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Travels both intrepid and trepidatious, around the world and around the block |
Chateau Whistler Resortby Mina Shojania
Chateau Whistler has been the place to stay in Whistler since it opened
in 1989. Despite the rapid expansion of this resort town, no other place
has matched it yet in glory and comfort. In fact, I have happily spent
a couple of days in the Chateau without ever venturing out its doors. Though called the Chateau Whistler, it’s actually in Blackcombe. We’re almost there. The Whistler village entrance off highway 99 is to our right. Go straight all the way, turn left, turn right at the next crosswalk, and follow the signs to Chateau Whistler. Walking Whistler/Blackcombe is a lot easier than driving it. The only thing to do with a vehicle here is park it. There are a few other lodgings on the same drive as the Chateau and, like bridesmaids to a bride, they are lovely, but not as spectacular as the real thing. Carry on to the front; the valets await our arrival. Good afternoon and welcome to the Chateau Whistler, they say as they take the keys. Are you checking in with us today? Yes we are, we answer. They give us our valet ticket, we leave our bags with them and go on to the Guest Services desk. Our luggage will be placed in our room shortly. Enter the glass doors into the spacious lobby. The décor, modern rustic; the lobby ceiling, a spire. A small bridge runs between the two sides of the A-frame ceiling at the third floor. Clothed people cross this on the way to their rooms and robed people on their way to the health club. Let’s check in. I want to get to our room to freshen up. Room 624. Stick the key card in, open the door, and walk into your new home (for the next two days). The bathroom is beige marble. The bed is comfortable and welcoming. Its thick, soft comforter and smooth sheets make you want to jump right in. A TV and small snack center face the bed. A desk with a phone and hotel directory is beside the bed. Walk across the rust coloured carpet to check out the view. The pools are down to our right, the mini golf is behind them, and a carved wood children’s play area is to the left. There’s a knock at the door. It’s our luggage. Once the porter is tipped and on his way, I’m just going to unpack a few things and put them in their place – toiletries in the bathroom, wrinkle-prone clothes in the closet – and I’ll be set. Let me know when you’re ready. We’ll go downstairs, tour the rest of the place and then go for a drink in the Mallard Lounge. Modern interior design is very interesting. Out with the old and in with the curious. There is a bunch of rocks and slabs in the lobby with handles screwed onto them. The bigger ones have two handles. Don’t bother trying to lift them; you’ll be trying to lift the hotel: they’re bolted to the floor. There are various couches and chairs to sit on. A few are rocking chairs made of branches and twigs. These must be decorative in nature only; they’re rather uncomfortable for sitting. If your back is to the lobby doors, directly to your left are the elevators and the banquet halls. The Wild Flower restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, is ahead of you. This is a pleasant restaurant, country kitchen in looks and modern city in menu. A lavish buffet is offered weekend evenings. Washrooms, phones, and an ATM machine are just outside. There are large glass doors beside the restaurant. In the summers these are open to allow guests and staff access to the patio. Chipmunks sometimes help themselves to a short tour of the hotel lobby. The opposite direction holds the rest of the hotel’s amenities. The Mallard Lounge, the Chateau Spa, the health club, and various shops are available to you, including souvenir shops, a sundries shop, and clothing stores. Open Country clothing store has particularly nice and useful things, mostly designer. I’ve done quite a bit of shopping there. The Portobello restaurant, which has food available all day and will prepare picnic baskets, is downstairs by the other entrance to the hotel. For now, we’re going into the Mallard Lounge for a drink. The Mallard is my favourite lounge in Whistler. Once I see this room, I’m home. This large and comfortable bar offers beverages and light meals all day. There’s a wire-encased fireplace that displays the flames from both sides. Entertainment is provided almost every night. The view from the lounge is of the pools, the beautiful flora and landscape of the Chateau, and of Blackcombe mountain. If you crane your neck, you can see the mini golfers in the summer. Lights adorn the trees directly outside all year ‘round. In the winter it’s a winter wonderland. Sparkling snow and ice is everywhere, skiers and snow boarders go swooshing around and the lounges feel even cozier. Good afternoon, says a nice waiter. What can I get you today? I’ll have a glass of the Robert Mondavi Cabernet, I answer. The staff here are usually quite courteous and helpful. If you’re chilly they’ll offer you a blanket. Various prints make the fabric of the seats and all the tables are of painted wood. A leaf design dots the walls and ceiling. Speaking of ceilings, I must warn you about speaking any fatal secrets in here. Look above: the ceiling is made of decorative elliptical scoops. One of the many talents of these oblong semi circles is the ability to send sound from one end of their area to another. The Ellipse Effect is a phenomenon of physics. In fact, there was once a very paranoid king (like there’s any other kind) in history who would make his advisors and generals plan their strategies on one end of a large room. He had his desk at the other end and would pretend to do some work during their meetings. The ceiling of this room was an ellipse, i.e. half a football cut from point to point. Everything the advisors said traveled directly to the ear of the king as though there was a speaker right by this head. This way they could never plot against him. In Vancouver’s Science World, an example of this is set for use. A metal dish is placed on one end of a room with a metal loop hanging in front of the center. Depending on which part of a conversation you’re at momentarily, your ear or mouth goes here. A similar dish is on the other side of the room. Whatever is said into the loop on one end buzzes exactly in the loop of the other end. No shouting required. Anyway, in the Mallard Lounge, this is a common occurrence. So be careful what you say. These walls really do have ears. Leave your drink for a minute. I’d like to go see what the spa has to offer. It’s right across the hall and looks quite lovely. My back is a bit sore and I may be able to benefit from a pro back-rub. I’ve never been a spa person. My idea of pampering is going out and having a great night out with friends, and I do that all the time. Do good and enjoy life, I say. I don’t like facials, I don’t buy into any so-called treatments, and as far as massages go, I’m some what of an oddity: I like giving, but generally don’t like receiving. Most people give lousy amateur massages, doing more harm than good by squeezing muscles instead of pressing in the right places. To those in doubt, I’ll tell you how to give a no-fail massage: don’t use your fingertips. Then you can never hurt the person. Until a commoner gets better qualified to poke at another person’s body with the intent of causing relaxation, unless otherwise stated, they should just slightly lift the fingertips while handling the receiver. That way, the greater surface area of the base two segments of the fingers and the palm of the hand will spread the pressure instead of the pinching concentrate of fingertips. Why am I seeking a massage if I don’t even like them? Just to see what it’s like in this professional soothing environment. I’ve done this once before in Hawaii and I’d like to try it here. That way I can give my full opinion when asked about the amenities here and learn some new techniques for my own doled out massages. Besides, I’ve been hunching and rebound stretching a lot lately. I’m feeling it in my mid to lower back. Maybe this will help. These spas are so nice. The minute you walk in through the doors it’s like you’ve entered some beauty monastery. Well sort of. Angel music is playing, interesting soaps and body products are for sale and smiling ladies behind the desk happily tell you about their services. Spending the day in here would be numbingly serene. I choose a regular massage for today and a more involved herbal and steam Swedana, which I’ll explain later, for tomorrow. The total is $300. Yes, I got carried away, and that’s the basis of all impulse buys, but there’s nothing I can do now. There is a 24 hour minimum notice for cancellation and since my first massage is in half an hour and the next is for tomorrow morning, it is immediately too late. They call in my masseuse (the guest gets to choose between a man and a woman) and I go to pay for my drinks in the Mallard. Kristine (choosing a man would not go over well with Mark) sees me at the door upon my return and shows me to our room. She’s in her 30’s and rather fit. She looks like a tennis pro. The room is warm and decorated in earth tones. I am left alone to disrobe and instructed to go face down under the first sheet on the massage table when I’m finished. Their speakers have malfunctioned, so apologies are made for the lack of music. It’s all right. Silence and I are good companions. I’ve never been the type who just absently turns on the radio. If I turn on a source of entertainment noise it is out of intent and not habit. A tissue box sits beside a candle in the corner (which has proven itself to be a fire hazard. They still don’t move it though) and white towels lavishly wait for you in the case of more messy massages. I am ready and Kristine enters. The next 45 minutes are filled with gentle pressures, careful kneading, rotating of joints, and slight pulling. Everything she does she does over the sheet, so oil is not necessary. Good. I make note of her movements and am learning a lot. This is not bad at all. We discuss my habit of late of arching my back in a make-up stretch for real or imagined slouching. We come to the conclusion that my forced arching is what’s causing my back twinges. I won’t do that anymore. I am not now nor have ever been a sloucher, so I have nothing to make up for anyway. There are enough annoyances in the world without me inviting back pain. When the time is up, and it was a perfect amount of time, she leaves to give me a minute to just lie there and then get dressed. I have enjoyed my time with her and consider the experience worth the price. When I come out I sign the room charge, include her tip and then start the procedures for tomorrow’s spa experience. This one’s a bit more involved. I am handed a sheet which questions all sorts of things about me. What I look like, how much energy I normally have, my usual type of produced waste (I’m serious), any chronic ailments, concerns or health goals are all asked about. Why? Because the Swedana (meaning ‘sweat’) experience is supposedly based on Ayurvedic principles. These are ancient eastern philosophies based on creating balance between you and your world. Aromatherapy, herbal therapy, oils, and various meditative techniques are some of the things used in creating this balance. Basically, what you’re not, you get. If you’re the calm sort, you get energizing herbs and scents. If you’re scattered, you get grounding elements. Stuff like that. This isn’t really my bag, but what the hey. Try everything once. I finish the questionnaire, return it and wonder what actually awaits me tomorrow. The golfers are back from today’s
round. They have refreshments in the Mallard and then part ways to clean
up before dinner. I find Mark face down on the bed from heat exhaustion.
I offer to try some of my newly learned massage techniques on him to eager
acceptance. He’s always liked these things. Well I can tell you this:
either I was very good or he was exceptionally tired (or both) because
it went over extremely well. Afterward he kept praising me and the massage.
I do believe my stint in the spa today was time well spent. We are having dinner at La Rua, the restaurant of the neighbouring accommodation Le Chamois. Reservations are at eight. We make it at 8:30. I have no idea why Mark takes so long to get ready. At least I had pleasant surroundings in which to wait tonight. Upon entrance into this colourful restaurant – it falls just short of being mistaken for Mexican – we are shown to a round table in one of the two rooms. A waiter says Hi to me by name. I know that we know each other; I just don’t know how. I hate it when that happens. Mark orders his usual scotch upon our arrival and I go straight for the wine list. La Rua has an extensive enough list, ranging from the very reasonably priced to the expensive. The less pricey wines are on a separate sheet than the wine list book. Make note of that. There’s a time and place for that Châteauneuf-du-Pape and tonight’s not it. There’s always been a nagging embarrassment in people ordering inexpensive wines. This is a result of basic insecurities and the snobbery that’s been a side effect of perceived wine appreciation. The true wine scholar knows that the price of a wine varies for many reason: availability, measures that had to be taken to protect the grapes against unforeseen damaging weather patterns, fluctuating prices of the little things, like corks, bottles, and labour, etc, etc. Such a person knows that it is a wise choice to order a cheaper wine that will taste better than a more snob-appealing designer brand that may not have had the best year. When people say It Was A Good Year they mean that the weather and the grapes cooperated favourably with the winery, resulting in a fine product. The role of the cork is also important. The method use to bleach the bark of the cork oak tree results in an undesirable taste about 8% of the time, referred to as corky or corked. Since screw off caps are about as classy as scarfing your food down without benefit of utensils or hands at a fine restaurant, corky-ness is a tolerated evil throughout the wine industry. These days, some wineries are, with success, opting for plastic corks. Of course the finicky wine lover will complain that this may result in a plasticky taste in the wine (never mind the environmental consequence of a non-biodegradable cork). Corky, plasticky, screw on, screw off, rain, shine. Sheesh. It’s enough to make a person order a beer. To go with my good and inexpensive Wynn Shiraz, I get the Pemberton Sheep Brie Cheese pan fried with blue corn meal, lardons (frizzled bacon bits), sundried tomatoes, and pine nuts. We defer entrée ordering until after the appy's. We’re in no rush. And besides, I’m never as hungry after my first course as I thought I’d be. It’s a good idea to wait to order my next course; cuts down on waste. This cheese dish is quite good with bread. It’s very rich too, so if you’re like me, a large pasta dish will be untackleable if you have this appy all to yourself. Mind you, even at the most famished of times large pastas are often like an order of nachos: impressive and unfinishable. Mark gets the Bocconcini Salad: a stack of the unripe mozzarella, tomato, and grilled eggplant with berry capers. This is a good twist on this classic no-fail salad. We like it. If it’s not already an accompaniment, I always ask for a side of fresh basil with a bocconcini salad. Some cheese, tomato, and basil all together is fantastic. For dinner, I wanted soup, but the soup of the night is bouillabaisse and Lord knows I’ve never been a fish fan. Instead, I get a mussels appetizer special (I’m don’t avoid all seafood; shellfish are not as fishy as, for example, salmon, if done in a nice broth. Crab, lobster, and prawns are so full of cholesterol that they can even be described as sweet) and make a some-disassembly-required soup out of it. Mussels are usually served in a broth and although many people just pick off the little morsels one by one, the proper way to eat them is to shell them all at once and then have mussel soup. The broth tonight is a white wine based concoction and a bit on the salty side. For his entrée, Mark goes with the Tagliolini pasta with lobster and scallops tossed with wild mushrooms and light lobster jus. This is very good. The lobster is a luxurious touch to an already fine pasta dish. The waiter tells me that it’s one of their most popular features. We aren’t in the dessert mood, so we finish our wine and go to find some action. The Savage Beagle is where we end up. The place is two floors, with the top floor being more low key while the bottom floor plays the club tunes. We stay downstairs. The place is small and packed. Bartender Jason makes sure to get our drink orders through; it can get tough battling other customers and wait staff for bar space. For future reference, people please: practice drink etiquette. Don’t hang around the bar in a packed club. Get your booze and move on. There are others waiting to get sloshed. Tonight some goof decided that it would be fun to keep pulling the fire alarm. A constant ringing is the background of all the songs and the staff is getting frustrated. So are the cops and fire crew who were mandatorily summoned. The DJ offers free drinks for anyone who can point out the culprit. If that doesn’t catch him, nothing will. If I were him, I’d be suspicious of my friends after that announcement. He best make himself scarce. And next time, he should just stay home. Overall, the Beagle is a fun place. Like most clubs in Whistler, the music is anything from the 80’s and up. It’s not cutting edge and that’s just fine. People like music that they know. It makes them feel welcome and at ease. They stay longer, order more drinks, dance more, and look forward to coming back. Familiarity breeds content. Let’s beat the rush out. That cozy bed in our room is calling me. Can you hear it too? Come back…sink in…snuggle…purrr. Mmmm. Can’t wait. And we still have to walk back, which requires a ten minute jaunt from Whistler Village to Blackcombe over a wooden bridge. It takes about five minutes just to get through the hotel and to our room. I’m just feeling lazy. It’s one of those times when I wish that I could snap my fingers and have us transported to our lobby in an instant. The bright side is that it’s a clear night and many stars are out. Living in the city makes for low quality star gazing. The light from a billion year old star that took 30 years to reach the earth is outshone by a week old street lamp. Stars dominate in the country side. We’re back at the Chateau. You go your way, we’ll go ours and I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t forget: we have that treatment at the spa to get through. One p.m. is when we are expected at the spa. The Swedana takes two hours. I have allowed enough time to sleep in so I won’t pass out on the massage table and enough time afterward to clean up before dinner. I have a feeling it will be necessary. The description provided by the Spa for this treatment goes like this: An aromatic steam and massage treatment to detoxify, cleanse and soothe the body. A consultation will determine your Ayurvedic Constitution, followed by a massage which uses warm, medicinal oils. A steam in our cedar cabinet quickly removes toxins from your pores. We finish with a skin brushing to exfoliate and cleanse the entire body. Okay. So after I’ve disrobed and allowed warm oil, sesame in my case, to be poured over my body limb by limb, asked for an extra towel to be stuffed below my chin to absorb the extra oil that’s dripping down my neck and into my mouth, spit out the oil that took a detour over my cheek, been rubbed up and down by an energy channeling masseuse, cringed at the thought of the oil that’s being forced into my hair, had chickpea flour sprinkled over my body to absorb the excess oil, had that scrubbed off by a rough bristle brush, been chaperoned to a cedar coffin to lie in with my head sticking out, had rosemary, lavender, and another herb I don’t recall put under said coffin to be steamed up to my skin, and counted the minutes until I could be free to get all this off me, I am then escorted to a shower to rinse before I run up to my own room to do the major clean up. The shower is pretty neat though: separate shower heads stick out from all sides of the stall. There’s a seat in there too. Now this I like. As a parting gift, I am presented with the brush that I was sloughed with, a $3 value. What is my opinion of the overall experience? If this is your idea of pampering, go ahead. But don’t for a second fool yourself into thinking that spiritual awareness, that vague term ‘wellness’, or a oneness with the universe is achieved through liquid fat and plant bits on your skin. If this is your idea of relaxation, and it’s worth $200 + tip to you, fine. Just know that if you’re looking for magic, there’s no need to pay to be figuratively tarred and feathered. The magic is in you and all around you and all you have to do is accept it. And make your own good vibes by giving that money to charity. I am in my room’s shower frenetically washing the oil out of my hair and watching the last of pea meal go down the drain. Tonight we’re having the golf tournament banquet in one of the function halls. When I arrive in my long satin sienna dress I am delighted to see that dinner consists of the same buffet that the Wild Flower offers for weekend nights. Long crab legs, mussels and clams wait to be cracked. Cheeses, green salad, Caesar salad, bean salad, potato salad, tomato and bocconcini salad, roast beef waiting to be carved, chicken dishes, fish dishes, and desserts galore are all there for you. Grab your first plate, let’s find our table, get a drink and start. Go back to the buffet as many times as you like. A silent auction is also part of the festivities tonight. Afterward we retire to the Mallard to mingle with our (stock) market friends (and enemies). And so we have come to the
end of another trip. Thanks for joining me. Your company has been deeply
appreciated. I always feel a twinge of envy watching people arrive to
the Chateau just as I am leaving. But such is the cycle of life and soon
those newcomers will be leavers and I will be coming back. Hope to see
you then too. Until next time! Chateau Whistler Resort
La Rua Savage Beagle ********* Didn't find what you were looking for? Try a Google search.
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