Cristina Matasaru

[I appologize in advance for the length of this post - I had lots to say! ]

I was watching the Winter Olympics opening ceremony this last Friday and all I could think was: “Why am I not over there right now?” With Vancouver, B.C. being about 6 hours away and a 3 day weekend ahead, it looked very doable. I shared my thoughts with my WONDERFUL husband and he must’ve been thinking the same thing, because he just said “Well, why don’t we go?”. That’s how an incredibly amazing Valentine’s weekend started for us.

Our initial plan was to just get out of town, we were thinking about going up to Seattle but hadn’t really made any definite plans, no reservations. Saturday morning I woke up and my SWEET husband had already done some research so we booked a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful room at a hotel in downtown Seattle. (Think 5 blocks away from Pike Market – and it was such a bargain you wouldn’t believe it!)

We weren’t sure if we’d make it all the way to Vancouver, but we still packed some warm sweaters and boots – and our passports. Later that day we called our friend in Vancouver and asked her about going up to Whistler and she gave us all the information we needed. We found out that we wouldn’t be able to drive our car to Whistler, we’d have to take a shuttle from the city. Since it was kind of late Saturday, we weren’t able to book anything so we just enjoyed our night out in Seattle. (The 1st Hard Rock Cafe had just opened the previous week. ) We figured that even if we don’t make it to Whistler, Vancouver should still be a lot of fun these days. We woke up not too early on Sunday (8 a.m.) and after a few phone calls, we got the numbers to the 2 companies that provide shuttles from Vancouver to Whistler. We called the first company – oops, they needed reservations to be made 2 days ahead. We called the 2nd company, Pacific Coach, and we booked our shuttle… for 11:40!!!!! (The only other option would’ve been 3:30, which would’ve given us too little time in Whistler.) By the time we left Seattle, we had about 2.5 hours to get to Vancouver, or $150 would’ve been thrown out the window. Oh, and there was a border crossing between those two. Needless to say, we raced all the way to Vancouver, went over the speed limit the whole time, crossed the border around 11:05 and made it to downtown Vancouver 3 minutes before the scheduled departure for the shuttle. Big WOW right there.

However, that wasn’t good enough. When we got to the bus, a lady was just purchasing her ticket and 2 other men were waiting to get on the bus. Of course, we wanted to be curteous and waited for the lady to finish her transaction…. only courtesy was the last thing on the driver’s mind, since he shut the door the second the lady got on the bus and drove away, leaving 4 people with confirmed reservations wondering what on Earth was going on. Apparently Pacific Coach wanted to make more profit than their means allowed them. Luckily we had one of their representatives there with us and he managed to get us on the next bus, an hour later, appologized on behalf of his company, said he didn’t know what the driver was doing and also that our tickets will be refunded. (I’m curious how that will work out.)

We made it to Whistler around 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It was such a beautiful, sunny, gorgeaus altogether day in Whistler! Lots of people all around the village, cameras rolling at every corner, big screens that were showing all the different events going on, everybody cheering for their own country. (We were standing next to a group of Germans when 2 of their peers won Gold and Silver in Men’s Single Luge competition – talk about excitement!!!) It just felt like people from all over the world finally managed to put aside their differences and came together to support the world’s best athletes. It was great to be a part of that.

We didn’t have tickets for any of the events going on and we were late for most of them anyway, but we did get a free gondola ride up to the luge track. We looked for a Romanian flag in all the little souvenir stores but couldn’t find one. We bought a French flag instead and then went to a hotel reception and asked for a yellow highlighter – if they don’t sell Romanian flags, we can make our own, no problem! We waved that flag like crazy, in front of every camera that we saw. We had a US flag, too, so we kind of took turns.

We were out in the village for as long as we could, walking up and down the little streets, taking in the Olympic atmosphere, but then it got quite chilly as the day was coming to an end. We delected ourselves with a traditional Canadian dish for dinner, called Poutine Canada (french fries, brown gravy, fresh cheese curds and beef sausage – interesting but delicious combination!).

We left Whistler Village around 9:30, not without some minor misunderstanding about the shuttle – again, Pacific Coach proved to be a pain – how did they ever get such a big contract??? All in all, it was an amazing experience, I felt so blessed to be able to be there! We got back to downtown Vancouver around 11:30 that night and took some pictures by the Olympic torch – the city was full of people walking on the streets, it was great!

Driving back home the next day, my AMAZING husband and I were talking about our wonderful weekend and I told him that to me it seems like we always try to make good plans when ever we go somewhere, but our trips are usually so short planned that we don’t get to decide on every detail, we plan to play things by ear… and that’s usually where God comes in and takes everything from good to great and makes things better than we could’ve ever planned for! It’s so amazing to see God do that for us over and over and over again. It leaves us speechless every time and so, so thankful to be loved by such an amazing God.