Vancouver

Canada

August 2006
7 days

Canada : Vancouver.
Arrived : Tuesday 22nd August 2006.

Helloooo from Vancouver City.

Haven't been online much so getting our fix now and this may be a long journal entry! Hold Tight!

Well we stayed up all night Monday panicking and packing like crazy... we were still loading tunes on to the IPOD at 5:30am, eyes hanging out my head knowing we had to get up at 7am so we batted on through! The flight was great except Sarah's screen was broken so we took turns to watch movies... &Quot;Mission Impossible 3&Quot; and &Quot;Over the Hedge&Quot; were pretty good and in between we got about an hours sleep.

So we landed in the very beautiful Vancouver City to be faced with sunshine and 28C surviving on our adrenaline alone. For the first time we had to strap on the heavy sacks and get two buses to our Grand Trunk Hostel in old Gas Town.... It turns out to be probably the cheapest hostel in Vancouver at only 8GBP each per night and oh yes its a total dive... Check out the photo - it really is that bad!!!

Its clean but has an unsafe feel to it... we are at the end of a long coridoor with the washroom and loo down the other end... you need the loo in the night so quietly open your door and poke just your head out to check all is clear! Every so often you are faced with other heads looking back at you waiting for the toilet.... Its like the old pink panther cartoon when you see people darting in and out of different doors!!

On the second night Jon went to loo at 4am and came out the loo and was faced with a young 23 year old skate boarder kid... He asked if I had any gum or toothpaste as his mouth stank.... &Quot;Don't worry man, i'm not on drugs&Quot; he said, which after talking to him for over an hour i found out to be a total lie... He was on something and was very very paranoid... I couldn't seem to get away from him so we told each other our life story and think the whole hostel could hear us.... I managed to get back to my bed unscathed at almost 6am and Sarah was freakin' out wondering where I'd been. Anyway he seemed harmless but i've seen him in the street twice since and he looks very shifty and still very paranoid... crazy kids!

Anyway outside of the hostel is superb!!!

We spend the first two days making use of the hop on hop off city bus tours as they are great value and the best way to learn some stuff and get your bearings. Where we are staying Gas Town is the oldest part of Vancouver City and we are only 1 block away from the poorest blocks in the whole of Canada... Thus we don't go that way!

There seems to be an abundance of tramps who all look identical with big greasy beards! But they are probably the politest you will meet and ask nicely for change and walk off if you say no so harmless enough.

Vancouver is a cool blend of sleek skyscrapers, expensive boats and a breathtaking backdrop of lush green mountains and blue sea. The bus tour tells us that it is known as North Hollywood as so many films and TV shows are filmed here due to its scenery. We've seen loads of TV trailers parked up all over and they have filmed X-files, Buffy, Smallville and Stargate here to name but a few.

The real estate here as anyway is not cheap and 1 in 20 people who live here are millionaires, which seems crazy when you think there are so many homeless around. We have lost count of the amount of Porsche's we've seen and have seen 4 Ferraris and 3 Lamborghini's at least.

There is a really cool hotel here that has an art sculpture outside..... made up of numerous steel cages/boxes... each box represents an elevator inside the hotel and they move exactly in time with the elevators inside.... silly but I liked that!

We've been to a place called Stanley Park on the peninsula here which is so so nice. It is a woodland/park surrounded by a jogging/cycling track and also pitch n putt, bowls and gardens. We trekked through the parkland, in the middle we found Beaver Lake which you will see from the photos is almost like a place you'd see in a dream surrounded by trees and is totally covered in Lilly's... very romantic....

We had a great view of the Lions Gate Suspension bridge which is a mini Golden Gate bridge made by the same people and came across our first raccoon too! Sarah tried to get close to take a photo (check it out!!) but then he turned and ran up to her - so she ran off!!

On Saturday we took the seabus over to North Vancouver and then a bus up to Grouse Mountain. After the bus you get the cable car (Sky bus) up to over 3,100feet where the views are astounding. We stayed up here all day to see the sun set and whilst up here we saw Grisley bears, a wild bird of prey show and a cheesy lumberjack show that was only worth watching because the girl hosting it was like Daisy Duke from Dukes of Hazard !!! Cooorrr!!! From up here we could see mountains as fr as USA as we had a perfect clear day. Come winter time this mountain is buzzing with snow boarders and skis. Sarah was very very brave and went on a cable car lift hundreds of feet down the mountain, if not thousands. For those of you who know her well - you'll know just how much of a scare this was (feet dangling over tree tops!)

Come Sunday we are just getting used to the time zone now and had a lie in and then hit the beach to plan our 4 week driving tour, highlighting a map and stuff.... after that we laid and listened to our learn Spanish exercises on the IPOD so at least now I can say stuff like yes, no, pardon, sir, madame, do you understand English etc.... so not quite fluent yet but its a start. Lovely to sit by the beach and relax......

So apart from that we have seen two movies.... Snakes on a Plane featuring Samuel Jackson which freaked us out... very jumpy movie.... so now really looking forward to our next flight!! :o( and last night we saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2.

We were in an Internet cafe a few days ago and i realised the PC had no antivirus security so I told the owner it wasn't secure and he said so what... He wanted the money off me so i through it at him and he lobbed it back at me... so don't think we are welcome back there... Bar Steward!!!

So we pick up our car from HERTZ tomorrow morning and set off on our 4 week drive which should be interesting seeing that I haven't driven for 2 years. They want $25 per day just for insurance so our daily budget of $132 is not going to be feasible. We read about some of the places we will be seeing and we can't wait to get going and leave the Grand trunk behind although it has served its purpose.

We've started a new game, it is very sad but addcitive so play along at home, you get a digital watch (15 pounds each from Asda thank you very much) and you put it on the stop watch function, then see how fast you can press start and stop - ie to see how quickly you can stop the count. Jon is the best at 0.09 seconds - I could only manage 0.13.....

It's free for us to receive texts in Canada so feel free to send us some for the next five weeks and we'll reply on email when we can.

That's it for now..... check out our selection of Vancouver City photos..

Love Jon and Sarah
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx