year. Travel, 2010-07-15T17:16:54+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/la_to_vancouver_to_whistler_mountain http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/la_to_vancouver_to_whistler_mountain#When:10:10:05Z As a result of our horrific nights sleep the night before, we canceled our final night at the Wilshire Grand (ha!) and took the LA Metro - risking our lives in the process - out to the airport to stay at the Radisson, SO much better. Another early start led us onto the Air Alaska flight to Vancouver. As some of you probably figured out by now, we had free WiFi! Woohoo! It was a bit of a novelty updating Facebook, Twitter and sending emails at 48,000 feet. I’m sure once it’s a standard service in a couple of years time people will be annoyed it’s yet another place we can’t escape being contacted though :o) We landed in Vancouver on time and after a quick lunch boarded to bus to Whistler Mountain, a resort a couple of hours away. The trip up there was stunning to say the least, it’s called ‘Sea to Sky’ and it really is. The journey takes you from the turquoise Pacific Ocean up thousands of feet to the clear air of the mountains. On arrival we were dropped off at our hotel, the Westin Resort and Spa Whistler, a very, very pleasant surprise indeed considering our last hotel the Flight Centre booked for us. More details to follow….. Travel, 2010-07-14T10:10:05+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/around_la http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/around_la#When:21:09:48Z After a TERRIBLE nights sleep due to a group of noisy Koreans making noise in all the rooms surrounding us until the early hours, we spent our last morning in LA taking a walk (something none of the locals do) around Downtown. The photos I’ve added show the Disney Theatre, used a lot in TV shows, a building that was actually used in Flash Forward as the FBI headquarters but is really the Water and Energy office building for LA, not quite so glamorous. Finally we stumbled across the LAPD complete with an LAPD cop car parked outside, Kel got very excited :o) General, Travel, 2010-07-13T21:09:48+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/hello_desperate_housewives http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/hello_desperate_housewives#When:14:43:33Z We woke up to our first clear sunny morning in LA today. Incredibly powerful sunshine even though the actual air tempeerature wasn’t very high. After breakfast we hopped onto the Metro out to Universal City, which is where Universal Studios have their theme park and ‘back lot’ for making movies and TV shows. Kel bought us some queue jump passes which meant we could sail past everyone and get on to the rides first. :0) First stop was the Studio Tour, you climb on board a trolley and are driven around the back lot by a tour guide. It was great fun, highlights being seeing the start of Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives (we couldn’t go all the way down as they were actually filming the first episode of the new season at the time. Next we passed by the ‘Grandview’ set, which is used for hundreds of TV shows, films and adverts. It’s probably most recognisable for beinng the main town set in Ghost Whisperer. In fact Jim and Melindas house in Ghost Whisperer is actually on the Wisteria Lane set. Next up we drove through Amity which was the set for Jaws. It turns out the same set was used as ‘Cabot Cove’ in Murder She Wrote. There were some unexpected fun moments on the tour. We drove onto a subway set, moments later there was an extremely realistic earthquake which destroyed everything around us. I took some video which I hope to get uploaded over the next few days. After that was the King Kong 3D experience, which was amazing. The trolley entered a huge 3D screen which surrounded us. Then King Kong popped up and started fighting a T Rex. On the trolley we felt like we were right in the middle of it, being bashed and thrown around. Loved it. Then it was back into the hot weather outside where we rode the Jurrassic Park ride and The Mummy rides. Travel, 2010-07-13T14:43:33+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/los_angeles http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/los_angeles#When:00:12:01Z Following a slightly more restful night, we ate a hearty American breakfast and headed out on the Metro to Hollywood to catch the City Sightseeing bus tour. The Metro station opens up onto the ‘Walk of Fame’ sidewalk with all the celebrities names embedded in stars on it. It was all a bit tacky but it’s tourist entertainment so that’s the way it’s going to be. The bus took us through the Sunset Strip and into Beverly Hills then dropped us off on Rodeo Drive. The cafe we bought a quick drink from was brilliantly named :0) The next bus we were due to take had broken down, so we had to wait another 40 minutes for a replacement to turn up. Once it did we headed down to Santa Monica beach (where Baywatch used to be filmed). This time the bus driver came to a halt 2 stops short of our destination and told us he was finished for the day, could we walk down to the beach and catch the next bus! We were very disappointed with Santa Monica, it’s very dirty and looks nothing like it does on TV. There is a pier that sells nothing but junk food and creaks under the weight of all the obese people stuffing their faces. There is a nicer area a bit further up the coast, but there isn’t a bus stop there. The next bus arrived 30 minutes late! We were a bit fed up at wasting so much time by this point but the second half of the tour was much better. We drove through Beverly Hills again, then on into Hollywood, finally seeing the infamous sign (from a distance). We saw most of the TV studios, quite funny to see where the cast of Glee go to work. It all seemed quite normal. So all in all, while it was nice enough, about 80% of the tour was ‘look, there’s a shopping mall’ and ‘look there’s a shopping mall where Brad Pitt bought shampoo’ with endless driving through identical streets. Also, they kept calling everything ‘the best in the world’ when it quite clearly wasn’t. The American lady in front of us rolled her eyes a few times. Travel, 2010-07-12T00:12:01+00:00 http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/leaving_for_la_la_land http://www.kelandjon.com/index.php/life/view/leaving_for_la_la_land#When:01:34:32Z After a jet lag induced sleepless night for the pair of us it was an early start to catch our flight to Los Angeles. We took the Sky Train to the Airport which was quick and easy. What wasn’t so simple was the security procedures required to travel to the States. First we had to fill in some landing cards (we were given a lollipop by the security guy for doing this though!) then we used the ‘self-check-in’ desk which asked us for nearly every detail about our lives. The fun part really came when we had to go through passport control. Very stone faced inspectors asked us all sorts of questions, double checking our dates and why we were travelling to LA. For the first time ever we felt slightly uncomfortable with the invasion of privacy thing. We had our fingerprints scanned, presumably to be stored on some US database. We know we’d rather feel safe flying and that if you’ve done nothing wrong it shouldn’t matter at all, but we couldn’t help but feel like we were now being watched where ever we went. Electronically. My iPad continues to be a conversation starter, with no less than three people having a chat to us as soon as I whipped it out. An unexpected bonus in the flight was a fantastically clear view of Mount St Helens - the volcano that erupted a few years back - amazing to see it from above. Bizarrely, upon landing at LA we went through exactly the same stress as at Vancouver, Kels luggage appeared immediately and mine was last. Literally the very last, it landed on the belt about five minutes after all the others. Travel, 2010-07-11T01:34:32+00:00