Vancouver day 1…..

So we planned to wake up and get out the hotel for 9:30am to get the sightseeing trolley, well not that I'm complaining one bit but travelling with someone else (especially a female) is a lot different to travelling alone,lol!

It was pretty chilly out and we walked round to the trolley stop to get the trolley at 11am! Kami went to get a coffee at Starbucks(which by the way did you know there are 200 Starbucks in Vancouver!!) 15 minutes later the trolley arrived and we were the only people on even though we got on at stop number 7. it was one of those “Hop On, Hop Off”  type things and had over 25 stops and went all over the city and took approximately two hours for the complete tour without getting off.

   

We decided to stay on the trolley the whole two hour trip without getting off and then going the extra 3 or 4 stops and getting off in Chinatown for lunch. Its the second largest Chinatown in North America after San Francisco and Kami’s love for anything china and Chinese food just wasn't worth me arguing with!

After 4 or 5 stops they changed drivers which was great as the first driver was so hard to understand, his voice want too clear over the microphone and he talked with some type of lisp! We passed lots of interesting places that were all pointed out to us along the way and fortunately we were able to understand the new driver! he was pretty good and informative. We passes a huge building that had five elevators inside and outside the building was a sculpture type thing that had five  boxes on poles. The boxes moved  up and down in relation to the elevators inside the building! We also passed a bank that was the most robbed bank in north America!  originally it was a concrete building but they had re designed the whole building and built all the walls out of glass and since then they hadn't had a single robbery!

Elevator boxes

 

Its a beautiful city and one this i noticed was how clean the streets were, it was spotless! id certainly like to go back and see it over a few days and have more time to see things.

We headed up towards a huge park called Stanley ark that's across the river from Vancouver city itself and you get some great views of the city.

The gun in the cage below is fired every hour, on the hour every day of the week every day of the year.

 

Gas station for the boats!                  Bridge back over                             Sulphur mine

   

As we headed round the park we saw a couple of bald headed eagles up in the trees, i think this is the first time I've actually seen some in the wild!

   

We also saw several huge tree including a large hollow one that had been saved and “restored” at a cost of $100,000 plus a huge tree trunk that has two types of tree growing out of the same trunk.

          

We headed back towards the city stopping at a few places on the way with a few people getting on and off and an hour or so later we were back where we started. Chinatown was 3 more stops after so we stayed on the trolley till we got there and headed out to look for a restaurant to eat at.

   

Took a few pictures in a Chinese style park that we passed and just wandered around Chinatown for 20 minutes before finding a restaurant.

     

Kami is very particular in where and what type of Chinese food she eats, it has to be as authentic as possible and not really western style. it was actually harder than you might think to find a restaurant to eat at! there were lots of stores and supermarkets selling produce but not many restaurants at all! Kami speaks fluent Chinese and Japanese so we stopped at a supermarket and she asked an old Chinese lady if she knew where a good cheap place to eat was. I think the Chinese lady presumed we wanted Western style as she directed us to an expensive place a couple of blocks away. We did however find a small Chinese shopping mall that was full of Chinese people and had a few fast food type but authentic  food.

To be continued……

San Jose to Vancouver (via Seattle)….

We had to be up and off early today as we fly out from San Francisco at 10am to Seattle, pick up a rental car and then drive 3 hours to Vancouver.  We left the hotel around 7am, got to the airport, dropped off the rental car and as we were on the shuttle bus from the car rental i got a text on my phone to say the flight was delayed an hour. My friend Simon had called me while we were driving to San Fran to see where i was and if we wanted to meet up for breakfast and go out for a ride on the motorbikes (when we were kids we were big motorbike fans, Simon had continued this as he got older and had five bikes including a couple of Ducati racers!) i had to pass on this and told him we were on our way to the airport.We checked in the luggage and headed to the Alaska Airlines exec lounge, as we were heading over there i got another text on my phone to say the flight time was now 1pm After spending a couple of hours in the lounge and eating and drinking their cranberry juice and cookies our flight was pushed back till 4pm! Its a shame as i would have had time to have met up with Simon and gone out on the bikes for an hour had i known!

The sign Kami spotted                  The silly sign i spotted

   

We arrived in Seattle eventually at around 6:45pm, we could see during the landing that it was pouring down with rain and i wasn't looking forward to the 3 hour drive up to Vancouver in the rain. Kami went to the bathroom as we arrived in Seattle, She had been on the plane dying to pee and hungry and i wouldn't say she was complaining but she had a face on that you knew was someone not to mess with!

 

As she went to the bathroom i spotted the following sign and wondered what on earth it was about. I tried the fountain and found out!

Click the video below to hear the noise it made!!

Gurgling water fountain

We made our way to the Alamo desk, did the paperwork, picked up the rental car and headed out towards Vancouver. SeaTac airport is about 15 miles south of Seattle and we had flown over Seattle as we landed and got a great view of the space needle even though it was pouring down with rain. I wasn't able to get my camera out quick enough before the view had gone though which is a shame as it was a great shot. We dove past it again on the highway as we were driving but the rain just made any pictures of the needle or the city look really bad. I know it rains in Seattle a lot but i couldn't believe how hard and how much rain was on the ground,even the wipers on the car couldn't keep up with the amount that was falling and being splashed onto the windscreen!

once we were past Seattle and about an hour into the journey we stopped at a family style restaurant for some food. We had a Club sandwich and fries and split it between us and it was a still a huge plate full. We did this so we could have desert though and id seen Apple pie with ice cream on the menu and had my mind set on that, Kami had seen the red velvet cake in the counter as we came in and wanted that. I ordered to Apple pie only to be told they had sold out so chose the cheesecake instead. Kami had her red velvet  cake and was finally happy having had a pee in the airport and some food to feed her hunger.

 

We got back on the road to Vancouver and headed towards the Canadian border. After the last two experiences of getting into Canada i wasn't looking forward to this too much however we were driving this time and not arriving off a plane so i was hoping it would be a touch easier, and i was right! We arrived at the Canadian border and as i handed mine and Kamis passports over to the woman in the booth she asked where we both lives, i said “the UK and DC”. She then asked why we were going to Vancouver to which i replied “to see a Roger Waters concert” she handed me back our passports and said, “have a good trip”!! that was it we were in! I'm definitely flying into the US next time and then driving into Canada!!

I spotted a couple of signs welcoming us to Surrey, which is the county i live in in the UK! However the weather and the night time made the pic come out pretty blurry and i want able to get a picture of the Surrey sign till we drove back in the daylight.

We both spotted some really bright lights in the distance and both noticed how they looked to be in the shape of a dog! It was like those huge designs that people do on the hillsides and light up at night. Kami tried taking a few pictures of it but these were the best we could get.

The dog on the hillside!

It really did look like the shape of a dg with a head, nose, legs and a tail. Well it did till we started getting nearer and it just looked like a lot of lights on the hillside! we must have been a good 30 miles away from it however due to us changing direction when driving the lights moved as well and sooner or later it looked nothing like a dog!! As we arrived into Vancouver it was still pretty hard to tell what the lights were but when we were a couple of miles from the hotel the lights were in front of us and we decided it was the ski lift and ski pass that was all lit up on the hillside!

We arrived at the hotel at 11:30pm after a long travel day which should have been a lot shorter, had our flight been on time we would have arrived around 4pm and had the night to go out for something to eat and relax, as it was though we just headed straight to bed! As we checked in i had picked up a map of Vancouver and there was an advertisement for the Vancouver sightseeing trolley buss tour. We decided to get up early the next morning and do the 2 hour tour to get an overview of the city.