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Published: November 24th 2010
Craig and I had a feeling that we were going to enjoy Vancouver prior to arriving, and we weren’t wrong. We’ve had a great time. The people have been lovely, and the views of the mountains from the city are breathtaking.
It’s been unseasonably cold while we’ve been here - lucky us! The maximum temperatures have been ranging from -5 degrees to about 2 degrees. Good training for Alaska, hey? It’s been snowing a bit too, which Craig has been very excited about!
We’re currently on a Greyhound bus bound for Seattle, where we’ll board a flight to Anchorage. Hopefully our day of travelling today will be less painful than our trip to Vancouver! Our flight from Salt Lake City to Denver was delayed, which meant we missed our connecting flight to Seattle and had to wait at Denver airport for six hours to get the next flight. Then the flight from Denver had shocking turbulence, and as Craig and I can both be a little nervous about flying it really wasn’t fun! We arrived in Seattle a bit late but thought we’d still catch the 9.30pm Amtrak bus to Vancouver. We arrived at the bus station at 9.20pm,
only to find out that we’d gotten our times mucked up and the bus had actually left at 9.15pm. So then we had to make our way over to the Greyhound bus station on the other side of town to get the 10pm bus to Vancouver. We arrived in Vancouver at 2am, when we were meant to arrive at 7pm! What a crappy day! (Awful, awful day of travelling, probably the worst! The turbulence on the plane was simply crazy, like nothing we had ever experienced before! Everyone on the plane was very relieved once we landed! - Craig)
We’ve done some really cool things in Vancouver. The day after we arrived, I read in the paper that there was a Christmas craft market on at the Convention Centre that weekend so I dragged Craig along there. I think even he had an OK time looking at all the art made by local artisans, and we picked up a couple of things. (It wasn’t so bad, could have been worse. - Craig)
On another day we got picked up from our hotel and went for a private tour of the sites where they filmed the Twilight movies New
Moon and Eclipse. For those who know what I’m talking about, we saw places like Jacob’s house, the Cullen’s house, the scene of the breakup in the woods, the movie theatre where Bella decides to be reckless and jumps on the back of some guy’s motorbike and the high school that was used as Forks high school. Even though Craig had no interest in the Twilight movies, I think he really enjoyed the scenery as we went around Vancouver. At one stage we got out of the car and went for a little hike through some wilderness near Capilano lake to see some filming locations, and the scenery was just stunning. It was a lot of fun. (The scenery was fantastic, had a great time looking out of the windows all day long! - Craig)
At the end of the tour when we were coming back into town, we noticed that there was something being filmed out on a street in Vancouver. It turned out that it was Reese Witherspoon’s new movie called, ‘This Means War’, and we got to see her filming some scenes! At some points, we were standing only a couple of metres away from her
- only a couple of metres away from an Oscar winner! It was pretty cool. There were a few paparazzi there and everything.
Christine, the lady who ran the Twilight tour, also told us that they filmed one of my favourite shows called Fringe in Vancouver. Fringe is a sci-fi show kind of similar to The X Files where an FBI agent called Olivia works in the department of “fringe” science (the inexplicable) using the assistant of a crazy genius called Walter Bishop and Walter’s son, Peter. In San Diego at Comic Con we sat in a panel with the actors of Fringe. An Australian actress called Anna Torv plays Olivia, and an Australian actor called John Noble plays Walter (the show is practically Australian!) and Joshua Jackson (Pacey from Dawson’s Creek) plays Peter.
It turns out that Fringe was actually filming an episode that evening at the Vancouver art gallery. Christine told us that we should go along as the actors are all quite friendly to fans and we might get to say hello. She told us to just have a chat to the production assistants and tell them we were hoping to meet the actors, and
they might be able to help us. Craig and I were really shocked about this, as we thought they’d just tell us to bugger off. But we thought we’d take our chances, and we headed over to the Vancouver art gallery.
When we got there, I went up to an assistant who was manning the door to the art gallery and told her that we’d love to get a photo with one of the stars. She couldn’t have been nicer to us! She told us that only Anna Torv was there at the moment and while she would tell Anna that there were some fans here to see her, it was unlikely that we would see her anytime before midnight as they were busy. She told us that we were welcome to wait though. It was about 5pm at that stage, but we decided to take our chances and hang around for a while. It was much more than we were expecting her to do though, we hadn’t imagined that she would actually tell Anna that we were there so that she could come out if she decided to when she was available!
Even though it was cold,
it was pretty cool hanging around just to see the extras (now called “background performers” apparently) wandering in and out. They were filming some kind of ceremony and so all the girls were in glamorous evening gowns and the guys were in tuxedos. A few times while we were waiting the production assistant came over to us and told us we were probably best to come back after midnight, but we decided to take our chances and wait for a bit longer.
At about 5.30pm, the production assistant came over to us and told us that Anna Torv had come out to have a cigarette but it wasn’t a good time to say hello as she was about to film a scene and was “getting into character”. So we continued to sit where we were and peaked over at her from time to time. After 5 minutes she went back inside. Craig and I were just talking to each other and debating whether we should come back later when Anna Torv materialises in front of us! She said she didn’t have much time but wanted to come out and say hello. She was so lovely, while we were getting
up from sitting down we almost knocked over an empty cup of hot chocolate that we’d had and she bent down to pick it up for us. We didn’t get a chance to talk much, but Craig commented on how cold it was and she said, “It is, isn’t it!” She was dressed up in a formal gown and looked beautiful. She popped her arms around us for a photo and then said she had to get back inside. How exciting! After she’d left, the production assistant told us that she’d come back to say hi when she’d told Anna that we were fellow Aussies.
Afterwards we just couldn’t believe how easy it had been to get a photo with an actress in one of my favourite shows! It was just awesome!
It wasn’t just celebrities whom we mingled with in Vancouver. Craig had an old family friend called Evan who was studying in Vancouver, and we met up with him and his girlfriend Kiri for a few drinks one night. They’re both lovely and Craig and I had a lot of fun. We caught up with them again a couple of days later when they decided to
come with us to check out the Capilano suspension bridge, as they hadn’t seen it yet. Thanks for the wonderful time Evan & Kiri, it was really great to see you!
The Capilano suspension bridge was very cool. It was strung between two mountains about 50 metres above a river. It was super strong, as evidenced by the fact that a huge tree fell on it in 2006 and it didn’t break! We could look down below and see huge salmon swimming in the river. We even saw a bald eagle along the banks of the river, probably eyeing off the same salmon that we were looking at.
They also had walkways built around the trees on the mountain, and we had a good time wandering around there. There were even some suspension walkways that were built between huge trees that were completely supported by the trees.
It was snowing while we were there too, which just added to the experience. (It was a really cool place to visit & the fact it was lightly snowing the whole time enhanced the experience. - Craig)
After visiting the Capilano suspension bridge, Evan and Kiri headed back to
Vancouver while Craig and I continued further up the mountain to visit Grouse Mountain. To get to Grouse Mountain, we had to get on a big 100-person gondola that took about 8 minutes to get to the top of the mountain.
There were a lot of people with their skis and snowboards, as there were about 20 runs at the top of the mountain (there were about 5 open that day as it was early in the season). It was only about half an hour from downtown Vancouver and annual passes to the slopes and chairlifts were only $100! Compare that to our closest mountain in Melbourne, Mt. Buller, which is 3-4 hours away, only has about 13 runs (most of which is man-made snow!) and a daily skilift pass is about $120! I was so jealous!!
It was very cool being at the top of Grouse Mountain, even though we weren’t skiing or snowboarding. Craig couldn’t believe how much snow was us there, he’d never seen that much snow (just wait for Whistler, Craig!). Unfortunately the clouds were low that day, otherwise we would have had great views of Vancouver. (It was as the name suggests, Grouse!
Had a great time up there mountain, playing in the snow was a definite highlight for me. Need to get some snow shoes though, my toes were absolutely frozen stepping through the snow! - Craig)
We hired ice skates and spent some time skating on a frozen pond. We also visited some rescued wolves in a habitat there. They had a couple of grizzly bears too, but unfortunately they were hibernating. They did have cameras in their hibernating den though, and it was cool being able to see them. They had a really interesting movie playing in a theatre at the top of the mountain about how the rescued bears were located to Grouse Mountain.
Craig also went to the ice hockey while in Vancouver to see the Vancouver Canucks play against his beloved Chicago Blackhawks. (And what an awesome game it was! I wasn’t too confident going in to the match as the Blackhawks had lost the night before 7-2 to Calgary, who are in the bottom 4 teams so far this season. The Canucks are one of the top teams & have been widely favoured to win the Stanley Cup at the end of the season.
So it turned out to be an incredible night, as the Hawks absolutely smashed the Canucks, winning 7-1! It was such a fantastic game, flogging them felt so very good. I didn’t celebrate too much though, as I was the only Blackhawks fan within 5 rows of me & was sitting next to some pretty rowdy Canucks fans. It was really special though, the first regular season Hawks game I had been to & it was such a resounding victory! Also the Canucks are one of our bitter rivals, which made it all the more sweet! - Craig)
We’ve spent quite a bit of time just walking around the streets and looking at what’s around. We checked out Gastown, which was a really pretty area with gas lamps lining the streets and a steam-powered clock in the middle of it.
Yesterday we walked over to Granville Island. There were some cool shops around there, and they had a public market where we bought some beautiful bread and goodies like fresh cookies lemon tarts! Yum! (Chocolate mousse was awesome! - Craig)
We had been considering hiring snow gear for Alaska and Whistler, but we thought we should see
how cheap it was to buy. We first went to an outdoor exploration shop where the cheapest ski pants were $200 and the jackets were at least $300 each! No way! We also needed ski gloves, and the cheapest in there were $70. Then Craig had the really smart idea to check out Sears, which is kind of like Myer. Now only did they have cheap snow gear, but they currently had a 40% off sale! So for $265, we got ski pants for me, ski overalls and a ski jacket for Craig, and two pairs of gloves (I already have a ski jacket). We couldn’t believe our luck!
Next stop - Alaska! We can't wait!
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non-member comment
Hi
Hi there, Great photo, I was wondering if we could have permission to add this photo to our website please? Looks like you had a great time in Vancouver!