Calgary and Vancouver

We're at Whistler so a quick precis.

Calgary for 3 nights with Beatrice's (Liz' cousin) daughter Julie and they took us to the Canadian Rockies. Beautiful beautiful area. Lake Louise is usually a lake at this time of year but of course was all snow.

 I had a walk past the lies about thin ice but got stuck in a 2 foot snowdrift. Noone else saw that embarrassment which was good as I looked like a prat trying to scramble my way out.

Mum had a great time looking after Julie and Paul's children then going shopping.

Later they all decided to go onto a "gondola" which is nothing like the ones in Venice. The Venice ones stay round about sea level which is good. The Rocky ones don't which is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. They go upwards. A lot upwards. Any awfully lot upwards. It looked simple at the beginning so I said that was going to be easy peasy so "I can do that". It started to go waaaay above tree level. Gripping onto the bars on either side didn't help so for the second time in my life I prayed.

Didn't work this time either.... I'm still not a millionare. We got to the top eventually - 8 minutes is a long time when you're near death - so of course Mum and Julie and the sprogs charged off to get even higher: while I cringed against the furthest wall from the windows.

For all you people who are scared of heights; I've found this brilliant way to get around that fear.

That may look like a smile but my teeth are 5mm smaller than when we started.

At the moment we are at the Four Seasons in Whistler which is where the Winter Olympics were held last year.

On the way up Mum saw a bear; 400 metres later Beatrice saw one too. We did a u-turn and went back to see this one and he was only 20 metres away from us. Unfortunately the only film I got was video and black bear was behind trees. I wanted to get out but wasn't allowed to in case it ate us (since found out that it's a load of crap and only one person has been attacked by a bear in recent memory and that was because it was protecting it's cubs.

This is the so-called hot spa in the Rockies (canny remember the place). Hilarious. We all expected a hot spa dug into the mountain or something like that. All these folk probably went back home and told their mates they sat in a hot spa in the rockies.

The Emperor's New Clothes story is alive and well wherever you go.