Having been in the city for a few days now, my favourite area of downtown Vancouver has got to be the interestingly named Gastown. The oldest section of the city, comprising just a few blocks along the riverfront, Gastown is a delightful collection of cobbled old world streets from another time - not a high rise office block in sight. In fact, nobody seems to have made any effort whatsoever to change the way things have always been here, and I simply wouldn't hav...

When it comes to describing Stuart and Emily's suburban home on the outskirts of Vancouver, I almost find myself lost for words. I think the expression I'm looking for rhymes with Plucky Dastards. Seriously, once you get out of the downtown area, suburban Vancouver - at least, the bit of it I've seen - is very much a collection of leafy tree lined avenues on gently sloping hillsides, filled with those curious gable-end houses with extra floors and attractive exte...

Luckily for my dwindling budget at this point, Dad and I have a family friend who happens to live in Vancouver and he has very kindly offered to give me somewhere to stay while I'm in town. On my last night in Seattle, therefore, I phoned ahead and made sure that everything was still okay, and rang the local bus and train information hotline to find out which bus would take me across the Canadian border. I'm not sure why, but for some reason I had imagined that t...