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...