Parklife

Monday October 8th

We follow the Sea to Sky Highway all the way to Vancouver to drop off the car and check ourselves into a hostel for a couple of nights. The journey is slightly more fraught than it should have been thanks to the slight miscalculation on the amount of fuel needed for the journey, trying to be too thrifty for the sake of £2 apparently not the done thing. The road, as the name suggests is pretty spectacular as it hugs the mountainside for most of its route taking you back to the sea from Whistler or into the mountains the other way. The weather's cleared up too so we get some great views out across the water.

It's Thanksgiving Day today so town is pretty busy and as the sun's out we take the opportunity to hire a couple of bikes and go for a ride around Stanley Park. The park is on a headland of the coast right in Vancouver. We spend a very pleasant couple of hours cycling around looking at not only the flora and fauna but also some of the sculptures and features in the park, including the totem poles that represent some of the native roots of Canada. There are some huge sequoia trees in the park, where some have fallen you really get a sense of the size of these things, the fact that the trunk is a good few feet wider than I am tall means you don't want to be close by when it's coming down. To round off our good afternoon we find a great shop selling cakes, well you have to balance the exercise out don't you, and enjoy those sat in the sunshine looking out on English Bay. The evening's food is just as good as we discover a Belgian restaurant that does us some fantastic food, and of course, beers. Only afterwards do we find out it's been voted in the top 10 restaurants in North America, and top 50 worldwide.

24/7: Sun, cycling and good food. Pretty perfect

Tuesday October 9th

Decide to investigate Vancouver a bit more today and start by catching the SeaBus across to North Vancouver. Find a good quayside market to look around and enjoy the sights and smells of this before heading back to the main city and heading south to Granville Island. We find out later that we actually manage to miss the main part of the island, it's very easily done (!), and instead end up in a coffee shop accidentally enjoying huge cinnamon buns and tea. Note to self, must exercise to avoid excess baggage charges at airport!

We haven't spent that much time just sitting around and reading papers and books so it was nice to be able to do that with the world passing by outside. Could quite easily get used to it too. Vancouver seems like a pretty good place too, not as big as Toronto maybe but still just as easy to get around and pretty friendly too, apart from one particularly dodgy area near the Chinatown part of town.

24/7: Too full for dessert, completely new territory