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Well, we've just arrived in Kamloops from Whistler, which is inbetween the Rocky Mountains and the coastal mountains, and tonight is officially a rest night - thank God! Haha Having danced til the wee hours of this morning last night I am in muchos need of a good night's sleep. And I will do my best now to recount my time in Vancouver so far, because all though it's only been a few days, it's been so jam packed with super fun things it's getting difficult to keep them all straight in my mind already!!
When we first flew into Vancouver we took a taxi over to Jan Louise's place and found the doors wide open and nobody home! Haha Typical Jan Louise (I can say this because she also is strongly resistant to the use of the internet so I know she won't see this! =P) So we let ourselves in and made ourselves comfortable and she got in a little while later. That evening we went out to a local restaurant called 'Crave' and enjoyed some beautiful British Columbian wine. The following day I got myself a phone and did lots of other mandatory, boring, settling-in type things, but it was really good because we did a lot of walking around and I began to get familiar with the local area. Jan Louise lives right down the road from Main Street, which is totally up my alley - full of vintage and retro stores, and consignment shops that sell clothing my local designers. Plenty of cute little restaurants too and we stopped for lunch in a place where the walls were decorated with every imaginable piece of junk, that someone still managed to look very cool and purposefully put together! That evening we cooked dinner at home and went and sat outside in the garden round a tiny wrought iron table for dinner. It was still light and warm at 9:30 in the evening, so it we beautiful to be outside enjoying a meal and glass of wine.
The next day Jan Louise tried her very best to kill us by attempting to walk the entire perimeter of Stanley Park. In the morning we took a wander through Gas Town, which is a really beautiful, trendy area, with lots of modern design shops and hanging baskets of flower on all the street lights. A mere stone's throw away is East Hastings and Main - a junction of streets that Jan Louise took me to to show me where not to go. I've never seen anything quite like it and it was a real eye opener as to how lucky we are in Perth. It's basically a street filled with hundreds of homeless people. There are a huge number of homeless individuals in Vancouver but this particular street is renowned for being dodgy. We saw people crouched in doorways with needle tracks all up their arms, people shooting up in the street, and openly buying and selling drugs. The alleyways that ran off the street were full of people doing similar things, and this was in the middle of the morning. Furhter down the street an ambulance was loading up a person who had overdosed. Although nobody was really threatening, it's definitely not the kind of place one would want to frequent at night time in particular.
In the afternoon we wandered down through Coal Harbour, which is a very beautiful, very pricey part of the city right down on the water. It's really beautiful and has a great view of all the city buildings, which appear to shimmer because the architecture here has so much glass. Also, the height of the buildings is restricted to about 150m so that the views through the city remain preserved. We then reached Stanley Park and stopped to look at the amazing Totems carved to represent to First Nations people. After which we took a long windy walk through the park, which is incredibly green and lush and will stay this way for most of the year because 70-80% of the trees are evergreens. That evening I got all packed up and ready to go, and then joined Mum and Jan Louise in the garden again for a glass of wine to calm my nerves!
I woke up feeling butterflies in my stomach, which lasted all of the ride to the taxi til I walked in the hotel lobby, met a girl named Carolyn from Toronto who was going on my tour, and found myself chatting away until in was time for our bus to leave! There are 54 people from 13 different countries on our tour, everywhere from Korea to Ireland, though the Aussies definitely dominate the group. We gave a couple of couples (hehe) but apart from that most people are travelling by themselves, which makes it an absolute breeze making friends! There are quite a few other girls coming over to go on exchange programme and one girl who's going to Simon Fraser like me. Our tour manager's name is Jordan and he's a really lovely guy, as is our driver Robbie. So all that nervousness melted away instantly and we hit the ground running!
After touring around Vancouver for a while, we drove up to Whistler for our first two nights stay. We were staying in a gorgeous place called Crystal Lodge, right in the heart of the village. The first night we all met for dinner at the Spaghetti factory, which is a really nice, family-owned chain of pasta restaurants. Then we headed out afterwards to a really cool club that was kinda Hawaiin themed, and were fortunate to have Jordan get the bouncers to A) waive the cover charge, and B) give us several cards for 2-for-1 drink deals! So we all hit the dance floor, and I managed to show considerable self-restraint in going home around 1:30, knowing that I had to be up reasonably early in the morning.
The next day I went on a Canoeing tour through the lakes and rivers in the mountains. Let me tell you something about canoeing - it looks really easy, but it's not!! Steering those canoes takes some serious skill, and we spent a considerable amount of time wedged in the bushes at the edge of the river haha At some points the river (well…more like a stream really!) was barely a metre wide. It was lots of fun though, and the scenery was amazing (though that's something I'm not going to continue to repeat because the scenery everywhere is this country is beyond amazing, and yet the photos I take just never quite seem to do it justice - so for everyone who hasn't been to Canada, put it on you life "to-do" lists! You may just have to if you ever want to see me again because I love it so much I may just never come home…kidding Mum =P) In the afternoon we went up the Gondola and an open chair lift to the very tip top of the Mountain. Fortunately we'd spoken to another girl who went up earlier in the day in thongs and light jumper and she warned us to wear every piece of clothing we owned. She was right too! It was freezing cold and pretty foggy, so at one point we up in the open chair lift really high above the ground and could barely see a thing, we could however hear the people ahead of us screaming, which didn't do much to calm my nerves! Haha
That night we went out to dinner at an Irish pub before heading out to my new favourite place - Buffalo Bill's. I tend to be too stingy to even go into places that have a cover charge, and even though we got the price knocked down from $20 to $8 I was pretty indignant about having to pay simply to get into the place…until 10:30. Then I understood that it was worth every penny! We were in there by 9:30 and a bunch of us girls got the d-floor going and much to my delight I found that it was pretty much like being at the Solid Gold Ball back in Perth!!! It was Earth, Wind, and Fire, ABBA, and Prince - oh my! Lol They played 'September' (shame on anyone who doesn't know this song =P) and I was like I'd died and gone to d-floor heaven! Haha By 11:00 the place was pretty packed and we realised Jordan wasn't exaggerating when he said we'd see a lot of crazy, drunken groups of bride's maids - whistler is like a hen's night hot spot and they are EVERYWHERE! We decided we didn't want to be left out so one of the girls took a napkin and pinned in to my head, and we had our own Contiki hen's night haha it was hilarious cause heaps of people actually congratulated me and asked me when the big day was going to be. Later we pinched a crown off an unsuspecting bachelor and vowed that Contiki crown must always be worn by someone on our tour whenever we're out. At around 2:30 the bar was closing up so I was forced off the dance floor and wandered back through the village, stopping along the way for the best slice of pizza I have ever had in my life! Yeah, it was a good night…=)
The next day we had a sleep in, before hopping on the bus and heading off for Kamloops. So…that's my life right now. Pretty awesome huh? I can understand if you feel overwhelmed with jealousy right now - you should! Haha =P For the next little while we're just commuting a bit but we've got two nights in Jasper and then we'll be in Banff for three nights after that. I've signed up to go white water rafting tomorrow, and in Banff I'm going on a horseback mountain trail ride where we stop for a traditional steak-fry out in the forest. Oo AND I'm also going ATV riding through the mountains!! Ok ok, enough gloating for one day! Hehe
I hope you're all safe and well, and please know that despite the awesomeness of my life right now I am missing you all very much as well! =)
Much love,
LIVxo
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