Driving rain and a howling chilly wind was our welcome to Vancouver. Touted as a breathtakingly beautiful city and harbour, she did not show her best side to us in our two days.

Disembarking our cruise ship at 9.00am Sunday, we felt a little disorientated as we moved back into backpacker mode. Hoisting our packs we arrived into Canada's immigration hall, traversed customs, found an ATM for some Canadian dollars, and then, on shaky land legs, endeavored to find our way to public transport. 

We had booked 2 night's accommodation on the cheaper North Shore, a ferry ride from the cruise boat terminal. It turned out we had to walk a kilometer to catch the seabus across the water then walk another half a kilometer to the hotel. Heavy rain had set in as we gratefully staggered into the reception of our booked hotel. Our room was not ready so we spent some time using the internet, getting some lunch and staring out at the miserable weather.

Our room was beautiful when we finally checked in. It was another internet special deal (Expedia Secret Hotel Deal) and best of all we had fast internet to catch up on blogging and planning.

The weather did not improve at all over the two days and we began to get a little dose of cold feet for our next planned adventure of taking a very basic campervan through British Columbia and Alberta. We strengthened our resolve though, and set of early Tuesday morning to catch the ferry, then a train and lastly a bus to get us to the office of Wicked Campers to pick up our transport and accommodation for the next 10 or so days.