TravelStream™ news feed for member benandgabigreen on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/benandgabigreen en-us Copyright ©2012 TravelPod.com Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:23:15 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1194018180/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1194018180/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1194018180/tpod.html Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:23:15 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

Week Three - Settling in - Port Coquitlam, Canada

Port Coquitlam, Canada

Hi all I am stealing an unsecured WiFi connection from one of the neighbours and the signal is very patchy! All good here. Ben is away on site again today - only about an hour north of Vancouver, but right up in the mountains and he texted earlier to say it was cold and snowing up there. He went out last night and got some proper cold weather work clothes as he froze on Tuesday when he went out. Fleece lined wellies and the like! He looks like a right woodsman with it all on!! Needs to thicken up his blood a little! He should be back last afternoon, but he has to get the sea bus from North Vancouver to downtown and then the West Coast Espress train and then a bus so it will take him about an hour and a half to get home. He's not finding the commute tooooo bad. Although we are looking out for an old reliable banger so that he can drive to the station. He leaves here at 7am so Anna isn't awake by then so for me to take him will be a bit of a schlep. The bus goes from right outside the house so it isn't too much trouble but a car would be easier. Having said that Anna isn't awake by 7am - she woke up at 5am this morning. Very loudly! And then refused to go back in her cot so she came into bed with me (Ben left at 5:30) and proceeded to kick me to death for an hour and finally we both went to sleep at about 6:15 and massively overslept till about 8:30! No shower for me therefore until about half an hour ago when she went down for a belated morning nap! Not a bad day to do it though cause we don't have much planned except a visit to the grocery store. Still exploring the shops to see which ones are good value. I am going to join the library today too as it is still 10 days till our telly is delivered and I've run out of books. They do some good baby activity programs there so I'll check them out and do my "first day at school" thing! Hate joining new groups but I shall be brave! Midge and Bill next door (!) have taken us under their wing (a retirement project!?) and have given me the entire Port Coquitlam Leisure Centre brochure and they also have quite a few baby oriented programs that we will participate in. Especially swimming. Don't want Anna to get un-used to the water. She was loving it so much by the time we left Barry. You have to pay for all the activities here and although they're not expensive, they will be if we sign up for everything so I'm going to be a bit selective. I'm also a bit hampered by Anna's nap times. There's no point doing something "fun" if she's tired and cranky - spoils it for us both. Our sofas and bed arrived - can't remembered if I said? Two chocolate brown sofas that look like leather but are actually microfibre and therefore a little more resilient and able to take Anna's love! They feel lovely too! Them and Anna's toys are the only furniture on the ground floor! Oh, and the outside table and 2 dining room chairs that next door lent us for the kitchen! Needless to say, Anna is loving having the house as one big playroom. The bed is an American King Size - ENORMOUS! Wider than it is long! And the top of the mattress comes above my hip so I have to do a little hop, skip and a jump to get into bed at night. Great. We have friends coming for Sunday lunch. Warren and Wendy. Ben worked with Warren in Guinea and they only live 15 minutes from us in Maple Ridge. Their youngest son (they have 3) is a year older than Anna so while the older two are doing stuff on Sunday we thought we'd plop Malcolm and Anna in the 'playroom' and we'll have lunch and wine and get to know each other better. We also met a very nice couple at a restaurant we were at one evening. They also have three kids and their youngest daughter Lola is the same age as Anna. They sat next to each other and played and we got chatting. I'm hoping to set up a few play dates with her too and use them as a way to meet other people. We have had some nice weather the past few days - cold but clear and not raining, which I am rapidly beginning to realise in Vancouver, is something to be very grateful for! Sadly, the rain looks like descending tonight, just in time for the weekend. Ben's bought a jogging stroller out of the local classifieds and is going to fix the flat tyre tonight and get Anna out running with him. Hope she enjoys it as much as he will!! I've had to order her a cosy toes because it seems to have got really cold here all of a sudden and she gets a bit blue around the edges if she's out in the stroller for too long. Its like a stroller sleeping bag that she gets posted into. Hard to find though and I think they're pretty much essential?? Ah well. It'll be delivered next week I hope. A little bit more walking from Anna this week. A few steps a day but she gets all coy about it with me and will only really do it for Ben!
]]> http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1193340660/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1193340660/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1193340660/tpod.html Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:42:15 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

Week Two - We have a house! - Vancouver, Canada

Vancouver, Canada

Good news!! We have (thankfully) been approved to rent a VERY nice 3 bedroomed house in Port Coquitlam. SUCH a relief! We were up against another guy and thankfully his credit was rubbish! :) Here is a link to the Estate website to give you an idea of what they're like: http://www.portcoquitlamtownhouse.com/d isplay_complex.php?mo de=&id=2784 Actual photos will follow this weekend as we're picking up the keys tomorrow. The area is an hour and a quarter from Downtown Vancouver by car but hopefully for Ben's sake, the train commute will be less than an hour. It is right on the edge of the development so plenty of scope for Ben to get horribly muddy on his runs! It has 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms and is in a fab condition. Double garage too which is good for all the stuff that is arriving at the end of November. Will be a little interesting until then as we have NOTHING! No plates or mugs or bed or sofa.....! Ha ha! Ah well, Anna has her cot so we will cope. As long as that is taken care of, and she sleeps, Ben and I can make do. We are having a gorgeous day today. Sunny and cold and just lovely. Its meant to be this way for the whole weekend too which is going to be amazing. Views out of our apartment window were taken about half an hour ago to show you what its like.
]]> http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1192991580/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1192991580/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1192991580/tpod.html Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:48:01 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

Vancouver - Week One - Vancouver, Canada

Vancouver, Canada

We've had a very busy week. Ben's been at work and is flying out tonight to Ottawa for a 2 day conference so it begins already! We bought a car on Wednesday. Very exciting. Its a Toyota Sienna and its a somewhat huge 7 seater minivan. We love it! I've really been clocking up the mileage too. The area that we are ultimately hoping to buy a house in, is over an hour's drive away. This city is LARGE. Anna's struggled a little with the extreme car journeys but she will get used to it! We are hoping to rent in Pitt Meadows or Maple Ridge so that when it comes to buying a house, we are familiar with the areas and Ben has got used to the commute. Or not, in which case we try somewhere else!!!! Friday was Anna's 1st birthday so Ben came home early and we did a little present opening session! We then went to the Mountain Equipment Coop which is one of Ben's favourite stores! Spent a load of money kitting us all out with warm, waterproof clothing. It has been WET this week. And they have forecast 80-140mm of rain between now and tomorrow afternoon. So VERY WET! Yesterday was Ben's birthday and we watched England lose at rugby (sigh) at the house of a guy who Ben works with. Quite a few South Africans around so there was some good natured rivalry! We then went out to Maple Ridge to visit some friends of Ben's from when he worked in Guinea. It was good to see the area and get a feel for what a "native" Vancouver home looks like. Today it is really wet so we had a lazy morning and didn't do much and then we went to the Aquarium. Knocks the socks off Australia's Sea World! A third of the price and 10x better. I'm going to get an annual membership cause it is just so cool. They have a great toddlers section too with tanks and tunnels all at toddler level. They have touch and feel tanks for them too. Fab. Fish and Chips for lunch overlooking Lyons Gate Bridge and now home while Anna naps. About time I updated this! More to come next week. Hopefully news of our rental house.... Keep fingers xxx
]]> http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1192990800/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1192990800/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1192990800/tpod.html Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:31:54 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

Vancouver at last - Vancouver, Canada

Vancouver, Canada

We've arrived! At last its happened! We got into Vancouver at about 6pm on last Friday the 12th, expecting it to be pouring with rain and that we'd have a 4 hour wait to get through immigration.... none of that happened! We arrived to a lovely autumnal evening and were out of the airport with visas in passports within half an hour! Amazing! We got to the holiday apartment all OK and Anna was fed, bathed and asleep by 8:30pm. She has slept incredibly well this past 3 weeks. 12 hours a night apart from the 1st two nights in Georgia when she was jetlagged and only slept for 10.5! Bliss. The apartment is a 2 bedroomed place with a large living area, small kitchen and bathroom. It is perfect for the next month although we wouldn't want to live here any longer! A bit dull! We are one block from Stanley Park which is enormous. We walked for ages on Saturday and didn't even scratch the surface.... It takes 25 mins to walk to Ben's office which is smack in the city centre and overlooks the water and the mountains (see annotated photo attached!). We went to Canada's second largest mall on Sunday (had to be done!). The main aim (apart from satisfying my curiosity as to HOW big it could actually be = the answer is MASSIVE!) was to organise a birthday present for Anna, get a cell phone each and do groceries. Ticked all the boxes although I have (!!) to go back again tomorrow to finalise the cell phone deal. So totally different from the UK that we've taken a few days to think about which deal we want. We have also hired a car for the first week as we very quickly realised that this is one huge city and we'll never get where we need to go without one. Ben's going to take an afternoon off some time later this week and we're going to go down to a big car mart in the next city down... we thought that they were all suburbs but apparently the burbs are all actually cities in their own right...weird! All our ideas of buying a car have changed since spending a week in Georgia - we want BIG now! Everything else here is BIG so why just have an estate?!??!? Minivan is the way forward! They make cars here we've never ever heard of in the UK. Electric sliding doors all remote controlled - whats not to like?! Ha ha ha! Banking is proving to be a little challenging in that HSBC are proving to be slightly less of "The world's local bank" than initially promised! Sigh. However, they assure me that we will have our bank cards by the end of the week.... all our money is tied up in an account we can't access unless we go to one specific branch. Very tedious. Ben's then going to get us both Social Security numbers this week after which we are more established as far as the authorities are concerned. As for darling Anna.... she's been delightful! Her birthday's on Friday and we've bought her an early birthday present. She had a walker in Cardiff and we shipped it cause it was so big but she's missing it so much we bought her another one with Granny's birthday money.... Big hit! She's very close to walking now. She took one deliberate step in our hotel room in Cardiff but that clearly scared the pants off her as she hasn't done it again!! The frustration levels are building though which usually means there's a breakthrough looming. We hope! The teeth are at 7 so far. Very sharp and she loves trying to bite us. She has struggled today cause Ben went back to work. She's become a total Daddy's girl in the last month. Every time anything didn't go her way today I had crocodile tears and DADADADADA endlessly!!!! Cute until hour 3! She is eating all sorts of new food at the moment and is really easy to take out cause we just order her some sort of vaguely healthy kiddie portion and she invariably wolfs it down.
]]> http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1191855240/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1191855240/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1191855240/tpod.html Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:42:42 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

St Simon's Island, Georgia, USA - St Simon's Island, GA

St Simon's Island, GA

Hello all We are in St Simon's. Part of the Golden Isles off the coast of South Georgia, USA. Fantastic part of the world. We have had a little birthday celebration for Anna's 1st birthday, although she isn't officially 1 until the 19th! She loved it and the house is festooned with balloons still!! :) Great-Granny and Gramps are enjoying spending time with Anna - she has managed to be particularly well behaved despite 2 days of jetlag. We're off there for lunch now to be fed dangerous quantities of enormous shrimp. YUM! The week before we left Cardiff was spent in a blur of frantic activity, trying to get things sorted so that we could leave with nothing undone. I think we did pretty well - haven't had any major flashbacks to worry me yet! We were in the tinyest hotel room in the city, but it was clean and was all we really needed. The flight over here from Cardiff via Amsterdam and Detroit was fine. The main long flight of 8.5 hours was on a plane that had loads of empty seats so we managed to get a row of 4 together which made the whole situation quite bearable. Anna used the 2 seats in the middle as her personal playground and did incredibly well. Napped a bit, played a bit, ate a bit in one long cycle. She has since slepr through every night and apart from waking up at 5am the first 2 days, has actually just had her first night of 12 straight hours! Bliss! It is Columbus Day here so Gerrard and Ami (my cousins) are off school for the day so we are going to Granny's for lunch and will then go down to the beach. Let Anna get some North American sand into her at last! I'll update this before we leave here. Gabs, Ben and Anna x
]]> http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1189431660/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1189431660/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1189431660/tpod.html Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:55:52 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

Time marches by! - Barry, United Kingdom

Barry, United Kingdom

Hello again everyone. We are still in Barry, still counting down the days until we leave. Flights have been definitly booked for Oct 4th to the States. One week with family there and then we land in Vancouver on Fri 12th Oct. We will be staying at some very nice holiday apartments for the first month (www.rosellensuites.com) and then we have to find our own place. This past weekend we had our farewell BBQ with all our Bristol friends (see photo). It was so lovely to see everyone and thanks to all for coming! It also happened to be my birthday on Saturday which was good timing! Tomorrow Anna and I are driving down to London to see Ursula and Laurie for a little goodbye. Looking forward to it! I'll pop some photos of the visits on here when I'm back. Anyway - I have lots to do - 16 days till the removals people arrive and the whole house needs to be cleaned and de-cluttered extensively before then!
]]> http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1187355180/tpod.html http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1187355180/tpod.html#comment Travel Blogs http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/benandgabigreen/vancouver_2007/1187355180/tpod.html Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:56:11 +0000 A run down of our journey to the other side of the world!

VISA - Barry, United Kingdom

Barry, United Kingdom

Good news! Our work visas for Canada came through yesterday and we have booked our flights. I've also booked the removals company so it is all really happening now! Only 6.5 weeks left in Barry!
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