Oh Canada!!

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It’s been a while but we’re back to wrap up our North American adventure with a look at the good (snowboarding), the bad (Canadian beer) and the ugly (again the beer). We started in Canada by meeting up with Heather and her friend Amy and getting ridiculously drunk, Canadian style. We followed that by getting up early the next morning to catch a bus to Big White Ski Resort near Kelowna, BC. This was the start of a week snowboarding which was awesome but very painful. Having never snowboarded we took lessons for the first couple of days before letting loose on the slopes on our own. Overall we did pretty well apart from a few bumps and bruises, some strained muscles and the flu. But as they say on the mountain “If you’re not hurt, you’re not trying hard enough”. I think we must have been trying to hard. In Big White we met Tom Green and Dave England (from Jackass) as they were shooting a movie up there. We hit the turps with them a couple of times and got rather drunk as we didn’t have to pay for any drinks. And thank god, as a jug of beer was $17.50 Canadian dollars. Big White was a great resort to go to as it is totally ski in/ski out meaning you don’t have to get a lift up to the slopes and you can ski into and out of any accommodation up there.

We got back into Vancouver from Big White and spent 5 days doing absolutely nothing as we were both sick with the flu. Unfortunately the sixth day was St Patty’s day and we needed to celebrate. Along with some crew from the hostel we got up relatively early (about 10am) and headed straight next door to the Irish pub for a big brekky, along with a few Guinness’s. After that we headed back to the hostel and hit some Jack Daniels before heading to the bar in the hostel for some green beer. By now it was about 1pm and the day starts getting a little hazy but I’m pretty sure we headed to about 4 more Irish Pubs during the day and night and finished drinking at about 4am the next morning. It was a quality night. One thing that was documented was the marriage between Ben and Helen (or Jordy as she is from Newcastle) at one of the Irish pubs. They unfortunately, for him, annulled it about 30secs later.

After the mad St Patty’s celebrations we woke up the next morning a little sore and watched the St Patty’s Day parade through the centre of Vancouver. This was a bit of a sham as there was even a Canadian Aussie rules footy team parading. Following that Heather picked us up and we stayed at her place for a week. We didn’t do a lot there as money saving was the main aim but we made our way to Whistler, home of the 2010 winter Olympics, and to Gastown in Vancouver which has a clock with steam spurting out of the top. At Heathers we did drink a bit and one night had a toga party at the house. That got a little messy with a couple of people passing out.

After a week of money conservation we headed back to the hostel and downtown Vancouver. From there we saw the Capilano Suspension Bridge which is a rather large bridge which hangs over the Capilano River in north Vancouver. Ian also took a trip up to Grouse Mountain which overlooks Vancouver and is the closest ski field to the city. Before we knew it we had reached our second last day in Vancouver and then our last day and then we flew out. We leave Vancouver behind for the hustle and bustle of London.

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