Wednesday morning Jess was teaching tennis lessons (her job here in Whis during the summer time) so I spent a few hours wandering through the village, poking my nose in shops & reacquainting myself with happy, familiar sights :) The village has been done up a little since I was last here…I lived in Whistler for 6 months the year before it was the host town for the Winter Olympics. So a lot of work was done both during & after the time that I was there, sprucing it up & getting it ready for the games. But for the most part it's very familiar, & similar to the feeling I had when arriving in Vancouver, it feels a little like coming home :)

In the afternoon Jess & I met up with a couple of her friends (all of whom are ski instructors in the winter time & serial Whistler seasoners :P) & we all went up the gondola to the top of Whistler mountain. It was a beautiful day for it - sunny, not too many clouds - so the views were spectacular. There's still a bit of snow up the top (some of it just never really melts all year round) but it wasn't TOO chilly…warm enough to get by in shorts, a t-shirt, & a light jumper.

We took the chairlift right up to the top peak where there's a great view of the Black Tusk (a "remarkably abrupt pinnacle of volcanic rock"…according to Wikipedia, jutting out the top of one of the mountains) & then hiked around the mountain peaks for a couple of hours. We made it back just in time to catch the last chairlift down for the day, & then the gondola back down to the village.

In the evening I caught up with Phil, a guy I know from back in Perth who's just moved over here to work & snowboard for the winter season. We had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, which is the ultimate budget night out for travelers with dwindling bank accounts :P For about 10 bucks a head you get garlic bread, salad, a HUGE plate of pasta, & a bowl of icecream. AND they will very kindly let you take the leftovers home (& in my case, there are always leftovers!) - so really, it's dinner AND the following day's lunch for 10 bucks ;) I took Matt there were he visited me in Whistler back when I was living there & demolished the whole plate of pasta in about 10 minutes…I reckon Phil took about 15. Not too shabby.

After dinner we met Jess, Dan, & a bunch of their mates back at Jess & Dan's apartment for some drinks. My bedroom for the week was technically the living room, & my bed (the couch) was currently occupied, so when the boys were still going at midnight, Jess & I called it a night & both crawled into her bed to sleep until everyone else went home. Dan stumbled in around 2:00AM & (having consumed several more drinks in the past couple hours) & seemed very confused to find not 1 but 2 girls in his bed! haha (Presumably he temporarily forgot about my existence :P)…I migrated back to the fold-out couch.