Randoms Days and Events - 25th Sept - 12th Oct

As we have said in other blogs we have had less time over here to be tourists, therefore this post is over a longer period of time and I'll only mention the things we have been up to. We have however found a few friends over here and have been enjoying living in a big city with so many things to see and do. Or so many nice places to go out to for dinner and drinking. It is very convenient living in the center of town and being able to just decide to go out for dinner, walking out your front door and being just minutes away from everything.

Any who, for some reason everything happened to come up at once, the evening after coming back from Vegas we happened to have tickets to Pearl Jam (Sept 25th 09). When I arrived in Vancouver there were so many concerts happening and we didn't have enough money to buy any. I said to Cam if Pearl Jam come, I don't care how much money we have we are going. So of course when the news came that they were coming we snapped up some tickets. Once again the band put on an awesome performance, however not quite as good as the last time. I guess we had real high expectations, it also didn't help that they sung Last Kiss (the worst Pearl Jam song in history). Don't get me wrong still thoroughly enjoyed it, they played for just over an hour and then came back on and did an encore that was the same length. So we got a full 2 and a bit hours worth which is better than most bands now days, and they did do Yellow Ledbetter which was awesome.

As my nursing exam was coming up on the 7th October the next week for me consisted mainly of study and for Cam work. We did manage to get out to one of our local pubs again for a few drinks and to watch a hockey game. Do you think its a bad sign when the waitress at the pub knows what you normally order to drink?? This pub is Doolin's Irish pub, what more could you wish for than a pub that plays sport on the TV's (including Rugby), has live music (which also plays kiwi music at times), and sells alcohol? I think this is why its become our local.

As we finally have two incomes we thought it was a good time to do some shopping. Cam desperately needed work shirts, and I well needed what ever I could find. Its awesome shopping here, I manage to find something I can fit and looks good every time. Cam ended up with about 3 things and I ended up with 2, ha see girls don't always get more things.

October 7th was my nursing exam, unfortunately I had to be there at 7.15 am which meant I had to get up at 5.10am to get the train and bus out to the venue. I had to leave real early as the public transport system doesn't run as often at that time of the morning. The exam runs for 7 hours which is crazy, its so hard to concentrate for that amount of time normally let alone after getting up at 5 in the morning. You do get an hour break in between but its still tough. I must say its the most stupid exam I have ever had to do, we all thought it was stupid, I mean really these sort of questions decide whether or not I am good enough to be a nurse. Hard to say how it went really, I guess I'll see in about another 3-4 weeks time.

The end of the exam called for a good night out drinking. Of course we headed out to our local again (Doolins) for dinner and drinks. What do you get when you have several Brits, 2 kiwis, an Aussie and an Irish girl in an Irish pub??? Chaos!! We started drinking about 4 and by midnight most of us were ready to head home, I know we must be getting older, but to be fair we had been up for a long time and had a long exam that we sat. Had an awesome night out with new friends, pub food and drinking.

The weekend from the 9th till the 12th was a long weekend, the 12th was Thanksgiving, we were very excited to be having our first ever real thanksgiving. The Friday night (9th) Cam, Emily and I headed out for dinner at Sip a restaurant in Vancouver. Places were pretty full being late on a Friday evening so we took what seats we could, which happened to be sitting at the bar in front of the chefs while they were cooking. It was like Hell's Kitchen however the head chef wasn't horrible. Its quite interesting watching to see how they manage to get all meals cooked and out on time together. I had ribs of course which were beautiful, the head chef actually stood there and asked us how our meals were going, we said they were beautiful and the chef that cooked them was actually there to over hear and say thank you. It was fun.

Saturday was Emily's birthday, we headed out for lunch with her to a diner just down the road, we had heard good reviews and they even had the worlds best $5 shakes which we just had to get. The food was great but unfortunately the waitress was the worse person I have ever been served by, she was just down right bitchy, so after telling Emily that she couldn't have a side of half salad and half chips she then we on to tell me that my meal was huge and that I could share my chips with Emily. I think we'll prob go back and try it again, she may have been just having a bad day. After this we went to another one of our favourite places for drinks, this one is called Milestones, its a chain over here. We had a few drinks out then headed home.

Sunday was a great day, but very expensive. Several snow shops were having thanksgiving sales so we decided to take up the opportunity to go out and buy snowboards and boots for the season coming up. We got a bargain, managed to get 2 snowboards and bindings, and some boots for me, for the cheap price of $1000, we had a look for retail prices in New Zealand and we got ours for about 1/3 of the price of what we could get them for over there. It was all very exciting, we couldn't wait to get home to try them out. First we had to cart them on the busy bus home, ah fun times. This evening we were supposed to head out for a night out at a nightclub however plans changed so Cam and I decided to head out for a few drinks, a few drinks turned into several drinks and several pubs, well actually only 3. There are so many places to go here, we decided to walk down Granville street, the main night life street in Vancouver and stop in at a few places we hadn't been to. We managed to find several nice places. At about midnight we decided to head down to the waterfront for a walk, its so beautiful along the waterfront looking out at North Vancouver and all the lights. then we decided to call it a night.

Monday 12th was thanksgiving, our first actual thanksgiving and we were both off so decided to head out for dinner that night. During the day we were going to go to the Capilano Suspension bridge however got down to the seabus and it was going in 25 minutes so decided to head to Van Dusen Botanical Gardens instead. We had been told that it was really nice going in Autumn as all the trees are different colours and leaves are falling. It was beautiful out there and much better for the price compared to the last botanical gardens we went to.

In the evening Cam, Emily and I had booked to go to Four Seasons Hotel for a three course thanksgiving dinner. It was very flash and a great excuse to get dressed up and buy an expensive bottle of wine. It was funny we had just been talking about how most places don't seem to give you wine like they are supposed to with the whole showing us the bottle, letting us taste it etc, but they did here and we even had a fancy stand thing with ice. It was very exciting. Oh and when we got there they lady that showed us to our table even took our coats. The dinner was absolutely beautiful and we ate far too much, well worth it though. It was a nice evening out but unfortunately we forgot to take photos, woops, I guess we were caught up with good conversation and food. We'll have to remember next time. We did however remember to toast to what we were thankful for.