West Side Story
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
21
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
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Vancouver,
British Columbia,
Canada
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
We stopped for food at a Chinese Canadian restaurant, which is as odd as it sounds. We ordered a dish each and shared, which turned out to be a LOT of food. Sated (or should that be satayed?), and up to date on our Chinese horoscopes (Kirsty was not impressed to find that she is a Monkey), we continued to Vancouver.
Arriving in the city, we quickly found the address of Bob, our host for the next few days. We rang the doorbell, a head stuck out of the window and was probably quite surprised to have a view of Sandy and Robin (we were obscured from view by being beside the door) as they possibly weren't quite who he had been expecting. After a round of greetings and farewells, we set about settling in.
We had showers and made tuna burgers for our hosts. Later some friends of Bob and his girlfriend Katelin, Katy and Devon, came round. A nice evening of beers, conversation and music ensued. Bob is not only a guitar teacher, he is an enthusiastic collector of all sorts of instruments from around the world. Devon is a bass player and Jacob is a drummer, so the three of them played some impromptu hippy swirly music. Eventually, Devon, Katy and Bob decided to go out in search of more beers and live music, and having inflated our airbed, we went to bed....
....and woke up in the morning on the floor. We had been warned that the airbed was a bit leaky, but by dawn it was pretty much entirely empty.
We went to the nearby cafe for a sturdy North American breakfast and then back to the flat to meet up with Bob and his friend Andrew (also known, confusingly at first, as Norman. This turned out to be his surname.) for a couple of rounds of Frisbee Golf. This was something that Jacob had heard of before, but had assumed was a joke. Kirsty hadn't heard of it and also assumed that Bob was joking when he mentioned being into it. Bob couldn't have been joking less. He has a whole bag full of Frisbees and was able to lend us two each and offer various tips.
Frisbee Golf is a great sport. Each player can use a variety of Frisbees which are differently weighted and shaped, giving them different flying characteristics. Some are heavy and don't fly far, but their flight is quite accurate and predictable. Others are lighter, so fly a long distance but with less accuracy. So there you have your putters and drivers. The Frisbees are thrown at a 'hole' (actually a basket mounted on a steel pole, with chains draping down into the basket to 'catch' the disc if the throw is accurate). Here is more information for those of you who may be "Frolf curious": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisbee_golf
Jacob turned out to be surprisingly good at it and finished the second round with a score only a point or two behind Bob. Kirsty was predictably terrible and despite having a higher par per hole than the others, still came a miserable 4th place. Still, we both had a great time and are hoping that it catches on more in the UK.
That evening, we went round to the flat of another friend, Dan, to watch the ice hockey, which is more of a religion than a sport in Canada. Afterwards, we went back to Bob and Katelin's for shrimp Thai green curry and to share the raspberry wine which Robin had given us. Mmmmm. Later, we went out to a bar for a few beers, conversation and ostensibly some live music, although that ended for the evening shortly after we went through the door. Still, the beer and conversation were good. We then blew up another airbed; this time provided by Andrew, and went to bed.
The following morning (this time waking on a still inflated airbed), despite the inclement weather (a typical Vancouver feature), we decided that we should try and see some of Vancouver. We set out on the Sky Train to the downtown area (city centre) and had a look around. It may be doing Vancouver a disservice, and the rain certainly didn't help, but we were a little underwhelmed. Once you've seen one North American downtown, you've pretty much seen them all. Although this one had hydroplanes taking off in the sea, which was nice to watch.
We decided that we would head for the Gastown district to go to see the steam clock. We made the mistake of checking our map in the street and were quickly approached by a homeless guy with interesting ulcers offering directions. Really useless directions incidentally. He requested our spare change for his efforts, and feeling benevolent, we gave him the small amount of change that we had. We were quite taken aback when the guy complained that it was insufficient to buy coffee and returned the cents to us as he "can't use these". Apparently he had never heard of the expressions "Beggars can't be choosers" and "Take care of the cents and the dollars will take care of themselves" (Canadian version of Trad. English proverb).
We found our way to the steam clock, which has been in Vancouver since 1977 (yes, that counts as historical here...) and is powered by a steam engine. The steam drives a bicycle chain thing, which lifts ball weights up slowly to a chute. Once at the chute, the ball rolls across and is collected by another bicycle chain drive. The weight of the ball drives this chain and powers the clock mechanism. The whole thing is topped with five steam whistles which play the Westminster Chimes every 15 minutes.
All downtowned out, we went to the Tourist Information office to find information on how to get to Victoria (our next stop) and also picked up information on the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which we planned to visit the following day. It turned out that the Tourist Information office sold entrance tickets at a reduced price, so we bought some. We headed back to Bob and Katelin's, where they were preparing to make sushi and spring rolls. We went back out to get beers, beansprouts and rice as our contribution to the evening's repast and then, having had our offer of assistance in food preparation turned down, we proceeded to provide the musical entertainment. Jacob jangled quite efficiently on Bob's guitar, whilst Kirsty tried hard to remember how to play the violin. On a violin which had not been played for some time and kept losing its tuning. Bob and Katelin insisted that the resulting noise was not offensive...
Food prepared, we had our first experience of 'Fresh Spring Rolls'. These are basically the same as spring rolls except that none of the ingredients or the resulting roll are cooked at all. It may sound like wrapped up salad (which is fair enough, as essentially it was) but it was good and tasty. The sushi was also respectable. After eating, we all showed off the freaky things we can do; Kirsty's bendy thumbs and Jacob's crunchy toes and ear popping were nothing compared to Bob's ability to lift his own eyelids away from his eyes using only their muscles. He can also roll his eyes back and look at the inside of his own head. Impressive.
The following day, we went out early and had breakfast at the same cafe as before, then took the Sky Train, Sea Bus (ferry) and bus to Capilano to see the suspension bridge. The bridge is a 136m long affair suspended 70m above a river. It was originally built in 1889 and was called the 'laughing bridge' because of the noise it made when the wind blew through the canyon. It has been replaced a couple of times since then, although one replacement was because a new owner was unsure of how strong it was. On replacing the bridge entirely, he tested the strength of the old bridge...to find it was exactly the same as that of the bridge he had replaced it with. It's quite a bouncy experience and the views of the canyon and the forest are beautiful.
Having crossed the bridge, we went around the Clifftop Boardwalk, which winds along the edge of the canyon under the magnificent Douglas Firs and was very pretty. However, the main reason we had been drawn to the place was the 'Treetop Adventure', which is a series of platforms and bridges about 30m above the forest floor offering what they refer to as a "squirrel's eye view" of the temperate rainforest. Unfortunately it was closed for two days. As we had prepaid for our tickets at the tourist information place, we were not informed of this on our arrival. However, after speaking to the staff, they gave us a 40% refund on the entry fee, which is what had been offered to people paying for their tickets on the day. As we'd got our tickets at a discount, we ended up quids in. Still a pain in the arse though.
Incidentally, when the supervisor asked where we were from, we were prepared with our usual explanation of where Harrogate sits in relation to somewhere more famous...but her family are from Knaresborough, which is about two miles away!
We continued up to Grouse Mountain, which is known for its ski slopes and other wintry entertainment. We rode to the top in the cable car and went to hire skates to go iceskating on their outdoor rink. It turned out that the rental place only had two pairs of size 12 skates for rent, one of which was missing and the other was currently skating around the rink, on the feet of some other sasquatch. However, the nice lady gave us some free hot chocolate and once the skates became available, she waived the rental fee. Neither of us have ice skated for at least 12 years. Remember how ice hockey is a religion in Canada? Well, this means that they all skate brilliantly. They probably skate before they can walk. We got off to a wobbly start and didn't embarrass ourselves too much, although we both fell a couple of times. After a while, we decided to go for a walk in the snow, then went back for another go.
We also saw a film on bear rehabilitation, a project which is taking place in Grouse Mountain. The idea is that instead of shooting bears who are found orphaned, as has been the policy since the zoos got full, they would house them in an enclosure, allowing them to learn to be bears without the benefit of a mother to teach them, safe from the teeth and claws of other, more experienced bears. The film was pretty interesting and the work they are doing is very worthwhile, but their insistence that they had discovered that bears do not hibernate was baffling to us as this 'discovery' came at least 2 years after Kirsty learnt it as part of her degree.
We rounded off our day with a meal in a seafood restaurant in the Granville Island area of the city. The place was partially outdoors, which gave us great views of the harbour, but with the warmth of the heat lamps. We had a lovely meal and headed back to Bob and Katelin's for the evening.
The following morning, we packed up and took the long and frustrating journey over to Vancouver Island to our next stop: Victoria.
