A Very Vegan Girly Birthday Weekend

A few weekends ago (Weekend 33.0) I turned 31. Stupid thirties.

To try to forget about this whole getting old thing, I picked up some hot women and headed to Whistler to distract myself with eating, drinking, spa-ing, and zip-trekking.

It worked.

The swell thing was we had a 1:1 ratio of vegans:veg-heads...or as I like to call them, vegans-in-training.

Our Girly Whistler Weekend got off to a swell start, thanks to our gorgeous mountain suite at the Chateau Whistler. Had to use up some President's Club perks to get the room at a rate that was in our tax bracket, but it was totally worth it.

For dinner that Friday we met up with a stunning omnivore realtor and headed to one of my all time faves even pre-vegan conversion... Mongolie Grill. I was pretty choked to discover that neither of their soups were vegan...the Miso was made on fish broth and the Hot & Sour had egg in it (boo), but the plethora of delicious veggies and noodles and sauces I had to choose from to create my dinner masterpiece quickly put the soup out of my mind.

Oh hello delicious soba noodles and veggies in curry & coconut sauce.

It's also a nice bonus that most martinis are vegan by default.

After a thumbs up dinner I tried to forget I was well into my thirties and ventured out to partake in the mountain nightlife. We scouted out a few establishments and sat through some generic music and observed the demographic partaking in the evening's merriment (a demographic whose report cards I very well could have been preparing a few months ago), and quickly realized we would be much happier capping off the first night of our Girly Whistler Weekend back at our awesome mountain suite.

But not before trying out the pole, of course.

We woke up Saturday to a gorgeous sunny morning and a day of zip-trekking and spa-ing ahead of us.

Because our suite was on the 8th floor of the Chateau Whistler, we wandered over to the Gold Floor Lounge down the hall and enjoyed a lovely complimentary breakfast there.

There were many tempting corpse and titty-milk breakfast items to pass over, but my dependable buddy oatmeal saved the day like he always does, and I was able to fuel up for the busy day ahead.

Little did we know as we were enjoying our Gold Floor breakfast that our suite did not actually count as part of the Gold Floor and we weren't actually supposed to be in the Gold Lounge, because the Gold Floor at the Chateau Whistler is actually more like a Gold Wing. We discovered this when we tried to get back in for pre-dinner appies later that day...and were turned away after they asked us for our room number...which they didn't do that morning at breakfast...yahhhh...that was kinda awkward.

But seriously...the 8th floor is called The Gold FLOOR. If Gold Floor perks don't apply to every room on the 8th floor, call it the friggen Gold WING and avoid the awkwardness and confusion. Seriously, Fairmont...I love you, but it's simple english.

Oh well, whatever. We scored a free breakfast anyway. Suckas.

After unwittingly scamming the Fairmont out of four free Gold WING breakfasts, we proceeded to our first legitimate adventure of the day...zip-trekking. It might be worth noting that not only did we have a 1:1 vegan:veg-head ratio in our group, but also a 1:1 not-terrified-of-heights:terrified-of-heights ratio. Which made for an interesting zip-trekking experience.

You see, for whatever reason, my lovely friends, the bff and WestCoastSunshine signed on for zip-trekking in spite of their petrifying fear of heights.

Awww...she's afraid she's going to plummet to her early demise.

But you know what? They did it...and loved it...and can't wait to do it again.

Mags is unafraid...FIERCE

Gotta throw in a plug for Whistler zip-trekking here...if you've never done it, do it. It is just exhilarating...breathtaking...mindblowing...kind of like biting into one of Alicia's chocolate peanut butter cups, except up in a rainforest soaring through the trees like a bird who has learned to exist on vegan peanut butter cups instead of worms and bugs.

If that's not an expression of exhilaration I don't know what is.

Having digested our unwittingly scammed Fairmont Gold WING breakfast over the course of our zipping adventure, we took the suggestion of our zip-trek guide and headed to Ingrid's cafe in the village for lunch.

Hello delicious vegan burgers with a crapload of avocado. Oh yes, these were goooood.

Why people insist on eating a carcass burger when you've got incredible options like these is beyond me. Just sayin'.

I shouldn't be saying snarky things like that, though, because I effed up pretty big that weekend in the vegan department. Here goes...confession time.

We went to the spa on Saturday afternoon, where we all booked ourselves in for a massage and milk bath.

Yes, milk bath.

How did I book a milk bath without thinking that it was actually milk? I mean, it's called a friggen MILK bath.

I guess I shouldn't judge the Fairmont too harshly on their liberal application of the term Gold FLOOR when I can't even clue in that if I'm booking a MILK bath I will likely be bathing in MILK. As in cow titty milk. Which is not vegan.

Yah...I'm an idiot.

It's something that should have been so obvious too...like when I ordered a California roll and ate it and didn't even think about the fact that I ate fish until the next day when I was thinking about ordering another one. 

I repeat. Idiot.

Oh well...the nail polish for my pedicure after the milk bath was vegan.

Relaxed and freshly marinated in milk, we headed back to our hotel for dinner, because Fairmont = Lifestyles menu. Hells yes.

Gazpacho!

Hellooo raw beet ravioli

Hellooo beets

My soba noodles & veggies in amazing broth...light and refreshing and perfect

There was a lot of food picture taking going on.

WestCoastSunshine loved her quinoa risotto. It was rather spectacular, I must agree.

Something of interest...the bff ordered the non-vegan version of the quinoa risotto. All of us tried it and were overwhelmed by the taste of butter. It overpowered the dish...interesting indeeeeeeeeed.

And of course there was dessert...

This would be a poached apple stuffed with raisins...oh yes.

This was a cashew ice cream. We weren't too thrilled with it until we decided to look at it as cashew butter or cashew paste, after which we liked it just fine. It did not work as vegan frozen dessert alternative...way too thick with a consistency that was definitely not that of ice cream. It was like eating mouthfulls of peanut butter. Still tasty, though...would have worked well as a spread, and after we acknowledged it as such, we gave it the thumbs up.  

Yay Fairmont :)  Yay Lifestyles menu :)  Yay seven grain cereal with hazlenuts for breakfast the next morning :)

...times four...

After breakfast (our waiter actually called us the healthiest table he served all morning) we lounged by the pool, followed by wandering the local market in the Upper Village. There were sooo many crazy neat things to buy, as an abundance of lovely people were peddling their vegan wares...vegan loaves, vegan spreads, vegan marinades...love love love. I totally scored some kickass tzatziki, a cheesy spread made with nutritional yeast, a couple of banana & zucchini loaves, some chimchurri sauce, and strawberry infused balsamic vinegar.

Grabbed lunch at Merlins before heading home...

That would be a black bean hummus...thumbs up!

Alas, the Girly Whistler Birthday Weekend had to come to an end, as did my 30th year on this lovely planet. It'll be interesting to see what crazy things 31 brings. There's totally internal rhyming there. I'm all inspired to write a poem now...

Went up to Whistler with the girls

No boys allowed cuz boys are smelly.

My boy cd has hair in curls

And I like plants all in my belly.

Hello Fairmont kickass mountain view

So nice it gave me cause to sing

But Gold Lounge access kinda blew

Cuz Gold FLOOR really meant Gold WING.

Zipping through the trees among echoing cheers

My acrophobic buddies were down with that

And despite the bff's and WestCoastSunshine's fears

They did not fall and make a splat.

Massage and milk bath were quite a sensation

Left me feeling all relaxed and pretty

Tried to block out the unsettling realization

That I soaked in something that came from a cow titty.

Oh year thirty-one, how full of insanity

Have the first few weeks of you already been 

With the way shit is going, excuse the profanity

I may just end up the next Mrs. Charlie Sheen.

Belated thanks to some awesome ladies for some lovely memories from a brilliant birthday weekend :) Gonna be holding on tight to those happy times for a while :)

And another smiley face for good measure :)