Blogs from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America - page 2

A short flight from Seattle to Vancouver saw my return to Canada. Last time I was here I didn't get to see much other than the ski mountain I lived at (the NBA season was nearly over so I had to get back to the US). When I arrived at immigration in the airport I was greeted with an absolute grilling by the border control woman. She didn't look like a hard-ass but that just made it all the more surprising. She asked a multitude of questions, such as where I'd been, who with, what I did back home, and even going so far as to ask exactly which sights and places I saw in various towns. I mean come on, I'm Australian. I thought we were on good terms with Canada. After surviving that brief ... read more

Now that I've had a few more days to fully settle in and recover from the flight, Vancouver seems to be growing on me. I have spent the past few days with the others from my BUNAC group. After setting up bank accounts and getting new mobile phone numbers, we've had a bit more spare time to explore Vancouver. The city itself is fairly laid back, with around 2.3 million residents, but you'd never think it because the pace of life here is so chilled. Vancouver has all the things you'd usually associate with a big city - high rise buildings, intricate transport system, diverse shops and shopping centres, but it just doesnt feel busy. You can comfortably walk around and shop in the Pacific Centre on a saturday and not get annoyed by other shoppers. ... read more

It's amazing how good you can feel after a great sleep! Waking up Thursday morning I felt refreshed and ready to get out and continue exploring this fantastic city. I was really hanging for a nice, hot cuppa and so I headed to one of the many Tim Horton coffee shops that are all over the city (along with the multitude of Subway shops, seriously I have about 6 of them within a three block radius!) and feeling like I had started my day in my normal way I headed off to find a bike rental shop so that I could cycle around Stanley Park. I headed to Coal Harbour to start this adventure and had managed to get about 6 blocks from my hotel when I was stopped by a police motorcade which had pulled ... read more

One of the places we had wanted to visit in Vancouver was Capilano Suspension Bridge (having seen a photo on a website nine months ago). When we got here we found it was around $35 each to get entry, and some people said it wasn't really worthwhile since there was a free suspension bridge nearby at Lynn Canyon. So, when we finally got through the worst of the traffic heading back into Vancouver we went straight over into North Vancouver to Lynn Canyon Park to take a look around. It was pretty beautiful and the suspension bridge was around 50m high and 50m long. We spent a fair bit of time just sitting on rocks in the sun next to a stream. It was really peaceful and gave us time to chat about how we felt ... read more