Vancouver

Canada

September 2006
7 days

Hello Guys

During this period we were sad to drive our trusty hire car back to Vancouver and even though we had 4 weeks to return her, of course we found ourselves driving back in to the city through rush hour with only a hour before the penalty deadline. The one way systems were not in our favour so we went round and round with a lot of swearing before we rolled her on to the lot with 5 mins to spare. Touchdown! They said they would charge us for $300 for the bruise we gave her but as yet have not been billed so lets hope we don't see that!

OK so back once again where we started in the great city of Vancouver with a week to kill. So here´s what we got up to...

The Aquarium.
Check out our Photos of the aquarium on Netgallery or for those still having issues then try http://www.spicyapple.co.uk/worldtour2006/ and go to &Quot;10 Canada - Vancouver&Quot;

We got some really cool shots of underwater creatures etc. My favourites are the white beluga whale, the horrible looking underwater pink wormy thing and the dark and mysterious eel!

Tandem Bike Ride.
As Sarah can´t ride a bike we hired a tandem and cruised around the outer edge of Stanley Park stopping every so often to look out over the ocean. Sarah only had to peddle and stay on the contraption, although I'm not convinced she did much peddling! A fun way to spend two hours though!

Yoda and Yoga.
Whilst searching for lunch one afternoon we found a wicked comic shop selling new and some very old comics and action figures. Some of these original comics are worth thousands and I stumbled across the original Star Wars figures section. memories came flooding when I saw these as I had a few of them.... They also reminded me of Steve Selby who I think had pretty much most of the figures. Little YODA still boxed was selling for $500 - madness!

The same day Sarah has signed us up for a beginners YOGA class at the sister hostel up the road. 10 people turned up and I failed at the first hurdle which is to sit on your feet with them tucked behind you... anyone who knows me know my toes don't bend too well so it hurt! The instructor was fit as a fiddle though so watching her get in to some tight positions helped to ease the pain. lol.

Beach.
Still being blessed by great weather and a late summer we hit the beach for the day. A really nice beach on the south west side of the city so we sat and I finished reading a great book about MIT Students who learnt to card count and took Vegas for millions playing Black Jack. It really got us in the mood for some gambling so there and then we promised to fit Vegas in to our trip!

Jake and Laura.
My good friend Steve Selby told me that he had a step sister in Vancouver and that we should defo hook up with her to say hi. I thought this may be a little weird not knowing them but we headed over to their apartment on Saturday afternoon for beers. They had a great pad and we were introduced to Jake's brother and their cute dog Chewy.

I needn´'t have worried as it turned out Jake's wrote for Bodog Poker magazine and they already had the cards and chips out ready on the table for an afternoon of Texas Holdem. So there was our common factor - superb! They made us really welcome and in the evening they took us to a really cool Irish bar were we ate great homestyle food washed down with local ales. They called over the waiter at one point and demanded that we get &Quot;screeched in&Quot; which I'm not sure what it meant but involved us downing a nasty shot of something and all was good. Thanks guys for such a great day and for kindly paying.... Hope you liked the Vegas book we sent you!

Micky Mouse.
The only slight downer on the week was that we were woken one night to the sound of mice rummaging around in our plastic bags. We couldn't get rid of it so we demanded to change rooms at 3am. Very sleepy we dragged our stuff to another floor and room with Sarah hitting the deck at one point tripping over her bag straps.

We´d been in the room 5 minutes before we encountered another damn mouse behind the draws. I slept but Sarah laid up all night with a torch in hand keeping an eye on our visitor.

We told the hostel and they sent someone to check it out.... they weren't sympathetic as we did have rice cakes and cereal in the room! DOH! Lesson learnt!

OK so yes this update is over 6 weeks late now simply because we´re having too much fun and no time to do all this techie stuff.

So please bare with us and it´ll all get done eventually... but just to brief you we are writing this on 17th November from Palenque in Mexico near the jungle.

After Vancouver we flew to San Francisco for 4 weeks with brief trips to Vegas and Yosemite National Parks. Then we spent a week in Hollywood LA and a weekend in San Diego before we started our group trek through Mexico.... You´ll here all about these places as soon as we get time.

Love

Jon and Sarah xx