Back to Downtown

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Be warned this is a long post!!...Since last week Jade and me have moved on again and we're now back in lively Downtown Vancouver. We left Victoria on friday morning and headed by coach, 2 hours a bit further up the coast on Vancouver Island to a small town called Nanaimo, now when i say small it was actually tiny and had very little to do. But as one of the main ferry points was not too far away we decided to stay a couple of nights. We ended up at the Hosteling International place, which i think was the only hostel there and pretty much just chilled out and thought we would try and get ourselves some veiwings for appartments for when we got back to main Vancouver.

The Hostel itself was really nice (a lot better than the one in Victoria! as it had recently been refurbed) as there wasn't too much to do either i thought i'd take Jade on her first ever hike! we went over to a small island just off the coast of Nanaimo called Newcastle Island and spent about 3 hours walking around (Jade actually seemed to enjoy it aswel! well we got to see some racoons so it can't have been all that bad) That night we got ourselves packed up again ready for the ferry ride back to Horseshoe Bay not far from Downtown Vancouver and thought we would have a nice bit of head down before we had to be up early the next morning......that was until our room mates arrived! I think i wanted to kill them both at some point that night at seperate times!! First we had a really old guy turn up around mid-night, now the dorm was pretty small and had two bunk beds, me and jade were in one and so when he came in, i think he decided he was younger than what he actually was and so attempted to scale to the top bunk on the otherside of the room (very unsuccessfuly) i then had to talk him down as he was halfway up the ladder on his second attempt, and in the end he swapped beds with jade so he could have a bunk closer to the floor. Well all that climbing must have made him quite tired as he fell asleap almost instantly and began to snore....the loudest i've heard anyone do so in my life!! which jade thought was funny. But there was no more laughing as the second guy came back in the early hours.....

He must have been out drinking as at about 4 am i was woken by the strongest smell of ale and sick which seemed to smack me in the face (i had ear plugs in due to our first friend so couldn't hear too much) i then sat up to see this new lad projectile vomiting to the end of his bed haha good effort on his part i suppose! I don't think i've ever seen Jade move so fast.....let alone at 4 am!! I don't think i want to mention the rest but yeah it was like being back in the army again! hahaha.....so we were up pretty early that day.

Sunday we then arrived back at the Samesun Backpackers Hosteal in Downtown which we were at before, we mainly came back as we managed to get a couple of viewings for some appartments! both were really nice, one was not far from where we are at the moment in Downtown and the other was in Kitsilano, a really nice place about 10 minutes by bus. So hopefuly we will be hearing from them soon......if we don't hear anything, we're thinking about just travelling around for a bit more instead as it doesn't seem to be too easy finding somewhere to rent and so eventually we will just end up spending too much! So time will tell i suppose.

Well we have another hostel booked as from wendesday at Jericho Beach which is in Kitsilano so we have somewhere to stay for the next week anyway.

One thing we said was that we would like to try local foods aswel, where ever we are, and so last night went to a small place just along from us and had Poutine! It's basically chips and gravey with whatever other topping you want on top, like i had cheese sauce and meat sauce.....it sounds a weird combination but it was actually really good and well worth going to try! Todays been our last full day here in Downtown aswel as we move on to our next hostel in Kitsilano tommorrow until saturday, which seams to be a really nice place, so today we just spent the day at Stanley Park, just up the road from us, it's basically rainforest with loads of trails and a massive seawall around the outside, and with loads of Aboriginal Totem poles aswel so turned out to be a good day even though it was a bit knackering after about 6 hours of walking!

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