Well we eventually arrived in Vancouver. Our journey began last Monday (9th June) and ended on the Wednesday (11th June), overall 51 hours.

The journey was a lot better than any of us thought, i think it was because we were dreading it so much! The train went through some beautiful scenery, a couple of national parks one of which was a glacial park, and there was loads of snow up in the mountains as we travelled through them. The train had a big observation carriage which was glassed almost all the way round, with swivel chairs so you could get really good views of the surroundings.

Anyway 51 hours later we arrived in Vancouver pretty tired!! We had a brief look around when we 1st got there and had a couple of drinks in the bar in the hostel in the evening.

Thursday we all went to Stanley Park, which was a massive park not too far away from where we were staying. We spent the day in the park, seeing the beaches, the English Bay, the marina and a variety of totem poles in the park. We played frisby for a while, then I (Liz) fell asleep in the park and Carol and Matt rolled down the hill that we were sat on a number of times!!

Thursday night we all decided to go to the club that was next door to our hostel to what we thought was going to be a Brit Pop night! How wrong were we!! Before we went to the club we did the quiz in the bar in the hostel. Some Swiss guy was sat with us and decided that we were going to be called 'Bush Walkies' after some sumo wrestling team or something along those lines before leaving after round 1 and therefore we were stuck with the worst quiz name ever for the entire night!! So after we lost miserably in the quiz we headed out to the club next door, where there was a band on playing non Brit Pop songs!!

Friday we headed over to Granville Island, which was a a small marina with a lot of small shops and a market place that sold a lot of fresh food and had a lot of street performers. We also booked Whale Watching for the next day. We got the ferry back across to Stanley Park where we sat in the English Bay for a while.

Saturday we went Whale Watching all day which was really good. We spent 7 hours on the ferry in total as the Whales were really far out and we ended up sailing quite far down into USA to catch a glimpse of the whales. We also saw harbour seals, bald eagles and porpoises. The whales were killer whales that we saw and our favourites were one that they reckon was over 90 years old called Granny and her friend called Ruffles and a family member called Blossom. We got really wet on the way out, but luckily for us we had some big protective clothes which when we put the photos on i'm sure you'll all laugh at!!

Sunday we travelled over night to San Francisco which is where we are at at the moment and we'll put the photos and updates soon!

Speak soon

Liz and Carol

xxx

ps it's lovely to hear from you Auntie Elaine, you have nearly sent more messges than our own parents!! hint hint mum and dad!!!!