We had to move hostels this morning as there was no room for us! We moved our stuff over the road to another one with a huge stuffed moose in the window! We then set off in search of Granville Island. We had to cross a mahusive bridge to get there, yet it wasn’t quite what we were expecting! We were thinking beaches etc, but instead we got markets and old shops! Needless to say, we didn’t spend long there and made our way back!
Back in downtown we decided to explore some of the areas of the city that we’d not yet seen. We wondered through Yaletown which reminded me of the nice posh areas of London. The shops were far to posh for us to go in so we just observed from outside! We also popped to the library again to use the www.
We went to Chinatown, which is meant to be the second biggest in North America! It was a very poor area with many homeless people around and it linked up with an even poorer area on the next street, which was very scary to walk down! We noticed how it was so close to the nice areas such as Gastown, yet you walk one block down and the people are so different! Odd!!
Gastown also reminded me of London, lots of different shops and cafes and tree lined cobbled streets. There was a steam clock which was completely powered by steam which is sourced from underground. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working today! Just our luck! This reminds me, Canada is very Eco friendly! They are big on recycling, much more so than the UK. There are bins everywhere for it, buses and trains run on electric and everyone looks after the place.
We then went down to see the Olympic countdown clock and wondered through the different streets taking it all in.
In the evening we went to an Ice Hockey game. It had to be done here! Tickets for the Canucks sold out last night – they are the big team here, but we went to see the Giants who are the Canucks youth team. The game was about 2 ½ hours long and there was a lot of stopping, starting, swapping players and fighting! There was one fight just in front of us where all of both teams, apart from the goalies, ended up in the cooler leaving no one left to play! There didn’t seem to be much skill involved other than being able to skate well! And to top it all off, we got in for free as someone had handed their tickets in so the ticket office let us have them! An interesting and enjoyable evening!