On the Amtrak bus as I write this, making our way from Vancouver to Seattle on Highway 99 (you get a free ice-cream with a flake at each junction). I've got my 'travel bands' on, so hopefully no travel-related nausea!
We had a great time in Vancouver, it's a beautiful city with loads to do, everyone was really friendly, and we're sad to be moving on. It's quite high on our list of 'places in which we could live, if we didn't love Liverpool so much!'. Toronto hasn't made the list, no offence, guys, it's just too far from the sea!
Vancouver is surrounded by water, open spaces, and mountains, and seems to have great vistas wherever you look. It's a very 'walkable' city, and we walked miles! Though probably not enough to burn up the calories from all the Tim Horton's doughnuts and A&W burgers!
We found our way to the Museum of Anthropology, where they have a huge collection of 'First Nation' (the people formerly known as Indians) art and artefacts. It was fantastic! The building itself was worth a visit, as it had been specially designed to house the huge totem-pole exhibits. But the rest of the collection was stunning too, especially the Bill Reid stuff, whose work fused 'first nation' designs with modern influences.
There was a huge ice-hockey game on while we were there, the Vancouver Canucks playing the Chicago Hawks in the Stanley Cup, a competition which, our guide claimed, is the hardest one to win in ANY competitive team sport, in THE WORLD. He hadn't even finished the sentence, and I was like, 'hang on, hang on, what about the Champions League? The World Cup? The Autoglass Trophy?' No idea, these North Americans!
The Canucks beat the Hawks, who by all accounts, were their bogey team, and the atmosphere in downtown Vancouver was great. I'm going to have to follow the Canucks progress now in the Stanley 'difficult' Cup!
Vancouver has a huge Asian community, and you're never far away from restaurants serving Chinese food, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, it's all available, and all good. We saw a trendy-looking Tiawanese place serving 'bubble tea', with 'pearls or coconut jelly'. WTF? We had to try it, obviously! I had 'mint chocolate bubble tea, with pearls', Sal opted for 'sesame tea, with coconut jelly and pearls', which she said she enjoyed. Mine tasted like melted mint choc ice-cream, with frog-spawn in the bottom, but in a good way!
Looking forward to the USA now, hopefully no-one will ask if we enjoyed the Royal Wedding!