After 18 years I have finally convinced the husband to go on a ski holiday! I knew he would love it but other adventures have always been more viable.. Lets be honest any ski trip is gonna cost a lot of cash so I was really nervous… what if I was wrong… what if they hated it? What if boy blue is to young? What if the jet lag was too much? What if it was to cold?

But all adventures have what ifs right? So we took our normal transfer to Pudong airport and bordered a plane to Vancouver. Landing before we took off is mind blowing and probably the reason we left a bag on the carousel. Oops



For the whole 3 days in Vancouver I don’t think any of us knew what day it was or what time.. 17 hours difference is no small thing but the boys did great. And we loved the chance to be out in the fresh air!

Our first hotel (best western) was just back from the beach near Stanley park and in my opinion a perfect location for us. We went on walks and bike rides around the park… probably the best city park I have ever visited. It was massive and basically a forest.

We also managed some Christmas fun, wandering a market and spotting decorations. and of course a Christmas trip to see star wars!

Vancouver has been great, and required to start adjusting our body clocks… but in Ezra’s words… it was time to go to the “ice world”.

It was a early pick up (Vancouver time, but who knows what time our bodies thought it was) but the boys were so excited to go… Ezra has never really seen snow ( no I don’t count the sprinkling Shanghai had last year) and the older two don’t remember it from there few years in the uk. The journey it’s self was straight forward… we even managed to report our lost bag and were told it would be delivered to our hotel in Banff?!? (Go Air Canada).

You couldn’t see much during the flight because of fog… so when we landed Ez got his first view of snow. He could not have got his face closer to the terminal window, shouting “it’s snow, we are here in the ice world, it’s really snow….” etc. He soon had a crowd of people cooing at his reaction as we explained it was the first time he had seen it.

All of them were so excited that even the 10min wait for our bus meant a snowball fight in the tiny patch of snow available. The two hour drive up to the mountains was stunning to say the least… and every now and then you would get the boys showing us the snow. The final leg of the journey was a spectacular (and cold) gondola ride up to the highest hotel in Canada.

While I checked us in the boys went crazy in the snow… freezing cold but smiling from ear to ear… yes … relieved I was now sure this would be a good place to spend Christmas. But what about the skiing? Tomorrow we will see!