My flight from Regina to Vancouver was rather uneventful, although arrived a little late due to a weather delay. I was therefore concerned that Candice would be waiting rather impatiently for me at the airport. However, it turned out her plane was delayed so by the time she got through customs etc. it wasn't much of a wait at all. Another surprising thing is that we managed to find each other quite easily despite the size of Vancouver airport.

We decided to catch the train downtown, which was quite a good idea as it only cost $8 and was much quicker than driving. The hostel we stayed at was only 500m from the city centre so we had prime real estate for our 4 nights. It was right on Granville St too, and for those of you who aren't aware that is one of 'the' shopping area's in Vancouver. So we spent the first afternoon getting our bearings and checking out the local shops then having beers and nacho's for dinner at one of the pubs. One thing about Canadian's is that they don't mess around when it comes to food portions and by the time we had finished our nacho's it didn't look as though they had been touched.

Monday we decided to hire a car and drive to Surrey to check out a western store. It was about 1 hour away and lots of traffic on the road, so I definitely freaked out a little more than I did driving in Regina. But we managed to pick up a couple of sweet deals including a cowboy hat and belt for myself plus a couple of other trinkets so it was definitely worth it. We then drove back to the city, took a trip around Stanley Park then back to the hire company in the late afternoon. I must say I was very relieved to hand the keys back with no damage done to the car. We then spent the rest of the afternoon shopping and headed out that night on a pub crawl.

The next morning we needed to be up by 8 for a tour we had signed up for and let's just say our late night didn't seem so smart the next morning. Anyway we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and down to where the tour started from. We did a bit of a walk through the city to start with which was pretty interesting and then headed out to Lynn Canyon. It's about 40 minutes from the city by bus and nowhere near as impressive as the Grand Canyon, however it was rather picturesque and great to see some local sights. Unfortunately the weather was overcast and cold, and in our bedraggled state we somehow thought shorts and t-shirts would be a good idea. If it had of rained (which I was warned happens quite often in Vancouver) I think we would have been a lot worse off.

Tuesday night we went to the Nickelback concert (not Knickerbockers Mum) and that was definitely the highlight for both of us. They were such good entertainers and interacted with the crowd really well. The band was drinking beer and doing shots on stage, as well as throwing/shooting beers into the crowd which was pretty cool. We are definitely glad that we went, especially because they are a Canadian band…although at $8.50 a beer we didn't have a big one.

The next day dawned sunny and bright and after spending the morning doing some more shopping we headed off to see Stanley Park again. Somehow we decided that hiring rollerblades would be a good idea. Turns out it wasn't quite as easy as we remembered and it took a little while to get back into the swing of it. One lucky thing for us is that Stanley Park has a rather flat path around the outside of it and we managed this quite easily. The problem for me, however, came when we decided to cut across the park to see Beaver Dam. Pretty sure we took a wrong turn or something and ended up where we probably shouldn't have been. Braking and hills were something that we were having trouble with and we managed to find ourselves at the top of a hill. Candice figured she would take it on anyway so off she went whilst I watched. She managed to make it partway down in one piece and so I figured I should be right. I started off OK, then somehow ended up on the road with a car behind me, then cut back onto the footpath and ended up flying across the best manicured lawn in the park. I went about 20m before I bit the dust and am lucky that it was on grass and not cement. Candice obviously found it quite hilarious but we decided it would be best to walk to rest of the way down.

We finished off our visit to Vancouver with another pub crawl, and were lucky to meet another good bunch of travellers. The next morning we headed to the airport and caught the plane back to Regina. I was relieved to see the van still sitting there in one piece and off we went back to the Ranch. I think the family were quite excited to meet Candice and it has been good to settle back into a country town. The weather back in Saskatchewan has been very warm and sunny but that could change at any moment. We are now looking forward to the next couple of weeks, and definitely can't wait for the Calgary Stampede.