October 18, 2008 by
Harry
Vancouver
is a nice city. Even though we had to get used to being in a large
place again, we enjoyed the neighbourhoods, the bicycle lanes, the
beaches, Chinatown, Sushi. I will keep this report short and just show
you some images.
We were surprised by the large number of homeless people in the
streets downtown and the lack of a real ‘tourist’ area. A lot is going
on in Vancouver as the Olympic Wintergames will be here in less than 16 months: new buildings, houses and more.
We spend many days resting at Kristen’s place.
I had to transfer many websites from one host to another, which is the
electronic version of emigrating an entire family, but all went well
and now www.BikeTravellers.com, www.ExposedPlanet.com and some others are finally reachable and fast again.
We went into some big outdoor and bicycle shops but did not really need anything. I commented about this on Bikeradar, a well-known website that had reviewed our Santos Travelmaster:
I am currently testing it on our ride from Alaska to
Argentina. The bike is great, no problems whatsoever. My girlfriend,
riding the same bike, and me were in a big Vancouver
bikeshop after finishing the first 5000km, including about 800-1000km
unpaved (Dalton Highway, Denali Highway and Cassiar Highway).
‘What do we need for our bikes?’ we asked eachother, looking hungry at all the nice gear and tools.
‘Ehhhh?’
In the end we realized we have to change the oil (recommended after
5000km) and as we already had the spare Rohloff oil with us, we bought
nothing.
And once you have tried the Rohloff, you will never want to go back 
(tripreports can be found on http://WorldOnABike.com).
After our first long trip on into town –on foot- ended up with blisters
we started using our bikes and toured around the city and through
Stanley Park. The park is quite big and houses many trails for cyclists
(one way!) and hikers. We saw raccoons, geese and met some nice guys who invited us for dinner after we managed to meet them again a few hours later…
Of course we ate a lot, both in Kristen’s place as well as in town,
the biggest find being an all you can eat Sushi Buffet! We found out
that it was Canadian Thanksgiving (which is about a month before the US
version), and Kristen and her housemates all went out to eat with
friends and family. Just when we thought we would have to spend the
evening alone, we got an email from Carol and Barry, inviting us for
thanksgiving in their place in North Vancouver! It was great to see Barry again and meet Carol, who is full of wonderful stories; the food was delicious and we felt privileged to be there with them.
It was time to get to Seattle, but we decided that we did not want
to go straight down, through the non-stop Metropolitan area of Northern
Washington State. We decided to visit Victoria first…
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Tags: Animals, British Columbia, Canada, Cities, Couchsurfing, Vancouver, WarmShowers
