CANADA!

I finally made it to Canada. It was a long time coming, but I made it. I didn't go in the RV, so this trips presence in this blog is questionable. But I reasoned with myself that this is a travel blog, not just an RV blog. Any way you look at it, this entry will appear in this blog, and there is little you can do to stop it.

The trip was in aid of Dave and I's 2nd anniversary. *Pause for applause* (those of you who know me well know this is quite a feat). My Dad very kindly used his Marriott points to get us a room in a beautiful hotel. We got a free room upgrade and had a 180 degree view of Coal Harbour, just amazing.

 

A floating gas station

Don't worry, we travelled in style on the 'Bolt Bus,' the Pacific Northwest's version of the MegaBus. From Seattle, it's a 4 hour bus trip. Not bad at all! However, we chose our seats and it turns out we had the worst seats in the house. Half way through, when we offloaded a bunch of people at another stop, we swapped seats and found the leg room had doubled! Part of me thinks it was best we had such shit seats to start with as it made our new location seem positively palatial. 

To be honest, our trip mainly consisted of drinking and watching our money slide down our throats. Vancouver is a very expensive city to drink out in. We just kept saying, meh, it's our anniversary! Then, an undisclosed amount of money and a heart attack later, we decided we were probably a bit frivolous. But we had fun, lots and lots of fun. We visited the Vancouver food truck scene and had ourselves a 'Japadog.' This is the Japanese take on hotdogs, complete with teriyaki sauce and seaweed topping. It was good, but as is usually my problem with any Japanese food, it kind of tasted like fish. But the dog itself was delicious. 

We did eat out, and found that while the food was good, all restaurants in the downtown area must cavort. Every menu had a different variation of the same thing. Lettuce wraps is one that sticks in my memory. I'm sure when you get out of the touristy area this becomes less, but I felt I was paying a lot for not very much. Even the food trucks charge about $8 for a meal. Sadly, we left our car at home so our options were limited. One thing though, and that was the sandwiches. Don't ever give me a British sandwich again. I can't consider that limp, underfilled insult to be something edible. We went to one place (and this also seemed a theme in Vancouver) and there was no 'I'll have a BLT with no B, L or T and can you just put a bit of mayo and a gherkin in it?' You chose what meat you wanted, and if you didn't want any of the fillings you could just bloody well take it out yourself. I loved this concept - the flavours worked so well together that changing anything would have changed the sandwich. Sandwiches were the best thing we had while we were there, and we had a lot of conversations about starting our own sandwich place in England. Just another idea to throw in the bingo ball. I wanted to try a bacon maple ice cream sandwich, but the place was closed every time we tried.

When we weren't eating or drinking, we were walking. We walked to the Space Museum and went to the planetarium. It was made more fun as Dave had never been to a large planetarium and it was great to see him gaze slack-jawed at the ceiling. 

They have an amazing area called Stanley Park - right downtown, but it's 5 miles to walk around. And to walk around it, you follow the sea wall. We saw a turtle and a bald eagle family! I couldn't believe it. This park has been lovingly looked after and attended by locals and tourists alike. It was such an awesome space. It was made better by fairly frequent drinking establishments with lovely views. This is something Seattle lacks. Decent bars available to random foot traffic.

One word of advice - don't give beggars money in Vancouver. We did twice and once got yelled at and once got asked for more. They've certainly got balls.

Our trip home was fairly uneventful even though Dave was travelling on an expired passport. We were making arrangements for me to drive back up to Canada to get him if it all went wrong. But no, they ushered us through. It was all going amazingly well until we got on our usual bus to get home. It broke down on the slip road and we had to wait 45 minutes for a replacement bus. But that was it. That was the only thing to go wrong. Happy Anniversary to us!

I did fall in love with Vancouver. It seems to be a happy midpoint between what I love about England and what I love about America. But I had a look, I'm of no use to them. A real shame, but we've only just started our journey, we can't decide before we have seen everything. But, just as it was when I was a child picking a Christmas Tree from the farm, it may well turn out that the first one you see is usually the best.

The pictures above were extremely amusing when we were inebriated. I shall explain why. The first picture is self evident. It's even recycling. The second is funny because it looks like a toy tug boat. I had originally taken the picture but thought, there is no way to capture the dinkiness of that vessel. Low and behold, it was taken care of. We were in hysterics over this. The latter looks like the guy left a mess on the log after a quick perch. Again, this was funny. However, not as funny as the tug boat...

Fun Tings Ah Gwan - pictures finally included!

The weather today is beautiful. Perfect temperature and a blue sky with little wispy clouds chasing each other toward the horizon. It is days like this when I can't wait to hit the road.

And I have good news! The generator has been repaired. It was a simple fix, as I kept telling Dave. It is nice to know that in all my research, I was right. Then again, I always love being right. It was a problem with the cables. We had a local guy come out and look at it. He turned up in an electric blue Gran Torino. The trunk was FULL of tools. And he looked like Bill Clinton. He was good looking and looked good for his age, perhaps due to an active lifestyle and not being married! But he couldn't say enough nice stuff about our rig, which is a nice change. Usually it's a whole load of breaths deeply pulled and held as it's inspected. Although  he did remind Dave of the guy in Father Ted who incessantly gabbles inane crap, whether being listened to or not. He did go on a bit, and then charged us $75 for the pleasure of his conversation and inverting the battery wires. We kinda hoped he would go easy on us, but I am beginning to realise that it is rare when this happens, so appreciate it when it does.

More good news - Dave and I passed our driving tests. It was a totally different experience to the palm-sweat inducing experience in England. Don't get me wrong - it should be hard, it should be something to take very seriously as it is one of the most dangerous things we do. But Americans are happy to send their kids out on the road, but god forbid they should have a drink at 18! But anyway, we had an hour of driving lesson before the practical test. The written was common sense with a few 'stopping distance' style questions thrown in for good measure. Our hour lesson turned into more like 30 - 45 minutes as we were deemed ready to take the official exam. I asked about crossing your hands over the wheel - "I don't really care about that" was the response. And here, it is signal, mirror, manoeuvre, which was the hardest habit to break, Why signal first? Surely you want to see what's going on behind you before you brazenly stick your winker out? But we both passed with flying colours (I passed with one more flying colour than Dave, but let us not be petty).

But we still don't know when we are going to leave. Ideally, it would be July, but we have a better chance of finding Big Foot. The hope is August, but I think we may be too hopeful. Then the question arises about winter RVing. Will it be warm enough down south to keep us comfy in a tin box? Do we put it off til next summer? I'm not sure my sanity could take another winter here, not where we live. We live in Lake City, home to the crackheads that are rejected from the city. I love our flat, but the area just has nothing really going for it. There are places like Fremont and Ballard where there is a hive of activity; bars, cafes, parks, and like-minded people. Plus, I like the people I work with, but it has a shelf life. I've risen through the ranks as far as I'm going to get in that amount of time and it is just the same thing every day. Since it is a cafe only attended by employees of Amazon, the clientèle don't provide much variety either. So we are both applying for catering work on top of our jobs. For those of you who don't know me very well, this is unprecedented. Never in my life have I needed or wanted to work so much. I like having one job, doing it well, but having it in the background, something to fund 'life.' When you have a goal, it becomes easier to stomach. I'm still not happy about it, but it's easier to cope with than the thought of staying for longer.

As I have promised, I now have pictures to stick up. I am going to try and be better about that. I know it breaks up the reading, no matter how riveting it may be :)

This has nothing to do with the RV, but I thought it was hilarious. Consider it a free gift.

 Just to give it a little perspective on the size - 30ft

Various items of clothing are covered in Dicor - the sealant we use to repair the roof

This is our bedroom at the back, The shower is next to the arrow, so whoever is in bed can have a show!

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Our floor to ceiling panoramic windows....

 This is our living space, the camera died before we got a picture of the kitchen