So our coach ride wasn't quite as pleasant an experience on the return journey. It all started by following a woman up the coach steps, her 'dress' didn't quite cover her overly large bum. The coach itself wasn't smelling all that fresh either, it had already travelled from Calgary, about 8 hours in. Fortunately we found two seats together and settled down for the long haul, unfortunately the seats were near the toilet which was pungent. Every time someone went in or out, didn't close the door or the bus stopped/slowed a not so fragrant stench would waft down the bus. My undying enmity however was reserved for the man who used it whilst we were stopped at a service station, WHY?!? WHY WOULD ANYONE DO SUCH A THING?!?!!!???? For a couple of hours we also got to enjoy the overwhelming musk of someone who apparently hasn't washed since 1973, yummy! So it was that we finally escaped the bus with the relief of someone who hasn't had a toilet break in four hours, and headed to our digs for the night. We'd decided to stay in the Cambie hostel, which is loud, does decent beer and food and is full of travellers. First however we had to negotiate our way through Vancouver at night, which was an interesting adventure. To start with we managed to jovially brush off the homeless guy who offered to show us where we could get champagne out of the bins at the train station. However then we walked down a couple of streets that in the day seem quite innocuous, a bit run down maybe but nothing all that untoward, at night however one notices that it is essentially a street of homeless shelters and missions, which apparently have a lively drugs trade on the side. So here we were tired, weighed down with rucksacks, a little lost and confused but not wanting to get the map out until we're somewhere with a less muggy vibe. In our haste to get off the street we turn up the next block, and as we turn back to the right direction walk into a night market of sorts. I say of sorts because it was a rather bizarre selection of items lying out on the side of the street, surrounded by some pretty drugged up sellers/buyers. Some guy was selling a girls outfit from the sunglasses to the shoes, I ploughed ahead, eyes forward until we reached the bright lights of a club strip full of girls tottering in heels and guys in dodgy shirts. So finally we got out our map, standing under a street lamp with a couple of bouncers two doors down. When we reached the Cambie, sticky and sweaty - it was a very hot night - we were told we'd been moved to their other location 'just a couple of blocks away'. Needless to say we weren't all that amused but we didn't have all that much choice in the matter. So off we headed, luckily more into the city centre, and found it with little disorientation. The reason for our move was that 4 fat Japanese guys had booked a private room - 2 twin beds - and the ones in the original hostel were bigger so they put them there instead. Now I didn't mind being moved, but they could have called us to ask/inform us before we turned up, I mean why else do we put our phone numbers on those booking forms? We dumped the bags and went to a pizza place that was surprisingly still open and actually quite nice, we then pretty shortly after collapsed.
Sunday arrived and we decided to go for a walk through the city down to Stanley Park. It was a gorgeous sunny day, so we took our time walking down through the city, along Denman street which is full of lots of different cuisines. We stopped off for a bit at English Bay beach, enjoying watching the sailing boats and kayaks out in the bay. Then we headed off to Pitch & Putt in Stanley Park, I started strong but unfortunately my putting skills turned out to be wanting, and George beat me, not great.
The most notable thing though was the Coyote that came to watch everyone play, at first we thought he was a dog, but no just a coyote chilling in the sun.
As we finished our game the dark clouds started to gather and a couple of spots of of rain were felt. Obviously we'd left our anoraks in the bottom of the big bag, which was still in the hostel, will we ever learn?
So we found an authentic looking Chinese restaurant called 'Legendary Noodle', we were the only Caucasians in the tiny restaurant , everyone else was Chinese, always a great sign. The food was delicious, some of the best Chinese outside of China, and I got a bit of speaking practice in. Our waitress was so cute, even though she was the only one in the restaurant when something happened in the football - Greece vs Costa Rica - she would stop what she was doing and watch the TV. Whilst she was literally in the middle of taking our order, she paused and concentrated all her attention on the match. So we spent a couple of hours eating, watching the footie and waiting for the deluge to stop. Eventually we headed off and jumped on the bus back to North Vancouver.
Tuesday was Canada Day, and another absolute scorcher, so we tatted up and headed into the city.
We decided to hit up Granville Island, which according to the busyness of our connecting bus, so had a tonne of other people. The bus route passed the Art gallery which is a surrounded by an open square, which was full of a massive weed festival/ market. Pungent smoke was heading skyward, marijuana was on deal - today only prices - and some savvy food cart people had set up on the street outside. We were taken aback to say the least, we knew a lot of it was grown here, a lot of people smoke it, and it is illegal. So if anyone knows how it can happen please let me know. Granville Island was bustling and we wandered around marvelling at the different food stalls, and the arts and crafts shops. George had to pull me out of a beautiful pen and paper shop, which was full of gorgeous notebooks. We were sorely tempted by some of the food, but the practicalities of carrying a massive salmon home in the heat decided us against purchasing much more than a couple of Canada biscuits.
We stopped for a drink in Bridges, a massive restaurant/ bar right on the edge of the dock. Enjoying the view of the city and the kayakers and yachts going in and out of the mariner. After a little more exploring we found a new distillery which has only been going since 2010, they make vodka, gin, white whiskey with normal whiskey coming in 2016. I had a super tasty cocktail of whiskey, lime, pineapple juice and a dash of jalapeño, George had a white whiskey Old Fashioned which I've been assured was just as good.
Avoiding the gigantic bus queue we headed across the bridge back to the city, our goal was somewhere for dinner but decent food places were few and far between the clubs and XXX shops. Luckily we found this great restaurant called the 'Fish Shack', you basically pick a fish and the way you want it cooked, fabulous!
Our plan was to jump on the Seabus, find some Gelato on the way and watch the fireworks from Lonsdale Quay. Now we succeeded in locating Ice cream and it was very tasty, the fireworks weren't so successful. We stood on the McDonalds roof and at 10 one solitary firework went off, it was big and green. We waited for the rest of the show, 5 minutes went by, then 10, then 15 and at 20 our ice creams were finished and we headed for the bus. Typically as we got off the bus we heard the boom of fireworks in the distance. Ah well you can't win them all.
We decided to go and explore what North Vancouver had to offer, and it turns out not all that much. A lot of the shops have closed down as many of the blocks are being knocked down and redeveloped, so we ended up in the Salvation Army thrift shop. What delights it had, whilst George entertained himself with a pair of leather trousers I found a book about how Winnie the Pooh represents the Taoist faith. There were many other exciting finds such as this ridiculously sized Tim Hortons mug. A guide on how to become a millionaire, and a Friends trivia board game!
Later that night we heard some banging outside, and what do we see but a big black bear rifling through the bin. He was pretty sizable, and we were only standing there in our PJs, as close to the door as possible whilst still able to see him. As he was only about 10 ft away we decided against photo taking, as we thought the chances of him being startled and attacking were quite high. It was all very exciting.
The next morning however we had to clean up the aftermath, which was at least food free.
Then we headed into the city to go for a bike ride. Vancouver has a Seawall which runs from Kitsilano round Stanley Park to near Canada Place. We joined it by Yaletown and headed past English Bay Beach into Stanley Park. Along the way we admired the bay full of the massive cargo ships! and enjoyed an Older Lady with Classic FM blaring from her Boom box.
We had to abandon the Seawall as it's only one way and we wanted to head into the forest. Never have I been in a city where there's a park big enough and quiet enough to feel as though I am in the countryside.
We meandered our way through the towering trees, rarely seeing others, until we came upon Beaver Lake. It's a freshwater Lake that is actually drying up and turning into more of a boggy/damp area full of lush greenery. We stopped there for Lunch and one of the blackbirds with red lapels came and let George feed him from his hand. I found out they are quite sensibly named red shouldered blackbirds.
Luckily on our post lunch travels George came across a map, which he claims was given to him by his spirit guide, this allowed us to orientate ourselves. We then headed up the hill to the far end of the park before whizzing back down to join the Seawall. We pedalled along with a view of West Vancouver on our right and the briney smell of the sea rising up from the seaweed coated rocks.
We paused on Third beach and paddled our feet in the rather chilly Pacific Ocean. We headed onwards towards the Northside of the city, where we joined the city traffic. I have never cycled in a city before and fortunately Vancouver has a cycle lane system which partially covers the system. I was doing ok until we hit a hill and I got a bit freaked out by the cars speeding past us. I slogged up a hill with that hot sun shining in my face. It was at this point that the cycle lane became extremely discombobulating switching onto different sides of the street after each block, going both ways down a one way street. So somehow we missed our destination and ended up back on the Seawall which we just followed back to the shop. On our way back we bumped into George's friend Penny and stopped off in a brewery called Back Forty, where George ordered a Silo of beer, which was basically an oversized pint with a humorous name.
That evening we used the most insanely quick BBQ and had a whole rack o' ribs, which were de-li-cious! Super good.
Friday we headed to Deep Cove, from where we planned on following the Baden Powell trail back to Lynn Valley. It was made about 40 years ago by the Scouts of the local area. Unfortunately the only map we could find was a rather basic non descriptive one, the Baden Powell trail is luckily relatively well sign posted with these orange tags on the trees and posts at every junction... Or so we thought.
The first section was very busy as it leads to a local viewpoint about 3.5 km up. We reached the Quarry rock lookout and scrambled up one of the rocks to have lunch.
Then after admiring the gorgeous view carried on the now extremely quiet trail. We didn't see many other people and quickly discovered that whilst 12km might take 2 hours on the road it takes a fair bit longer when your hiking up inclines, over ridges then descending back into valleys. Also the trail is littered with staircases, so many stairs...
About 5 or 6km the signposts became worn away and we found ourselves guessing the direction we wanted to go, there was a junction where one path went up and another down. We knew we would soon have to head down to reach the bridge so opted for the lower trail. This proved to be our mistake as we ended descending a steep track with loose soil and rocks that stuck out, I even managed to slip and land on one of these rocks, happily it was my bum that hit it and nothing else, but it still hurt!
After a while we realised we had definitely lost the trail and came across a biker who pointed us in the right direction. We estimated that we walked an extra 5km or so on our 'detour', eventually we found our way back to the path and carried on through the forest enjoying the smell of pines and admiring the rocky canyons we traversed over by bridge. Finally 5 hours after we'd left we arrived back at Lynn Valley 3 hours later than we'd naively anticipated but essentially in one piece, apart from my bruised bum!!
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