We spent a week in Vancouver at 2 different Holiday Inn hotels. I like the way they do things here in Canada. Hotels have ice machines on most floors and then they have soda pop machines on odd number floors and snack machines on even number floors. This was a eye opener, eating chocolates like 'Oh Henry', Hershey bars etc.. Also trying things like Root Beer. You quickly realise how close you are to America, with Pepsi being alot more popular and widely advertised than Coke and not to mention that they drive on the opposite side of the road to us, hence they sit on the other side of the car. Its funny to experience and its not uncommon to get a cab and naturally go to get in the drivers side... happened to me a few times. It is like many other cities with the drivers being crazy behind the wheel and they do alot more honking on the horn than we do over here.
Vancouver is a very pretty city and has alot of water around it aswell as running through it. They have a massive parkland right on the edge of town called Stanley Park, lots of ppl running, cycling and walking about. They have an Aquarium in the centre with lots of great exhibits like Otters, seals, sharks, exotic birds, reptiles, massive fish species, with the biggest being the 2 white Beluga Whales and there baby. They were great to see and awesome to get so close to such a big animal.
We also spent a day on Grouse mountain which was fun. It was a hot day and got even hotter as we ascended to the top of the mountain in the huge cable car that holds about 40 ppl in each car. It took 8 minutes to get to the top, where we exited the cart to see a magnificent view of Vancouver and the massive ports filled with cargo ships waiting to enter the harbour. The highlight of Grouse mountain was definantly the 2 orphan Grizzly Bears they have in a man made habitat. These things are huge they cruise around and we got to see them up on 2 legs where they stood about 8ft or so in height. This is not huge for a grizzly, but still pretty intimidating. They also have lots of massive wood carvings of bears and lumber jacks etc. We watched the comedy style lumber jack show that they put on every hour or so. It was pretty funny and good to see these guys throw axes, speed climb up massive 80ft poles and play around with saws and chainsaws and things. Not your typical axeman comp we have in Australia.
The rest of our time in Vancouver was spent shopping, setting up paperwork, Social Security numbers and just checking the place out. Ele and I brought new snowboards which we are both happy with and cant wait to try out in a couple of months.
