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We arrived in Vancouver on the Thursday before Easter. The first night we arrived, Sarah and Kyle took us to a fab Veggie restaurant in Vancouver with their good friends Jen and Erin... Jen is a shop-aholic who works for a Media Co and Erin is a huge, half Chinese(you will see relevance of that later on) mountain biking freak, I say freak because he jumps off things on his bike that are not humanly possible! Anyway we had a good night, the food was great, we had veggie Quinoa(Sam was still hungry when we left) and delicious cheesy Nachos... See pic... boys doing their blue steel (Zoolander) faces.
Kyle and Sarah our awesome hosts had organised to visit Vancouver Island on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. So we had a good sleep after the 6am start the previous morning to catch the train and headed for Nanaimo. We stayed in Nanaimo with Tanaska and Nic. Tanaska is Sarah's best friend and they live in a very large house near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. The house is wicked and dominated by a 52-inch plasma which with the aid of Guitar Hero and copious quantities of alcohol was the scene of much merriment. For the
sake of Kyle who got looser drunk and was fully committed on Guitar Hero we will leave those videos off the blog ;-) The first night we had a great sushi meal and took some extras to Nic who was on night duty. The next day Tanaska took us all to the Cedar Grove and then to a great little shop that was called Goats on the Roof for very literal reasons. It was a general market shop where we had a awesome lunch and picked up some supplies. I picked up a Chocolate and Raspberry cheese.. very strange not really a hit. I was also introduced to a Canadian addiction of Cheesies.. basically very artificially flavoured cheese puffs... I became absolutely addicted to these and kept snacking on them for the rest of the time in Vancouver.. Got to love E numbers!.
Then later on a bunch of their friends came round and proceeded to drink copious amounts of alcohol, Nic also had a mean sound system, so it was sort of like being in a night club, Sam and I made a poor effort to keep up with Nic and Kyle and at around 11pm they cracked
open a bottle of whiskey and drank the whole thing between them by about midnight! Needless to say that in the morning Kyle was worse for wear. Sam and I went to bed around 1am, and we missed that later on Kyle and Nic were both laying by the toilet hugging, well Nic was mainly hugging Kyle who was repeatedly throwing up:-). It was apparently a very fun sight according to their other halves.. So we left Tanaska around 12 and caught the ferry home, we were all very quiet and tired but had very funny memories of the weekend. Sarah mum made an awesome Easter dinner which was much needed and it was soo delicious! Thanks Sandy...
The next week Sarah was our tourist guide and gave us some great ideas on where to visit, I think my favourite place was Granville Island Market, it is a cross between Spitalfields and borough market, combining delicious home made organic food, with cool arty jewellery and alternative lifestyle solutions. It was right on the river, so we sat outside for a while waiting for our feet to recover, we watched the world go by and fought off the pigeons who
apparently carry LOTS of diseases. Then we walked to Kitts Beach which is sort of the Malibu of Vancouver, all beautiful, rich people, they had an aerobics class going on in the park, lots of yummy boys with their tops off playing Volleyball. It was such a beautiful day too so we decided to plonk ourselves on a beach and again watch the world go bye, however this time was funny as a bird did a poop right on Sams jeans, fortunately it happened just a 2 joggers went by and they saw it happened and very kindly stopped to give him a tissue so he could wipe himself:-) good thing we had easy access to a washing machine!. We walked up the 4th Street to get the bus and some dinner from Wholefoods, yes it is my favourite store ever! I noticed there were some really cool boutique shops and made a mental too come back without Sam but with a credit card..-)
The next day we just hung but that night Sarah, Sam and myself went to an improv night at Granville Market, this is where most of the people from whose line it is anyway started
out. It was such a fun night, I was really surprised with how good the comedians were and so quick on their feet! We also managed to get $10 dollar cocktails while we waited!
The next day we headed into the main shopping district in Vancouver as we were meeting Sams old Uni friend who he hasn't seen for about 15 years that night. We had a mull over the shops and also visited the Library which was a piece of art, the architect designed it like the Colosseum in Rome, see pics, it would make even me want to go and read there!
Around 6 we headed to Doolins bar and caught up with Simon(Uni friend). Doolins is an Irish pub which was strategically picked as they had a sports screen to watch a 'very important' hockey match. Sam and Simon repeatedly downed the pints and then started on shots, by which point I could see that it was going to be a long night, Sarah and I left the boys to it. I managed to feed Sam some chips before leaving, in the hope that he wouldn't get too sick. Sam finally rocked up at 2am a
home after walking round the block a few times as he was drunk and didn't know where to get the cabbie to drop him:-) he eventually stumbled home and passed out. The next day I had planned on a SPA day with Sarah and Jen, so we got up and had breakfast then went out for the day. When i left Sam at about 10am he did look a bit comatose and couldn't sit up but seemed in good spirits. Meanwhile the girls spent the day in a Spa getting massages, lunching and shopping on 4th Street with all the lovely boutiques. When we arrived home about 6ish, Sam was, erm how can i say this, sorry sight, he was shaking, had been sick all day and still hadn't been able to eat a thing. Sarah and i almost forced feed him some toast( as we knew he would feel better if he ate) and then eventually some eggs, the shakes stopped and Sam slowly started to feel better. When will he learn:-)
The next day we met up with Jen and Erin, and they took us to an AMAZING Dim Sum restaurant, Erin goes there a lot with
his family. We never saw a menu (and wouldn't have had a clue what to order anyway) Erin ordered for us and what a meal it was, i am totally hooked on Dim Sum now and cant believe I had never had it before then! See the relevance now?
The next day and final day in Vancouver we went to Capilano which is a suspension bridge, they also have walks through the trees on raised wooden platforms, they had a few giants fir trees and it was really peaceful. See pics. We then headed for the Aquarium which was amazing they, had a really great Dolphin show( all animal lovers be aware that the dolphins have have been injured at sea and would not survive long in the ocean as they are disadvantaged for one reason or another, i.e. half a fin etc.) anyway they were certainly wooing the crowds and were jumping ridiculous high out of the water (see pics), they also had a show with the beluga whales which were 3 times the size of dolphins and soaked half the crowd with its tricks...
We got to see lots of tropical fish, and they even had a
small reef shark and sea turtle. They also randomly had a really cool bird show with, Eagles and Hawks.
The next day we caught our flight back to London, we were delayed by about 2 hours but once again Air Canada impressed us with it new planes and we had a smooth flight all the way into Heathrow.
That was the last stop on the world wide trip.. and a suitable send off it was. Cheers to all the Vancouver-ites that made it an appropriate finale. Particularly Sarah and Kyle
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