Rachael started off the day on the nursery slopes and just before lunch Tom managed to persuade her to try a green run. Taking it very slowly and only throwing herself in the snow a couple of times, Rachael managed to get to the bottom in one piece. After lunch we did another green run together and Rachael almost looked like she knew what she was doing by the end of it. Tom finished off the day with a couple of black runs while a very tired Rachael waited for him...

We were up nice and early this morning ready for our first day on the slopes. Tom was really excited and Rachael was quite nervous. We had a good breakfast and jumped on the bus for the 15 minute journey up to the Sunshine ski resort. We hired our skis and boots and got straight on the slopes which thankfully, due to it being mid week were fairly quiet.Tom spent the majority of the day teaching Rachael the basics on the nursery slopes and when Ben came to meet us...

The plan today was to head to Banff, the home of Banff National Park. By a coincidence Ben, who Tom did his Uni project with for 12 months, is spending a Ski season in Banff so we were planning to meet with him.We arrived two hours early for the bus one way or another, were frisked again (they totally emptied all our bags), and with a stunning drive arrived in the Rockie Mountains.We managed to meet Ben in the evening for a few beers and have booked a three day s...

To get out of the USA wasn't going to be difficult as we were living the jet setting lifestyle and flying to Calgary. We went to the airport via the train system as before but this time managed to avoid the very, very, rough crowd at the end of the street.The landing in Calgary introduced us to snow and thankfully the temperature had increased from the -20 a few days ago to a warm zero.The hostel seem pretty nice but we didn't spend long there. We got out quickly...

Today the plan was to visit Alcatraz and see a bit of the city and of course the Golden Gate bridge. We mad the most of our free breakfast and managed to make up some sandwiches with the bread they supplied and fill our flask with the free coffee. We headed out of "murderville" as Rach has now named our area and caught a tram to the pier where the boat to Alcatraz left from. When you first arrive on the island you watch a short film explaining all a...