Two West End Productions
It's been a whirlwind few days in London here with Alison, who flies home tonight.
We've seen
Avenue Q (a musical comedy featuring puppets) which was fun, but I think would have been better if we'd seen the New York production. It also seemed to lack a bit of panache... if the puppets weren't in it, it would have been pretty ordinary. The lead female singer was really good though. And I was half tempted to buy a set of 4 badges they had on offer :)
The other production we saw was Chicago, starring
Ashlee Simpson! It was quite average, so don't bother going to see it, but I think the novelty value of seeing Ashlee Simpson in a west end show made up for it.
I've managed to spend 200 pounds in two days. My budget is shot!
left, or right?
Dear London,
I have a dilemma. As you know, your citizens drive on the LEFT hand side of the road. In most countries, pedestrian traffic would logically follow the same side and everything would be at peace. For instance, in the happily LEFT hand side country of Australia, we walk on the left, loiter on the left, and stand still on escalators on the left. However, it appears that an American company sold you an escalator some time in the past, showed you how to use it in an American way with people standing on the RIGHT, and you shrugged your shoulders and accepted this strange new custom without fully grasping the consequences of this action.
The result is in 2006 you have confusion in the streets. Not just confusion, but
mayhem! Your citizens no longer have an acceptable standard of which side of the road to walk on. In tube stations, you walk on the right. On National Rail, you walk on the left. On footpaths -
who knows? There is no right or wrong way! Just MAYHEM! People walk wherever they like, possibly depending on which mode of transport they catch on a regular basis. There is no sign to guide them, like there are in tube and rail stations. People are just free willed, and take whatever pavement is available to them. It's nuts! You have to fix it! How can I be a good London citizen if you can't offer me the security of a proper side to walk on?
Yours temporarily (until I fly to France on the 10th of October),
pinkaholic girl
Waiting on a doorstep
My arrival in London had a ring of finality to it. I'm not ready to settle here - I have a trip to France planned in a couple of weeks, meaning there's no point househunting or jobhunting (much) yet - but it was an almost ominous feeling. As I flew in, I watched those tiny terraced fields of country london grow larger and larger, and I felt tired and exhausted and not quite ready for the holiday to end.
Maybe it was dragging 35 kilograms of luggage through the london transport system that did it.
Maybe it was the two hours of sleep and bad airline food.
Maybe it was the waiting in Cafe Nero (Nerd) for Alison and Aruna to arrive with a key and realising they let people SMOKE indoors here.
Maybe it's the sitting and waiting on Rox and Dan's doorstep with a laptop battery rapidly hurtling towards empty and wanting nothing more than a wholesome glass of water and a warm bed. (Or maybe some unsecured wireless in the neighbourhood to help pass the time until the key arrives - I'm typing this in Notepad until I get some intermanet). The thought of doing something else today is not appealing in the least, but it's Aruna's birthday so I think cocktails are on the agenda.
At least it's not raining.
Clapham Junction is busier than I remembered, and less shiny, though still quaint. I do like the villagey feel here with the row of shops and cobble-esque walkways. I think my feelings of "underwhelmed" are the result of travel fatigue. It would probably be wise not to dwell on it until I'm more rested.
I've been spending a lot of time on my resume. It should be a fairly easy task to do, but I'm both a procastinator and a perfectionist, so I'm not ready to give it out to anyone until I'm satisfied that I look like a star. It's just going to take me a little longer to get it to that stage (with the procastination and all). I've even been foregoing email, blog and photo uploading duties to work on this thing, but it's so HARD! You're only supposed to have a two page resume in the UK, which is impossible. And I think i'm getting stupider. My brain doesn't find synonyms as easy to come by as it used to, so I mull over finding words similar to 'excellent' or 'responsible for' without making it seem like I'm trying THAT hard. (this is, of course, between shopping bouts in New York/Boston/Montreal).
Passing through Immigration is a lot easier when you have a UK visa. She just looked at it, went "ok", no pesky questions like "what do you do for a living? how are you funding your travels? are you here on paid leave? what's the name of your cat from 1984? how come you didn't bring me some pie?" etc. Maybe I just looked scarier from lack of sleep so she didn't want to earn the wrath.
Here's an interesting factoid - UK immigrations officers dress in mufti EVERY DAY. How crazy is that? Welcome to the UK, no uniformed officers here, we're really very friendly as long as you have money and you're leaving in 90 days.
Now, while we're randomly filling in time, here's a slightly disturbing comment I overheard in Montreal - it was a shopkeeper talking on the phone.
Me: (walks into store and browses t-shirts)
Shopkeeper: (on the phone) "Yeah, there's one girl... maybe 18 or 19?"
Me: (thinks... que? he tells people who's in the store?)
Shopkeeper: "yeah, she's really awesome."
Me: (realises he is unlikely to be talking about people in the store, even if I am awesome, because not everyone recognises my talent immediately)
Shopkeeper: "...she's totally hot. Hey, do you know if that's illegal?"
Me: (EW!!!! WHAT?!?!?!)
Shopkeeper: "(pause). Yeah, I thought so, but I didn't really care ..."
Me: (makes rapid exit)
I just got an SMS from Alison saying that all trains are delayed or cancelled. London, if you really want to do me some favours, start the trains running again. I got two hours' sleep! And I have 35 kilos of luggage! Now I'm sitting around on a doorstep! Three hours waiting in smoky cafes or perched on one's luggage outside a doorstep is not how I intended to be welcomed. I'm going to watch Grey's anatomy until my battery runs out. Goodnight.
Montréal
Montréal is lovely. It's the size of vancouver - possibly even smaller - but the difference between the two cities is huge. We've been hanging out at Jenny and Paul's place, which is in an awesome location on St Laurent (Montréal's 'Plateau').
During the 5 days we've done a lot of typical Quebecois things, like eating
Poutine, speeding a lot, and going out. We've been to the famed
House of Jazz (a bit of an older crowd venue), seen a
McGill University Ice Hockey match and been to
Quebec City driving along the Chemin du Roy, a beautiful scenic route with apple orchards and autumn trees. We stopped by the
the tam tam jam on Sunday where people bring their own drums and beats and dance.
I challenged Ken (former chess club nerd) to a match in
Cafe Pi and won! The victory is recorded in photos which will be uploaded soon. We saw some strange live bands on recommendations but probably wouldn't do it again... Montréal does have a great live scene though. The city is small enough to walk around - we haven't caught the Metro anywhere (this is probably due to Jenny's awesome location).
The shopping here is fun - lots of quirky shops in which to spend your dollars. In fact, this is what I'm going to do on the last day before I fly out to the UK. :) I bought some touristy stuff and am currently debating whether its worth buying and transporting maple syrup - it seems to taste better here. It's plentiful and they put it on lots of things, like baked beans and chicken. Canadians are a resourceful bunch!
I have a whole bunch of things to update on this blog - like the road trip from New York - but will do it once I'm settled in the UK. So stay tuned for past adventures!
New York, New York
New York has a lot more quirks than other places I've visited so far. Catching a taxi here is like playing grand theft auto. They dodge and weave other cars & taxis as if they're stationery objects. Which they're not. You can't really be worried about a serious accident though, because Manhattan traffic never gets higher than 30km/h.
Today was super busy. We had an "early" night last night (2am) so we could wake up sometime before 9am today. Tina and Aruna were out till very late - as in, they came back to the hostel to look up the address of a club at 2am then went out again. I do not know how they do it, and I feel old and tired just thinking about it.
Central park was very pretty. We walked from Columbus Circle on 60th to the Great Lawn, through Shakespeare's Garden, The Mall, The Literary Walk, Belvedere Castle and Strawberry fields. (You can look all these locations up on
the website.) The lack of signage in the park makes it difficult to navigate, but it was still very peaceful compared to the incessant horn honking in the streets. I really liked Belvedere Castle - tiny and charming.
Afterwards we hit
the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) which I really enjoyed. It's a good size gallery - not too overwhelming like some galleries in Europe with multiple lines of pictures on each wall. There's a lot of famous artworks by Matisse, Cezanne, Dali, Magritte, Van Gogh, Warhol, etc which made it fun for me, because I'm a bit of a candy art person. I don't read much into the subtext, but there are free audioguides provided if you're into that kind of stuff.
This is about the acutal size of The Persistence of Memory. It's tiny. They let you take photographs inside the gallery, which earns them a big plus. There's also an outdoor sculpture garden which is a nice sancturary for weary feet after a visit.
The gift shop in MoMA is AWESOME. They sell lots of beautiful, quirky and unusual gifts but most of it is too large to carry in luggage :(
After MoMA, we caught the subway downtown to SoHo/the village and wandered around for a bit. We visited the
Dean & Deluca mothership store (aka where
Felicity worked - you can even buy t-shirts and mugs here) which had the most delicious array of cakes and pastries on display, and a million other gourmet offerings. I coveted. The problem was that both Alison and I had literally no money, so we couldn't buy much. In hindsight that was probably a good thing...
We ate dinner at a Ukranian restaurant and felt way too full afterwards.
I haven't yet achieved my goal of eating a giant pretzel in New York. I think tomorrow's my last chance.
Today's theme is... Queueing!
Woke up late again, but on the plus side it was finally sunny in New York! Woohoo! We ate breakfast at Cranberry Gourmet, the fantastic deli next door to the hostel and had a bacon, egg and cheese wrap. Mmmmm... I love New York delis! They serve everything in convenient, single-use (but very environmentally unfriendly) take away portions which is perfect for the traveller. And if you're feeling a bit indecisive, you can take advantage of the salad bar which is 5.49/pound - and there are 2.2 pounds to a kilo, if you didn't know (which I didn't really) - so you only buy what you want to eat, and can stop feeling guilty about not eating a balanced diet by putting a few lettuce leaves on your plate. But don't get U.S. yoghurt. It tastes funny.
We went to the Statue of Liberty. It was Saturday (you tend to forget the days when you're on holiday, because who needs to know what day it is?) so it was actually a stupid day to go because there were lots of queues, and lots of people. And there was subway trackwork, so we got delayed by shuttle buses, etc. That was a nice reminder of cityrail weekends at home.
We finally found Ken! Yay! We all caught the ferry to Liberty Island & got lots of good photos, but unfortunately we didn't have time to go to Ellis Island, which was the immigration point for millions of americans in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. Apparently 40% of the population of the U.S. descends from someone who went through Ellis Island.
The whole Statue of Liberty thing took much longer than we expected, so by the time we were back on Manhattan it was 4pm. We tried to go to Serendipity again (forgetting it was Saturday) and this time it was a 2 hour wait for the table! :( So we let it go.
Instead we showed Ken the Apple store and FAO Schwarz. We found some sour liquid warheads which was amusing, and I bought some as gifts for people.
Despite the fact that the weather was good, the day felt very unproductive. :( and because of a group vote that Alison & I wasn't listening to, we ate at the SAME vietnamese restaurant as yesterday... I mean, really, on the entire island of Manhattan we couldn't find anything else to interest us enough?!
ahem.
After dinner we headed up the Empire State building which is the inspiration for the title of my post today. Those guys are the tricksters of queues. First you have to queue to get to the security gate (our second of the day). Then you queue to get a ticket. Then you queue to get through a turnstile, walk a bit, and end up in another queue for an elevator to the 80th floor. This is not the end of the queueing. You get out of the 80th floor elevator, and go around a corner to seen an entire room of queue for a different lift to the 86th floor. It's evil! I think we would have enjoyed it much more if we'd known about the queueing in advance. Maybe a pamphlet or something would have been good. I bought some shiny holographic postcards which look really cool.
We went to Nelson's 30th drinks after the empire state, but left Ken to his devices shortly after. We have to get up early for Central Park tomorrow!
N.B. taxis are super cheap in New York compared to Sydney, no wonder people use them all the time!
homage to bridget jones
Perpetually late today. Woke up late, weather was horrible. Went to Macy's - bought Keds with cherries on them, AND a bag with FRUIT on it! Was still wet after Macy's. Took the wrong subway line to Serendipity's, ended up walking ten blocks crosstown in horrible wet raining conditions. Got to Serendipity's an hour late, and there was a line :( Had to forego delicious chocolate treats even though body was severely craving it, to meet Ken at MoMA 15 blocks away. Actually turned up on time at MoMa (first time for everything) but KEN DID NOT SHOW. Now in collective black books. Took shelter in nearby Lou's cafe. Drank much needed hot chocolate. Still not satisfied, so ate some chicken soup and felt better. Got soaked again walking back 8 blocks to the hostel. Felt dejected because of lack of achievement today. Cursed the rain. Resolved to get drunk and party (it IS friday night after all). Caught subway downtown to SoHo/East Village/Chinatown. Stumbled upon random italian street festival, which went on for ages! Ate a deep fried oreo for the hell of it - truly not as bad as it sounds. Got mocked for it, but at least I have photographic proof. Ate Vietnamese food and it very tasty. Did not win any of my plate wars - beef, rice noodle or salad - all were leftover on my plate. Felt sad. Walked back through street festival towards towards cocktails in Grenwich Village. Entered Fat Black Pussycat cocktail bar. Unimpressed by number of uncool people so made a rapid exit. Wandered around aimlessly for new cocktail bar replacement. Stumbled upon a tiny wine bar called V-Bar. Had a glass of delicious pinot gris from Italy. Moved up the street to Shade Bar and enjoyed cocktails made to order! Had varied martinis (apple, raspberry, chocolate) which were very, very strong. Theorise that the cocktails are pure alcohol and thus a bargain for 8 dollars (+tip). Sufficiently buzzed to go to gay-turned-indie-club-on-the-weekends venue somewhere downtown. Danced. A lot. Retired at 3am. Fell gratefully into bed glad that the day had redeemed itself and hoped tomorrow would bring some sunshine.
Photos are online
I've posted some
photos from the Canadian leg of the journey. I'm in New York now, where there's wireless internet in our room! I've caught up on the week when I was in the Rockies, and hopefully I'll be able to update the blog more often.
Back in Banff
Today’s schedule was busy. First we went to see
Athabasca Falls and Sunwapta Falls, where I had a delicious Pina Colada muffin. It stands out as a culinary highlight of the trip.
Afterwards we went to see the Saskatchewan Glacier, which is only visible if you hike (i.e. you can’t conveniently drive up to the base of it like the Athabasca and Dome glaciers).
We had lunch at
Peyto Lake. Yes, that’s me sitting on a rock overlooking the valley. Peyto Lake has a brilliant blue colour from glacial meltwater, and it was an absolutely stunning picnic spot.
After lunch we visited Moraine Lake, famous for being on the Canadian twenty dollar bill – and there’s actually a spot marked out where the photo was taken from.
We’re back in Banff now - Kent and Richard have decided to ditch the hostels and rented an alpine chalet for two nights, so we’re all eating dinner at their place tonight! Yay!
Edith Cavell and Maligne Lake
We visited the
Mt Edith Cavell glaciers (Angel glacier, Edith Cavell glacier, and a tiny one perched on the side of the mountain, whose name escapes me at the moment) where the meltwater was covered in icebergs that shone a pale blue. There were various ice caves at the bottom of Edith Cavell glacier – when you stood in the mouth of them, you could feel the cold winds of the glacier tunneling through. It was almost surreal standing in front of a glacier cave. The melt patterns on the walls were spectacular.
Lunch was at
Maligne Lake, which was beautiful, and just what you picture Canadian landscapes to be in your mind. We had a couple of hours to spend here, so some people went canoeing or on a boat cruise to Spirit Island in the middle of the lake. I did a small bit of hiking to a lookout point, then just lazed around for the rest of lunch drinking hot chocolate and not doing much else. I was actually fairly impressed with the taste of the whipped hot chocolate that comes out of the vending machines. For something that has no milk content, it was still very creamy and a good balance of chocolate. I tried a peanut butter cookie, which Canadians and Americans seem very fond of, but I don’t think it won me over.
After lunch, we walked along Maligne Canyon, which was very scenic and very easy – all downhill! Heidi went to pick us up at a rendezvous point further down the canyon. Yay! The sun had come out, so we got some good photos. It also feels very remote towards the end of the hike around the 5th suspension bridge, there were very few people compared to the top half of the canyon.
We had a bit of a farewell in Jasper, eating at the local pizzeria and watching a movie (most of the group went to see Step Up, while another guy from the hostel and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth). Got back to the hostel after lights out and annoyed the hell out of all our neighbours when we tried to find things in the dark.
The Icefields Parkway to Jasper
Today we visited the Columbia Icefields Centre along the Icefields Parkway, which is where the
Athabasca and Dome glaciers are visible from the road. You can go for a walk on the glacier, which takes you out on the ice in some very expensive all terrain ice vehicles of which there are only 23 in the world, 22 of them owned by the company doing the glacier walks and the other owned by the U.S. government.
Lunch was at a stunning picnic spot on Horseshoe Lake, creatively named for its shape. The water was a stunning deep blue, and very crystal clear – it comes from meltwaters from the glaciers in the region. There was a rock which was perfect for jumping off into the lakewaters, and Kent, Heidi and Richard all had a go. (note: I was content to just laze around in the sun.) We saw a guy jump of cliffs that must have been at least ten metres high on the opposite side of the river. It gave me heart palpitations just thinking of it. He made it okay, but we left before we could witness another attempt.
We had a half hour hike up old fort point just outside of jasper, which offered 360 degree views of all the mountains. It was really stunning. I tried to get a photo montage then realised I just should have made a video. :(
We got into Jasper at about 5pm and had a wander around. It’s smaller than Banff, but a touch less touristy and very quaint. We splashed out on thai food for dinner, then regretted it later when it didn’t taste anything like thai. But we took the food out to a picnic spot in front of Pyramid lake, and the colours in the sky were beautiful at sunset.
Checked into the hostel pretty late, where we discovered that we were in a 60 bed dorm! Insanity! The mattresses were covered with plastic and the lights were automatically shut off at 11pm and turned on again at 8am, making it really hard to do anything late at night or in the morning. On the plus side, they had wireless internet, and we all enjoyed our first showers in 48 hours.
I feel like I should mention that I've been eating a lot of bananas in Canada. They're a whole lot cheaper than at home.
The Moose Tour
Today I met my tour group for the next four days. When I first met our guide, Heidi, she was perched on a log eating a bacon and egg sandwich with a large travel flask of coffee next to her. Brilliant!
We have five Australians, an Englishman, a Dutchman and three Swiss-Germans. All of them seem pretty cool, but the bus ride has been unexpectedly quiet (I think some people are still recovering from drinks last night).
We started with a morning hike at Johnston Lake, which was pleasantly flat. There was a wonderful reflection in the lake because the waters were so still. Afterwards we headed to Lake Louise, but it was a bit smoky due to fires burning in British Columbia and Washington State. :( The glacier at the back of the valley seems to be disappearing at a rapid pace, but I suppose it is the end of the summer… We hiked up (and up, and up) to
Lake Agnes which sits at the top of one of the mountains in the area, and has a beautiful waterfall and teahouse (a teahouse!) at the top, perched right on a cliff next to a waterfall. We saw a whole lot of people in their 50s and 60s on the way, which was really impressive. The trail was fairly steep, and at least an hour of solid uphill hiking. I hope that when I’m that age, I’m that fit!
We had lunch at the top of Lake Agnes, but I think the highlight is seeing all the valleys and mountains along the hike, and the occasional shimmer of Lake Louise’s brilliant blue colour through the trees. I lamented more than once that I couldn’t fit all my peripheral vision in a single photograph. You just have to visit, and drink in the scenery. :)
After the hike, we spent the rest of the afternoon being ferried around by Heidi in the Moose Bus (an "11 seater" grey wonder). This included
Crowfoot Glacier,
Bow Lake & Bow Glacier, and
Mistaya Canyon - my favourite.
We stayed at the
HI Hostel Rampart Creek which was a wilderness hostel (read: no running water, no electricity)... but it had an outdoor bonfire, and a great sauna! After the sauna we jumped into the icy creek, which felt very Scandinavian and also a bit scary because it was DARK and STORMING!
It's scary when you lose things
I had two scares today! Both when I was by myself, which I think magnifies the panic a little.
I caught an early shuttle to the airport for my flight to Calgary. Lucky I arrived early, because the shuttle was late and the domestic check in queues were HUGE. It was at this point that I had my first crisis and discovered that I’d left my phone at the hostel. It was one of those “oh my god” moments when I realised that I had been sleeping on a top bunk, Alison wouldn’t check it for my possessions and both housekeeping and someone else was going to end up clearing or sleeping on that bunk. Thankfully, Alison’s mobile number is extraordinarily similar to mine so I called her using the last two dollars credit available on my phonecard. The phone was successfully retrieved in the evening. First crisis averted!
The hostel I stayed at was large with an alpine feel, but had less impressive facilities than Vancouver. Two little French ladies and three Japanese girls were in my cabin. The French ladies’ size belied their ability to snore very loudly.
Before dinner I browsed through the shops at Banff. It was all pretty touristy, but there was a cute cow shop with t-shirts, mugs and other cow paraphernalia. My ideal shop! I’ll be going back there when I return to Banff next week :)
I debated whether or not I’d try and talk to random people I didn’t know, but tiredness won out. Then I had my second scary moment when I thought I’d lost the key to my locker, which had my passport, laptop, and about 80% of the money I was carrying around. eep! I spent 20 minutes fishing the spare out (which I’d cleverly locked inside the locker) with some dextrous work with scissors through a tiny gap at the top. I found the real key two minutes later IN THE LOCK of another padlock. Go me.
It was fun trying to wake up for an 8am pickup without an alarm, but the snoring kept me awake, so I didn’t have any problems after all.
Whistler
We caught a moose tour bus for one day to the Whistler resort just north of Vancouver (to save ourselves from shopping and spending more money). The drive was very scenic – a bit reminiscent of the sounds in the south of New Zealand.
There was a varied group on the bus, with some bad taste in driving music – an entire powderfinger album, and not one of the good ones! They really need some mix cds in there. We occupied ourselves with musings about our fellow passengers, trying to work out their relationships to one another. (I realise we could have asked them, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun.) I think our driver was very new, she wasn’t exactly sure where she was going, which didn’t inspire a lot of confidence.
Lunch was at a rocky outcrop on the highway that overlooked the mountains and rivers far below. It really brought into perspective the scale of the landscape and was spectacular!
When we finally reached Whistler, it really was just like Disneyland. All the buildings were so tidy and painted in cheerful colours with cute alpine trimmings. The village was so very constructed, but still seemed to retain some cuteness, if not much character. Just in case you have a fashion crisis while you’re in whistler, there’s a GAP and Guess clothing stores to keep you trendy. I was actually surprised at the number of shops that were there – it could easily sustain a village of several thousand.
We only had a few hours at the resort, so we opted to take the gondola up to the top which takes an HOUR! A 25 minute gondola ride, a 10-15 minute walk to the start of another lift and another 10-15 minute open chairlift to the top. I had some vertigo problems going up, it was terrible. The view at the top was nice, but probably not worth all the time considering we only had 3 hours. It’s actually above the tree line, so everything starts looking very bare and very dry.
They had whiteboards with listings of bear sightings around the gondola, but we didn’t see any :(
We stopped at a tiny town on the way back to Vancouver. Our tour guide said they used to film X-Files episodes here and I tried to recognise anything from a quick walk around, but nothing sprung to mind. I’ll have to review the episodes again and see if anything stands out.
shopping in vancouver
We woke up so late today that our waitress called breakfast ‘brunch’! We went back to the diner and shared the blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs, brie and bacon in a croissant. Today’s table was covered in postcards of Wonder Woman (yesterday it was old cars). Tres cool.
After brunch we headed to Commercial Drive (most guidebooks and maps encourage you to visit, but neglect to tell you how to get there). We didn’t find much to get excited about, except another ‘Mintage’ store... so despite our late start, we were done by 3pm. At this point I was beginning to think that Vancouver might not be an ideal destination for 4 days straight, because we’ve now officially run out of things to do in the city, unless we do more shopping. But tomorrow we’ve booked ourselves on a tour to Whistler and back for the scenery and some forced separation from the shops (otherwise if we keep spending, we'll have no money left and what are we going to do in New York?)
We ate at a recommended greek place for dinner, which was completely full with queues forming by 6pm and was very delicious.
huge thanks to G, CG and Philby today :)
It's odd, this trip seems different to my previous trips. My brain is just happy to be empty and not think about anything. In contrast, the past couple of trips I've done I've felt very enthused and ready to document all the quirks and thoughts that have crossed my mind... I think I'm just writing things I've done just so I don't forget it. Which is okay, I suppose, but I think I'll be happy when my brain returns to normal function.
everything seems more poignant at 2am
Today was a bit of a topsy turvy day. I had pangs of guilt/homesickness last night and stayed up till 2am to call my parents back in Sydney. I spoke with Mum and Adrian, but Dad was still at work finalising things before his trip. I even tried to call him at work but got his voicemail. :( I managed to call him this afternoon, and he sounded really happy to hear from me, which made me feel happier - it’s a wonder how small things can affect your day so much.
We cycled around Stanley Park today. It’s huge, but an easy bike ride because it’s all flat. There were a lot of rollerbladers around the place – none very muscly or tanned, but I still felt like I was in California! I was also impressed because there’s a dedicated cycle/rollerblading lane, and another for pedestrians, so you don’t have to worry about cycling into anyone.
After the bike ride, we stumbled on actual Japanese people queuing up at an actual Japanese restaurant - a tiny place with a bar and four tables serving handmade ramen noodles. We debated about the wait and decided it was worth $7 Canadian dollars for a giant bowl each. It was delicious, but I wonder if real Japanese people can eat that much?
We shopped along Robson St in the afternoon, the Vancouver equivalent of Pitt St. I spent money I shouldn’t have :(
After a rest in the hostel, we visited the Vancouver art museum in the evening (“hey - it’s cheap Tuesday, entry by donation! Let’s go!”) and ate at a 50s style diner for dinner. Servings were huge and the décor was brilliantly retro. We’re going back for breakfast sometime, it all looked fantastic – baked grapefruit with brown sugar and pecans; blueberry and banana pancakes with fruit; scrambled eggs with brie cheese and bacon on a croissant with rosemary potatoes; muesli with natural yoghurt and fruit (because your diet SHOULD include fibre, even while on holiday).
I bought some really cute red earrings. I think they’re my new favourites.
vintage shopping is fun
Steve Irwin is dead! OMG! We found out today while browsing in a funky gift store in gastown. The owner – with tattoos and fishing hat – was thrilled to have customers, and talked our ears off. We didn’t believe him when he told us, but others at the hostel verified it’s true. Death by stingray to the heart. What a horrible way to go...
Back at the start of the day, Alison and I enjoyed a surprisingly edible hostel breakfast at 8:30 (noisy lawyer again making an appearance), then headed off to Grouse Mountain. It’s touted as the “top” attraction of Vancouver and you need to take a ferry as well as a bus + cable car to get to the top. You’re supposed to be able to get views of Washington State on a good day.
Being a public holiday, all Vancouver public transport fares were $2.25. Bargain! The ferry ride is pleasant, but the mountain is very overrated. Once we were at the top, the highlight was the grizzly bear habitat where we saw a bear reclining. It was very cute.
I had a frozen popsicle with frozen yoghurt. It was tasty, and much cheaper than Haagen Dazs which cost $4.50. (bleh!) The views from the top of Grouse Mountain were partly obscured by cables, so it wasn’t that nice, and definitely not great value for $30 :p Maybe if you have kids and stuff it would be better, but nothing at the top seemed worth it for us.
Back at ground level, we wandered our way through gastown and Chinatown and found some awesome vintage stores. I didn’t buy anything – owing to the huge amount of luggage I already have – but I was tempted.
Vancouver’s Chinatown appeared to be dead when we wandered through. We attributed it to Vancouver being a much sleepier town than Sydney. We saw the narrowest building in the world according to Ripley’s believe it or not (Jack Chow’s insurance, only 1.8m wide, where you stand at the window on the street to get service) and the Sun Yat Sen Chinese gardens – the public ones – because we felt cheap after the $30 Grouse Mountain affair.
We ate lunch at a BBQ restaurant which had actual asian people in it! Only when we sat down did we realise that the menu was entirely in Chinese. We felt sheepish and rude having to ask for an English version. It was super cheap though at about $6 each – Vancouver eating seems to be a lot cheaper than Sydney. There was a cake shop selling lots of fresh goodies too. Mmmm....
Wandered back through gastown in the afternoon. It’s like the rocks in Sydney, lots of tourist souvenir stores amongst cute and funky one-offs. We met the crazy Canadian shopkeeper who had the CUTEST soft toys: mouldy toast, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, happy toast, bananas – and a joke gift of a tampon soft toy. There was all sorts of wacky stationery from Japan too.
We walked back to the hostel and FINALLY got to use the internet. Hooray! I booked my flight to France, at 21 british pounds.
We went for a wander up Davie st for dinner, there’s lots of very cheap restaurants but there seems to be some fairly dodgy people who just loiter on street corners for the fun of it. As a result, we resolved to eat dinner earlier tomorrow. We’re also going to shop on Robson St and cycle around Stanley park tomorrow. Should be fun!
Vancouver
(I apologise for the length of this post, but I'm currently suffering insomnia and there's lots to say. Well done if you make it to the end!)
So, I’m off on my grand world adventure. It’s been a strange leadup, mostly because I’ve oscillated between ‘keen’ and ‘alarm’ on the scale of emotions. I haven’t felt infectious excitement or abject panic... yet.
Packing was very arduous. I wasn’t really worried until the day before I left, so I’d left all the packing until the last moment - literally. I figured there wasn’t actually much that I could take, so how long could it take to pack it all?
Wow, how wrong I was. It took me hours just to write up the spreadsheets of where I was going, accommodation details (maps, instructions, etc) and gather all the paperwork I needed to enter the UK. I also don’t have a copy of my uni transcript so I’ll have to order that and get it mailed to me. Troublesome! I also didn’t count on all the little things that I would have to cater for – like makeup and proper shoes for interviews, and sneakers and tracksuit pants for hiking in Banff. Imagine having to cram three wardrobes into one 50 litre backpack. I was up until 5:30, steadfastly plodding along. I had to wake at 6:30 for my flight, so I got a grand total of one hours’ sleep. I also was rushing to get out of the house in time, so I didn’t have time to say goodbye to the dog. I wish I’d hugged her one last time.
Saying goodbye to the family at Sydney airport was really, really hard, and I cried. I’ve actually refrained from writing anything about my trip yet because I didn’t want to think about not seeing them for a year. I’m very glad that Alison’s here, for my own sanity.
We met a peppy girl from Adelaide on our flight, and she was just a baby - born in 1988! Only 18 and she decided to go and work in Canada for a year at a vineyard. It was her first time traveling overseas too, and she seemed thrilled, wasn’t crying or an emotional mess. Impressive.
The flight was otherwise hellish. Singapore Airlines has really spoiled me for choice, because the Air Canada the hostesses were grouchy, abrupt and kind of unkempt. Also, it came as a rude shock to not have a personal entertainment-on-demand screen. Can you believe we were forced to watch the same movies as everyone else on the flight, sitting 20 rows back?
We landed in Honolulu and everyone had to get off the plane, clear customs and immigration and get our fingerprints/photos taken by the department of homeland security. The ridiculous thing was we got a date and visa stapled in our passport, then when we reboarded the plane the visa card got taken away again. It was in there for less than half an hour! I guess they’re keen to keep themselves busy.
I managed to sleep most of the Honolulu to Vancouver leg, but by the end of the flight I was very, very over it. Holly, the peppy girl from Adelaide, still had another connecting flight to Calgary but didn’t seem tired in the least. I don’t know how she did it, because she flew from Adelaide to Sydney before even joining our flight.
Once we got out of the airport, it was nice. Vancouver is much warmer than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. It’s quite humid at the moment and around 25 degrees, so I’m glad that I packed some summery things.
The city seems to be a town planner’s dream. We drove right down a main thoroughfare (Granville St) with cross streets at regular intervals and houses numbered in the high thousands along the side of the road. There were lots of pretty avenues with trees, and it all seemed very suburban. We found our hostel with minimal trouble, it’s right in the middle of a section of pubs, eateries and strip joints. Classy. The hostel itself is nice though, kind of homely with squishy couches and things, and lots of pamphlets about local attractions. Staff were pretty laid back, and very Canadian. The hostel gets a big plus for the private room that we have with individual lockers and keycard entry!
After checking into the hostel, we decided to go to Granville Island, known for its markets. Looked at a map and decided that it wasn’t too far, so we tried to walk it, then got stuck on a bridge that was high, high above the island with no end in sight. We finally arrived, but resolved to catch a water taxi back...
The island was smaller than I thought it would be, but there were two highlights – a postcard shop inside the mall, and the public markets, with SO much delicious looking fresh produce, particularly the berries. The markets also had numerous bakery stalls (key lime pie! blueberry tarts! banana cream pie!) and sold unique gourmet items all over the place. One stall had about thirty different varieties of salts infused with various flavours; another solely dedicated to about twenty different flavoured butters and chutneys.
We were both suffering from jet lag and dehydration, so we headed back to the hostel for an afternoon nap. Woke up at 7pm, read some literature and decided to go to Grouse Mountain tomorrow because it’s a public holiday. Feeling very lazy, we just ate locally – at a place called Whine Oh (hee!) which had some interesting décor and music, but didn’t really come alive until after 9pm. We had some scampi, patatas bravas and a spinach salad with duck.
One weird thing: Vancouver citizens drive with their lights on no matter what time of the day it is. Broad daylight on a sunny day, they all had their lights on driving over the Granville bridge. Odd. They also have very cute “bathtub sized” ferries that potter between the different stops on the south side of the downtown island. And the buses run on electricity cables suspended above the roads. (What do they do when there’s a traffic jam in the lane with the cables?)
One annoying thing: tax gets added to everything you buy. So when you’re looking at something that costs $5.21, it’s really about $5.50 depending on what it is (I think different things attract different tax rates, or no tax rates if they’re “essentials”). Also, having to remember to tip 15% on all restaurant services is stressful. I’m glad that Sydney doesn’t do that!
Anyway, back at the hostel I tried to use internet but there is no wireless, and only one ethernet port that is shared by all who have laptops. While I was waiting, I ran into an old, loud, ugly lawyer from Florida who just wouldn’t shut up about himself. He’s been to Sydney but didn’t like being “poor” because you can earn three times more money in America. Well Mr. Lawyerman, a) I’m glad you left Sydney because we don’t want you anyway, b) what are you doing in a cheapie backpacker hostel if you’re a monied up lawyer? and c) your glory days are over. They cannot be reclaimed. Just go and buy yourself a red convertible like all your other comrades to get over your mid life crisis.
That ends my crazy September 3rd of 2006, which lasted 38 hours.
