Location, location. You can't beat it. Perched right on the Inner Harbour in Victoria it seems that all roads lead to The Empress. The boats, yachts, skiffs, ferries, kayaks, paddle boards and cruise lines, the sea planes, the buses, the bikes and scooters, the cabs and even the horse drawn carriages are at our front door. And right across the road is the Visitor Centre. And after doing a very very happy dance because we have an IRON at last (who would have t...

Our first round of Whistler fun has come to an end and now we have left our Friendly Guides to do our own thing on Vancouver Island at Victoria.We started the morning with packing and headed down The Aspens hill one last time for a quick breakfast snack at Portobello. We were only gone for 45 minutes and by the time we returned Mindy and Ian had transformed their apartment to its former glory....all the furniture had been returned to its apartment-for-two configu...

Forty-one hours of birthday celebrations! Happy Birthday Mac and thanks to the Aussie friends who started sharing messages in the early hours of the morning here in Canada which sent Mac's phone and iPad into a notifications alert frenzy. (On the bright side The Birthday Boy now knows how to turn off the alert sounds and the keyboard tap!)It certainly ensured that we were off and running for an early celebration. We cranked up the Beatles' White Album an...

Yep, it's true, the Marathon Man took a tumble in Spearhead Drive very early in his run on Monday. Managed to get his foot caught in the loop of his shoelace and took a slide down the gravel. Very nasty - a hand, wrist, shoulder, hip, knee combo! On the bright side, no damage to his glasses.Mac limped home with his hand wrapped in his T-shirt - he didn't want to drip blood on the newly polished slate tiles in the foyer. When he came through the unit door ...

What an adventure. The last few days have been all about camping at Lake Cheakamus.Friday was a big day for Ian. He left Whistler on the bus at 4.30 am for Vancouver for his once a week workday in the city. We didn't see him again until 7.30 pm .... but we were thinking of him on our our almost daily visit to The North Face store. We wanted to get hiking packs for Mindy and Ian to thank them for their hospitality. We spent over an hour in the store with Nic a...