Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Trolley Wally
It was perhaps fortunate thet the jet lag meant that we woke up at 4AM and spent the next few hours dozing, as someone thought it would be a hilarious idea to pull the fire alarm in the hostel at 7AM. That sort of out of the box comedy thinking is likely to get the person involved a job writing for the next series of Bo Selecta. We can only hope that whoever it was genuinely thought there was a fire, perhaps they had never seen the sun before, saw it streaming through the windows and got into a bit of a panic. The twat.
Anyway, today we decided that a good way to see the city would be to go on the Trolley Bus Tour. We reasoned that not only would this help us get our bearings, but it would be a safer way to get around the city given our abject failure to remember which side of the road people drive on in this country. As it turned out, however, rather than getting a detailed and humourous guide to the city of Vancouver, we instead got a guide to the drivers favourite restaurants, all of whom we just happened to have a coupon for to get us a free helping of croutons, or some other equally attractive offer. Essentially we paid $28 to be advertised to, hooray for capitalism!
We also visited Granville Island, which is a big market, and Stanley Park, which is a big park. It also contains a statue of Robert Burns, for reasons that seemingly don't actually exist. We look forward to seeing more random Scottish statues appearing for no discernable reason whatsover. There was also a statue of a girl in a wetsuit and a runner that died while jogging round the park. Does anyone feel that maybe Vancouver lacks some good local heroes?
Anyway, today we decided that a good way to see the city would be to go on the Trolley Bus Tour. We reasoned that not only would this help us get our bearings, but it would be a safer way to get around the city given our abject failure to remember which side of the road people drive on in this country. As it turned out, however, rather than getting a detailed and humourous guide to the city of Vancouver, we instead got a guide to the drivers favourite restaurants, all of whom we just happened to have a coupon for to get us a free helping of croutons, or some other equally attractive offer. Essentially we paid $28 to be advertised to, hooray for capitalism!
We also visited Granville Island, which is a big market, and Stanley Park, which is a big park. It also contains a statue of Robert Burns, for reasons that seemingly don't actually exist. We look forward to seeing more random Scottish statues appearing for no discernable reason whatsover. There was also a statue of a girl in a wetsuit and a runner that died while jogging round the park. Does anyone feel that maybe Vancouver lacks some good local heroes?
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
5000 Miles (I'm Gonna BC)
The trip managed to get to an extremely excellent start, when not only did we manage to sleep in, but we also left our cash cards behind at home, leading to some panicked phone-calls from the airport at 5 in the morning. Still, things improved after that, with only our attempt to order 2 cokes and some fries in German during our stopover at Frankfurt airport causing major problems. Still, that extra diet coke and no chips that somehow appeared where just what we were looking for. Ahem.
The flight itself was pretty uneventful, we don't have a fear of flying, unlike some people, though to be fair, it's not so much a fear of flying that they have, more a fear of suddenly and without warning stopping flying while half way across the atlantic. We quite like it, we like looking down on the clouds, which seem so solid that you could walk on them. We do reckon though that it would be remarkably stupid to attempt to prove this theory. We like the food. We like the slightly ill feeling you get when the plane dips suddenly. What we don't like, however, is the fact that we somehow managed to arrive in Vancouver at exactly the same time that we left, as if we've been somehow incased in a stasis bubble. This is not good for the old body clock. We also didn't like the fact that they had the intolerable cruelty to consider Mona Lisa Smile and, umm, Intolerable Cruelty to be suitable in flight entertainment.
After arrival, facing the Canadian Inquistion at Immigration and not getting lost on the way to the Hostel, we went out to see the Museum of Anthropology, mainly because it's free on a Tuesday evening (Well, you're supposed to give a voluntary donation, but we pretended to not understand the Canadian twang), it was interesting, but we wouldn't have paid good money for it, though to be fair, our lack of sleep-addled mind probably wasn't in the best state to appreciate first nation carvings and totem poles.
After that a swift pint and slice of pizza before heading to bed at 9.30 due to sheer exhaustion. The wild party adventure has clearly begun.
The flight itself was pretty uneventful, we don't have a fear of flying, unlike some people, though to be fair, it's not so much a fear of flying that they have, more a fear of suddenly and without warning stopping flying while half way across the atlantic. We quite like it, we like looking down on the clouds, which seem so solid that you could walk on them. We do reckon though that it would be remarkably stupid to attempt to prove this theory. We like the food. We like the slightly ill feeling you get when the plane dips suddenly. What we don't like, however, is the fact that we somehow managed to arrive in Vancouver at exactly the same time that we left, as if we've been somehow incased in a stasis bubble. This is not good for the old body clock. We also didn't like the fact that they had the intolerable cruelty to consider Mona Lisa Smile and, umm, Intolerable Cruelty to be suitable in flight entertainment.
After arrival, facing the Canadian Inquistion at Immigration and not getting lost on the way to the Hostel, we went out to see the Museum of Anthropology, mainly because it's free on a Tuesday evening (Well, you're supposed to give a voluntary donation, but we pretended to not understand the Canadian twang), it was interesting, but we wouldn't have paid good money for it, though to be fair, our lack of sleep-addled mind probably wasn't in the best state to appreciate first nation carvings and totem poles.
After that a swift pint and slice of pizza before heading to bed at 9.30 due to sheer exhaustion. The wild party adventure has clearly begun.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
This site is the sister site to Talent in a Previous Life and has been set up to document Flum's travels around the US and Canada. They say that travel broadens the mind, though from what we've heard about the portions in the USA it seems that it's more likely to broaden the stomach. As we go round the countries we'll document our thoughts here on an irregular basis, though to be fair, anyone expecting any insights more advanced than "America, it's a bit different from the UK, isn't it?" would probably do well to go elsewhere. First stop, Vancouver.
