Vancouver

We spent 36 jet lagged hours in Vancouver and it seemed like a pretty pleasant place. Vancouverians turned out to be friendly, laid back and pretty liberal by the looks of things. They live in a small city with lots of skyscrapers, where the buses are mainly electric and have bike racks on the front. How genius an idea is that? Vancouver is built on a grid system and the thing I really like about it is this:- if you look down the street, in the distance you can either see the sea or some mahossive mountains. In our brief time there we walked round the very beautiful Stanley (i think) park which was on the edge of the city centre, but was basically like being out in the woods. Chipmunks/squirrels were sneaking round under our bench by Beaver Lake, and there were mounties there too. We had a squizz round Gastown, the old part of town, and saw the famous steam powered clock . That would really have given Ma Thommo something to complain about if Pa T had installed one of those in Ossy. Emrod - we also saw this amusingly named bar . We also had a splendid veggie meal in a restaurant called Naam in the Kitsilano district, yum yum.
On the negative side we stayed in a hostel that had a club downstairs. Our bed was vibrating on Saturday night (it sounded banging though). Good job we were exhausted, De Gorski looked like Kung-Fu panda the next day.
Next we are off to MTB mecca, Whistler, 2 hours up the road. After much inquiring we found we can take our bikes on the Greyhound bus, so are packing our stab vests and chainmail scarves and hoping we don't lose our heads on the way up there. Fingers crossed.

(PS. In Withnail, Marwood claims "Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane". If that's the case I can see why people get in bother with drugs. It was ace, free booze, tasty snacks, choice of films in a little screen in front of you, plenty of space and your own blanket. Before we knew it we were in Canadia and not really wanting to get off the plane.)

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