Christmas Lights and leading up to Christmas - 14th Dec - 20th Dec

Well the week and a half leading up to Christmas was mostly full of food, drinking and looking at Christmas lights with a few days of work for me and normal days working for Cam. That's ok though as he gets 11 days off over Christmas and New Year.

Monday 14th I headed over to North Vancouver with Emily to meet Paula who picked us up from the sea bus. We headed up towards her house which is near Edgemont village in North Vancouver. This is a really neat little village full of cute little stores great for finding gifts and unique stuff you can't find in other places. Somewhere I will have to remember, to pick up special birthday gifts and other gifts. We sat down for a coffee here and then headed round to Paula's house for a look. It was very exciting as had been snowing the week before that and there was snow around this area on the ground as its higher up and closer to the mountains. There is something about walking around a rural community, up near the mountains with snow all over the ground. Emily and I were jumping up and down in the snow as it crunched underneath us. After this we headed to one of my favourite restaurants, Burgoo, this place is great in winter, it just feels so homely and cosy. Full of comfort food. A nice relaxing day with friends.

This evening Cam and I headed to a Canucks Hockey game, tickets care of someone from his work. My second hockey game and Cam's third, however my first NHL game. To be honest it was a great game and the Canucks won but as Cam mentioned in one of our other blogs, not as good I thought as the Giants (minors) game that we had seen about a week or so before. People just didn't seem as into it as they were for the other game. Think I will still have to go to another one before I make up my mind though. I'm sure it could be better depending on who is playing and what they are playing for, this game was near the beginning so it may get more exciting.

Tuesday evening we decided to head out for some drinks at our local Doolins, was just going to be a few drinks and then we were going to head home for dinner. Emily, Cam and I decided that we couldn't be bothered cooking dinner so we all headed to Sanafir, a Tapa restaurant on Granville Street. This place was great and I can't believe we haven't seen it before. When we arrived the lady at the door said "sorry but we only have a bed available". We were like, "what do you mean a bed?" She said "you haven't been here before have you?" So we headed up the stairs to find that when she said bed this was actually what she meant, so we sat on a bed with net curtains around it and everything and shared a selection of Tapas, it was a very unique and fun experience.

Friday the 18th we headed to Stanley Park to look at the lights that they set up annually for Christmas. We walked around and looked at the lights, listened to singers/musicians singing Christmas carols and looked at the animals, luckily we managed to get a ticket on the train just in time, as it sold out not long after. This turned out to be well worth the money, the train ride goes for 15 minutes all through the forest area with lights, actors and music all the way around. It was very festive and nice to see children running around the place. I only wish they would do more of this sort of thing in New Zealand, really make you excited for Christmas, as I was of course already, for some reason more than normal.

On the Saturday we went to do some more shopping at one of the malls in Vancouver, for some work shirts I think for Cam, can't really remember now. All I know is that we came back with a few things each. This evening we headed for a walk down to false creek to look at the lights along the waterfront which was really nice, we headed down toward English bay and stopped for a drink at a pub down there, then walked down Denman Street and toward Canada Place to look at the light show that was supposed to be happening there. We think that maybe we were too late as it wasn't really doing anything, just different colours. Still a nice evening stroll, its just so beautiful down there at night time with the lights reflecting on the water.

The Sunday was a wet day so what better to do than to go to the Maritime Museum. It was quite interesting actually. So far I have really enjoyed all of the educational places we have been to. Here you get to go on an old boat called St Roch which has been restored, it used to be used by the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) AKA The Mounties, to serve as a supply ship for isolated arctic RCMP detachments. It was quite fun to walk around the ship and see the small confinements that the people used to sleep and live in for days on end. Think they would get to know each other pretty well in these sort of conditions. A good way to spend a rainy day.

Vancouver - First Weekend

So arriving in Vancouver was sooooo relaxing after the crap departure we had from LAX. The easiest part surprisingly was security, give me this any day over dealing with United airlines. This was the most frustrating and long experience I have ever had at an airport, mix this with not enough staff, people running late for flights and stress and you get Chaos. Anyway so you wait ages for a lady (only nice person here) to talk you through the system which prints off your bag tags, then you wait another 10mins for someone to come and tag your bag, at this point he tells you they are too heavy saying each needed to be 50Lbs contradictory to the several times you had checked with the travel agent that it could be a combined weight. So after repacking to get within the weights we stood in the cue again that was 3 times as long now, finally got our bags tagged but then had to wait 15mins for a different person to check your passport, then you could precede to security. Moral of the story, don't fly with United airlines they are rubbish.

Once getting through the friendly, smiling security that welcomed you with a good attempt of Kia ora, it felt like we were in a different place, the people over this side were so relaxed, friendly and helpful it was amazing. We sat down with half an hour before boarding and had a well earned coffee (semi real coffee also). You would not believe how good this felt after an early 4.30am start and extremely stressful check in.

We managed to get the exit seats in our small jet plane which was awesome as we had extra leg room. We had to read the safety booklet and verbally say that yes we could do all of the things the safety booklet wanted from us in an emergency, weird had never had to do this before. Turns out we didn't have to use it thankfully. We were very lucky with the weather this day, the view from the plane and into Vancouver was beautiful on this clear, sunny day. I didn't get to quite see it all as I slept for some of it, luckily Cam was there.


Arriving at Vancouver airport we had to head to the immigration area to collect our visas, we were at the front of the line and only 2 of 3 people here, according to the one other person behind us, this is very rare. What a change from LAX the people here were very friendly and joking around. Only one hick up, the officer couldn't find one of my papers on the system, wasn't quite sure why she wouldn't look for 6ordan, pretty close to my surname I thought, it appeared they had spelt my name wrong. So after collecting our visas we headed to collect our luggage, this appeared to be an easy step as our luggage was the only stuff going around on the conveyor belt very unusual. Outside we were meet by Bob who had arranged our apartment and took us there. We were given a few groceries and shown around the apartment, before being left to ourselves. Today we had a short walk around the area, checked out our apartment and caught up on a few emails as we were too tired for anything else.


View from our apartment to the East.

Our second day in Vancouver was a 12km walk around Vancouver city and surrounding areas. First we headed along False Creek toward the East side of the city. I still can't believe how many parks and grassed areas there are in this city, it just looks beautiful everywhere you go. Well especially the weather we have had the past 2 days, sunny both days and about 25-30 degrees. Anyway we headed along False Creek, across the Cambie Street bridge and toward BC and GM place. BC place is home to the BC Lions, Vancouver's Football team and GM place is home to the Canucks, Vancouver's Ice Hockey team. Also good places to find as these are where most of the concerts are held. I can't believe how much will power I have had, from now to August there are about 6 concerts I would see, including: ACDC, Greenday, Aerosmith, Blink 182 with supporting guests All American Rejects and Coldplay. Lucky we don't have enough money to buy all of these.

After this we walked through town to find Robson Street one of Vancouver's famous shopping streets. Unfortunately we managed to find one of the most dodgy areas of Vancouver on our way, it was amazing how you could be walking along in a nice area and then cross a road be on the same street and there were people crowded round in alleyways doing who knows what and weird people talking to themselves and asking for money, I wanted to get out of there and quick. So we made it to Robson street walked down here just window shopping of course, till we start work and have money to spend, on our way to Stanley Park. Stanley Park park is just a short walk from downtown and is 1000 acres of walkways, picnic spots, sports parks, cafes and forest areas. From Stanley park on your way round you have views to the city centre, across to North and West Vancouver, out across the harbour, and across to the west of Vancouver. We only walked a short way around here today as it was, hot and we had been walking for a while. We headed back along the waterfront to Canada Place, where the convention centre is and where cruise ships dock. After this we headed home via bus this time, to finally sit down and relax.