It really is amazing how you can change your scenery out here in just a few hours. This morning at 10:00 we took the gondola up Whistler Mountain for a look around. The best parts: seeing a bear (a small brown) below the gondola about halfway up; taking lots of pictures of a marmot as he sunned himself at the top of the mountain; the open-air chairlift up to the peak of the mountain and the views from up there. It didn’t take long, but the views were as good (if less intimate) as anything we saw around Yoho.

We came back down the chairlift & gondola and jumped in the car. In spite of all the construction on the highway down to Vancouver we made pretty good time, and after a bit of complication (stupid Olympics construction) we found the car rental drop-off and walked the bags down to the hotel. We’re staying at the Opus, which is undeniably pretentious and poncy, but it’s also very comfortable and in an awesome neighbourhood. I’ve never spent time in Yaletown before (in fact, I just realized today that I haven’t been to Vancouver since 2001!) but it’s a cool neighbourhood. We found another brew pub right around the corner…same place, basically, as the place we frequented in Whistler. It happens to be right next to the chocolate place that I wanted to check out. We did a little shopping, ate a little gelato, walked down by the marina, explored our surroundings, showered & lounged in our room a bit…sweet. Hard to believe that 6 hours ago we were at 7,000 feet taking pictures of giant rodents.

Opus actually charges $15/day for internet access (apparently they’re taking lessons from Rogers) so I won’t bother posting this until tomorrow. Let’s just assume that we had a great night at the afore-mentioned brew pub.

[tags]whistler, vancouver, open hotel, yaletown[/tags]