2023 Whistler: Rest Day

 For our rest day, we started with a 10:00am scenic flight to see the glaciers around Whistler. The day was ideal, with little wind and calm skies. It was Boen's first time on a float plane. What blew my mind was how large and beautiful
Garibaldi Lake was --- reflective and calm in the morning.

The cindercone and the closer up of the crevasse on the glaciers were also sights not to be forgotten.  We even spotted people walking on the glaciers that morning --- someone had gotten up pretty early.

After the beautiful flight, we got back to the hotel to pick up the camera and proceeded up the Blackcomb Gondola, the only gondola allowed for the peak to peak sightseeing trip. 

I expected it to be crowded but the gondola moved at a quick clip and there wasn't much of a wait at all --- I guess when you don't have to load bikes the gondola moves a lot faster. The top of Blackcomb had a poor restaurant that we ate a few snacks at and then proceeded to the peak to peak Gondola, where the kids opted to wait for the glass-bottom gondola, which takes an additional 20 minutes but in reality proved to be a bit disappointing --- the look down might give you a better chance of spotting wildlife but didn't grant as gorgeous a view as the windows did. The peak to peak gondola was a great engineering effort, possible only because the end of the valley was closed off by mountains so the gondola was relatively protected from the worst of the winds.

From the peak to peak gondola you have to walk down to the peak express, which takes you to the tippy top, for both cyclists and hiker. We visited the suspension bridge at the top (and Bowen loved the Peak Express), and we walked around.

The return from the peak express to the top of the village gondola was actually a long uphill in the thin air, and Boen and Xiaoqin opted out of any extra hiking to take the peak to peak express back. Bowen and I tried to do the Harmony Lake hike, but the mosquitoes started biting us at the start of the hike and without mosquito repellent and reports from other hikers telling us it got rapidly worse, we bailed as well. At the bottom of the Blackcomb Gondola we saw that there was a pop-up store for the Lucia Gelato so we bought some and it was good!

Dinner was at Nogomi sushi, which was so good two days ago that we went back.