Leftovers.


Vancouver :: Canada

Things I couldn't write in an hour yesterday.

Places: Vancouver.

Coolest thing I did: Saw lots of waterfalls at Vancouver's 2nd longest suspension bridge, the one you don't have to pay $21 to cross.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Even though tipping is expected here, if you get it wrong people will just tell you instead of trying to glass you to death like in America.

Our big trip yesterday was out to the Capilano suspension bridge, a single man bridge over a gorge north of Vancouver which is a tourist mecca. Thank god we never made it. On the way over we decided to try out the shorter, but cheaper (ie free instead of $21) one over the Lynn Valley. This was a better pick, as the hordes from Nippon all headed the other way with their tour busses. I have a thing with heights but handled this ok as it's a modern take on the original rope suspension foot bridge that the hero always ends handing off once the baddie cuts the ropes. It crosses a narrow gorge that cuts through the forrest (not called the bush here) and has a rather impresive amount of water passing below it. Crystal clear and freezing cold, just like its supposed to be in these places.

How do I know it's cold? Well, back in the Stevil days I would have just followed all the school kids we saw jumping off the rocks into the 30ft pool (i'll take their word for it that it's that deep) but after seeing them surface gasping obscenities that their empty lungs wouldn't allow them to yell, the new, more sensible me decided against it. Pissweak. Add to that we saw a few Canadian blokes walking around in thongs and shorts while I'm in 3 layers and I get the feeling they breed them either real tough or real dumb around here.

Beer. Let's talk about drinking around here. We've had a few quiet ones in the local brewpubs in the afternoon because the other pubs and bars a either closed or a bit too seedy for the missus. The beer in these places is passable but suffers from the same problem most of the Canadian beer is giving me: lack of booze. I'm not sure what the percentage is but I'm not getting very drunk or waking up very hungover. This is not such a good sign. Still, I like the fact they have pints instead of those stupid schmiddy things they sell in Sydney now. The brewpubs have a pint that uses the same tricks of glass creation the schmiddy uses to look bigger than it actually is (it's really about 1/2 a litre). I've christened this the schint. Of the local mass produced drops, Kelowna is my current tip.

Our experience with the rest of the pubs in Vancouver is split between the joint attached to the hostel (those of you who've backpacked know what I'm talking about here) or seriously strange interpretations of Irish pubs. How can you call yourself an Irish pub, have 20 beers on tap and none of them be Guiness? It boggles the mind. To be fair we've not been so adventurous here as we expect heavy lifting on the booze front being at a ski resort all next week during the St Patricks day week.

I'm still finding I like this place, despite the rapid Pyrmont-isation going on just over the road from us. Yaletown is the next big thing and it's sending 40 storey towers of glass out of the ground in rapid succession. It's still a nice looking city, but alot of the smaller, older places will soon have the sun blocked out by these things most of the day. It's like two extremes, untouched nature at one end of town and rapid building over of the other end.

One final note for anyone traveling to North America, this is a godsend: maps.google.com. All cites and it can actually find addresses you type in, not like the Australian ones.

Now in X-Files country.


Vancouver :: Canada

And someone thought we'd get fat on this trip?

Places: Vancouver.

Coolest thing I did: Rode a bike around the 30-odd km of waterfrount that it's possible to ride bikes around here.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The world's thinnest office building is utter crap.

If you can get a plane that goes to Sydney to Vancouver without stopping anywhere on US soil, I'd strongly recommend it. Why they decided to pull us all off the plane at very early in the morning, fingerprint and photograph us then send us all back onto the same plane is beyond me. Stupid orwellian nightmare bloody countries we have to pass through.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

Anyway, so after a jetlagged trip back in time (we got on the plane at 11:30 in Sydney and arrived 9:30 the same morning in the 'couve) we find our good selves in what must be the most brilliant sunny day this place has seen in months. Everyone is raving about it, but all we can do is go to bed. Thank god there was just enough left by the time we woke up to make us appreciate what a nice place we've arrived in. People are maddeningly friendly, cars in the middle of the city stop for pedestrians and you can get a bagel with Chilli con carne on it for 4 bucks. What more could you want?

I have to say it's like bizaro world Sydney. Everything is very, very similar, but just a little bit different. I can see why Vancouver gets such good wraps as a livable city, but I get this feeling that thats changing. You can't help but notice just how much of this city is being covered in giant glass appartment complexes. A full quarter of the city seems to be under construction, but not in that good, energetic way, rather in a staid, bland, 2-income-no-kids kind of way. Still, I can't help but love this place

Stanely Park is a very, very good idea. Lets take what must be the most valuable piece of real estate left on the whole island and fence it off for public use. Trails run all through the old growth forrest and it's so easy to forget just how close you are to the downtown. This is the Canada you come to see, the parallel trees rising out of the pine needle carpets, moss on everything that moss can poissibly grow on and just a beaten earth path to follow through it all. Even the old stumps with their frozen tendrils sticking up into the air have been reclaimed by nature. It's something else to see.

We hired a couple of bikes and rode the 30odd km of cycle path around the waterfront and it a) reminded me just how long its been since I last rode a bike and b) gave you such a feel for the amount of work that has been done to keep the inhabitants of this place fit. It's like rush hour with skinny fit people running, biking and blading everywhere. I like the looks of this ice hockey on roller blades but I'm so crap at blading I'd just make a fool of myself. Maybe by the end of 12 months.

The only trouble I'm having here is the idea that most of the tourist stuff here is not like the tourist stuff in Europe. While I'm used to being able to plant myself in a city and walk to all the stuff I need to see, the tourist stuff in town is, well, not worth it. Gastown is the rocks style area that is famous for a clock that shoots steam as far as I can tell. This quickly becomes junkie town, just before it becomes Chinatown. In Chinatown is the worlds skinniest office building. It's really just a kind of annex on the side of an appartement building and we walked past it several times before we found it. Very, very gay. We havent bothered with the Lookout! (always written with an exclamation mark for some reason)as its not very high so we're not sure what we'd see.

So, we've had to make some new choices we thought we wouldn't have to. We've found out medical professionals are strictly not allowed to work on the working holiday visa, so unless the mad typing and web surfing Yvette is doing right now turns up something new, she may be looking for a new career choice. This is not such good news, but it does mean we may not have to decide now where to live. I'm able to see Vancouver as a place to live and I can be more flexible about working in any of the big cities. We have decided pretty much to do a few weeks of odd work in Toronto in April/May before going on a summer trip back here in the west and may now cosider living in Vancouver over the winter instead. It's still very early so we're not sure.

Right, so I'm now fully hooked on WestJet. We've got the flights booked for cheap to Calgary then onto Banff on Thursday then a week later onto Montreal. It's good to have no plans like this. Grant tells us it's snowing big style at the moment in Sunshine at the moment so we're both pumped for the wintersports ahead.