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Friday 11/5/12- Our flight to Vancouver took us through Auckland. The kiwis are very chilled out; on the departure board showing the flight gates, it said ‘Relax’ if you hadn’t been assigned a gate yet. And I actually enjoyed listening to their accents!
Flying into Vancouver you could see so many snow capped mountains! We were really worried that it would be cold, but so far, the weather is similar to Hobart’s – cool, but still bright and sunny. After the long day, we headed to the hostel. We lumped all the bags and the awkward box onto the train, to the city getting lots of dirty looks as we were blocking the doorway. We then had to drag the bags and box about 3 blocks to get to the hostel. We also found out that the bikes have arrived in Vancouver, yay! Not so good is the discovery that we have to wait until Monday to make an appointment with Customs and we may not be abe to clear them until later in the week!
Saturday 12/5/12 – Today we walked to Stanley Park and completed to 9km walk around the sea walls. On the way we saw
a beaver, many squirrels (black and brown – reminded me of Lola the ferret running across the pathways) and many ducks/geese/birdies with little babies.
Sunday 13/5/12 – Today we caught the bus out to the Museum of Anthropology. It had a lot of native BC works, like totem poles, carvings, and paintings. There were works from very popular artists called Doug Cramner and Bill Reid. The masks and totem poles were very interesting. On the way home, the bus driver was doing taichi on the grass outside the bus stop. Weird. And then one of the customers on the bus muttered under his breath that he was going to slit the bus drivers throat after the driver braked suddenly. Hmmm.
For dinner, we went to an Irish pub in Gastown, which is the old part of the city. Gastown also had a steam clock where the steam goes off and makes a tune every quarter hour, like a normal clock has bells.
Monday 14/05/12 – Today was D-day at Customs. We got up at 8am in preparation for their 8.20am opening time. When Adam rang to make an appointment, he asked for one as soon as possible.
So the customs guy said ’how about 5 mins?’. But of course that was a bit too soon for us to have showers and get to the customs office, so Adam said ‘how about one hour?’. The custom guy says ‘one hour is not ASAP; ASAP is 5 mins’ and gave us the appointment at 12.30pm. I guess customs employees are always rude, no matter what country you are in! Anyway, we cleared the motorbikes and have to wait for a customs officer to do a soil clearance tomorrow, then we should be able to collect the bikes from the warehouse across the city.
After our customs appointment, we jumped on a free shuttle and went to Capilano Suspension Bridge. It was good, kind of like the Tahune Airwalk (although not as high) where you got to cross the suspension bridge across the Capilano River then walk amongst the trees. They also had a ‘cliff walk’ which was a long platform with a barrier that snaked around the cliff face on one side of the river. Looking down made me feel sick sometimes! We then had a look around the gift shop and bought some home-made fudge and tried
on the lovely traditional beaver hat.
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Margaret Minehan
non-member comment
Having Fun
Looks like you two are getting around ok and having fun, look forward to the next blog, take care and love to you both -minehans -tassie