Blog 36 - Vancouver - Canada

As I arrived in Vancouver around midnight, I mentally prepared myself to stay the night at the airport. The only problem was that I was quite tired, cause I had a late night the day before and an early morning, cause my plane left at 10.30 am, but well…. That's what always happens when you have to leave people behind I guess.. You want to enjoy your last evening as long as possible and that obviously means you won't get a lot of sleep the night before departure… Anyways, as I arrived in Vancouver they put me in the 'naughty people' customs line and it took ages!! We saw this guy going in and coming out with hand coughs on 20 minutes later.. It ain'teasy getting into Canada! As they interrogated me: How long are you going to stay here for, what are you going to do, did you book a place to stay, where you're going next, can we see your plane ticket out of here, what do you do for a living, have you got enough money on you to pay for your stay, etc!! I just answered all those questions and finally they let me through. While waiting in line before, I made some friends with the other people standing in line and one of them offered me a ride and a place to stay the night. Bobby was going to be picked up by his colleague, both engineers on blueberry farms, and would stay the night on his couch. So I ended up sleeping on a couch that night and chilling out on a blueberry farm the next day. I just slept a lot, ate blueberries, finished my book and during lunch we went to this Caribbean festival that was going on somewhere. In the evening we did some shopping in the supermarket and they dropped me of at the hostel afterwards.

The hostel- SameSun backpackers - was really nice! Only 4 beds in the dorm (I was in a girls dorm) and free wireless :-) and breakfast (just tea/coffee and toast and jam). I slept in on Sunday, started writing my blog about Hawai'i and started planning my stay in Vancouver. There was a theatre festival going on called Bard on the beach. Every summer they play 4 Shakespeares in tents in Vanier Park. The week I was there I was able to visit All's well that ends well and The comedy of Errors. So I booked those tickets on the internet for Thursday and Friday evening. There was also a production of Annie the musical in Stanley Park - theater under the stars -and I planned to go there on Tuesday evening. Furthermore I checked if there were any yoga studio's around, since I wouldn't have the opportunity to go for a surf here… You can surf on Vancouver Island, in Toffino, but it's quite expensive and a hassle to get there and there's enough going on in Vancouver to cover 10 days anyway `and my surf muscles deserved a bit of a rest as well;-)

I found this yoga place just around the corner -Yaletown Yoga - the first 2 weeks for 30 dollars (not even 20 euro's) so I had my first yoga session that evening and from there every day of the week,some days even twice and mostly hot yoga and power vinyasa. I really notices the difference after a full week of yoga every day :-)

My sister (who I love dearly) forgot to put some money in my credit card account the week before and luckily I had some American dollars left, cause my credit card refused to pay the hostel.. andI had about 50 CAD left (after paying for the Shakespeares and the yoga). So Annie was 34 dollars and I didn't want to miss out on that, so I survived on 15 dollars till that Friday… to find out that the money my sister tried to transfer to my account never arrived… Pfff… don't like the ING anymore!! That money kind of got 'lost' in thin air. There was money on my account on Friday, because they automatically take money from my 'normal' account every month if I used the credit card, just to keep my balance on '0'. Man… me and my credit card problems… So right now, they're still trying to trace my other money…

Anyway, on Wednesday I helped out James, who had a pretty bad back ache and I rubbed some tiger balm on his back and gave him a massage. After that we went to Stanley Park together to chill out there for a bit. Yoga again in the evening.

On Thursday I went window-shopping… since I still had no money, but on Friday my money was in and I did some real shopping. When I headed to Bard on the beach on Thursday, I passed lots of surf shops and of course I had to take a look inside. I found out that wetsuits in Canada are nearly twice as cheap as the same ones in the Netherlands and I really needed a new winter suit, since my old one is too big and too old (4 years), so.. I bought a really nice Xcel 6-5-4-3 wetsuit (on Friday) and although that wetsuit is super good and probably warm as well, I still think that I'll be cold this winter, because I missed out on winter last year and surfed warm water the last 4 months… It's reallyhard to go 'window' shopping in Canada or the USA, especially when there are all kind of sales and you find that the 'surf' clothes are sooo cheap. I bought these awesome shorts for 13 CAD (about 7,5 euro's), because I got 80% discount, but even if they would have cost me 40 CAD, that would still have been 'cheap'. So why is it that the clothes in Europe are that much more expensive?! So annoying! I can't buy much more though, not because my backpack is too heavy, but because I'm carrying a board bag with 2 boards an 2 wetsuits in it as well and all together it does start to get a bit heavy.

So the plays were really fun! Annie was great! That really touched me. All's well that ends well was quite good, although I didn't like all the actors, but The Comedy of Errors was amazing! So funny, hilarious and so many great little details… I was pleasantly surprised. We even got free coffee and cake during the break (Starbucks was a big sponsor) and a Starbucks card which was worth 5 CAD once you registered it :-) free coffee at the airport! Friday evening, after the play, Tim and I went to a restaurant that wanted him to work for them as a chef and they gave us some nice food and drinks! After that we hang out in front of the hostel. Al and Chantelle were there singing and jamming (guitar) and I joined them… was an awesome night and a late one as well, what I nearly regretted when I had to get up the next day to do my yoga in the morning. No time to sleep in the afternoon either, because David invited me to come and climb Grouse Mountain with him - the Grouse Grind Trail. It's about 3700 foot high and it took us an hour and 11 minutes to get to the top from where you've got an amazing view. We got up even higher with the ski lift and it was so pretty!

We also watched the 'lumberjack show' which was actually really funny and we saw the grizzly bears!! We went down in the lift and missed out on the ferry, because it was full (400 people!), so we had to wait 30 minutes… By the time we got back I was knackered and happy to go to bed early.

The next day I went to yoga (last session - last day) in the morning and to Commercial Drive in the afternoon. There was this (amateur) theatre festival going on and there were some young people singing songs and performing an adaption of Alice in Wonderland, which was done really well. After that I went for a stroll. Commercial Drive is closed for cars on Sundays, so the street was full of people chilling, walking, making music… really nice…

I took the sky train back to the hostel, had a shower, did my laundry, packed my bags and went for and ice cream with James. We got back quite late.. I didn't want to go to bed… because the next morning I was going to leave!!!! I said goodbye to some people and went to bed around 2.30 am. My alarm went of at 6 am, got up, shower, brekky, ready to leave. Tim carried my board bag for me to the shuttle bus (so nice) and well, that was the end of Vancouver… I had to go through the USA customs at the airport in Vancouver (weird system), so that took a while, but the airplane left on time and the view from the plane was stunning….

LA - San Diego next….