Vancouver, Canada

Our Air NZ flight to Vancouver departed Auckland at 8pm Friday night and arrived 13hrs later Friday afternoon at 2pm local time. We deliberately chose a night flight to help us fall asleep easier in view of hitting the ground running for a whirl wind experience of Vancouver before our next leg to Athens. The flight was pleasant on a new 777 and we did manage to get some intermittent sleep. The food was also good – both dinner (chicken tika and a potato and celeriac salad, followed by Kapiti hokey pokey ice cream) and breakfast (huge nice scrambled eggs with hollandaise, baked beans, and sausages, fruit salad and yoghurt).

When we arrived at the airport and went to clear customs it was bursting busy with about 6 planes at once with queues everywhere. We were herded like sheep at a sales yard and then Vern goes – look dear look! What? Look, look there. Having no idea what to look at I asked “at what”? He pointed to 2 lanes across the ropes and there was Owen and Iona who are one of our close neighbours on our street. OMG, of all the places to bump into someone from your street! They had just come back from Europe heading home and stopping off in Vancouver for a couple of days. We knew they were going on holiday but didn’t know the dates or exact route. We had a lot of fun as we continued to bump into each other along the long winding weave of ropes to the exit.

When we got through to the other side it took us some time to get a little cash as firstly I had forgotten whose ‘card’ I had loaded CAD onto, and second the one ATM machines was a bit confusing and I was unsure if it was debiting the credit function or the money wallet. I did manage to log onto our account to check which card had the CAD via the free airport wifi. We just got the money in the end after about 3 attempts – so will see later which account it took it out of. By the time we went across the road to the ‘sky-train’ it was a little after 4pm – customs had taken ages. The train goes regularly to the city and our hotel was strategically booked to be a convenient 300m from it. Cost was $9.00 each vs. $30 each for a shuttle as quoted by the travel agent. Taxis cost about $35-55. The train is not only cheap, clean and regular but only takes a direct 25 minutes to get there with some great views along the way as some of it is on a monorail type raised bit before you head underground into the subway system.

The day was a very nice warm 24 degrees with a few small clouds. There are tall mountains, some of them still with snow on that provide a dramatic backdrop to the city which is surrounded by a delta system? Rivers and islands. We saw quite a few logs being floated down one river, which is apparently how they move the timber over here. The city reminds us of San Diego a bit with an overall tidy appeal, wide streets and trees. People are friendly and quick to help if you get lost – for example a nice young man used his phone to GPS our hotel when we asked if we were heading in the right direction, and another local couple on the sky train were very informative and chatty.

Our hotel – Westin Grand is nice and comfortable and we are on the top floor which is 31 stories. Our view is ok, but is of the city as tall buildings obscure the water views. We had a quick freshen up, a percolated coffee (included in our room) and headed out to explore part of the waterfront and the ‘Gas Lamp’ area for dinner. It was about 6pm when we left, but still very light and very warm.

The waterfront is only about an easy 20 minute walk from out hotel and on the way we paused to look up a tree to see what sort of bird was squawking. It was only a couple of crows but when we looked up there was a cute surprise amongst the leaves – a racoon curled up asleep! The tree was next to an old church with a beautiful but small english style garden being tended by a lady. She a/ firstly informed me that the possum was a racoon (oops) and that he liked to come down and eat eggs which she would leave for him.

The waterfront area is very scenic, especially on a balmy evening like tonight. There were lots of luxury cars out and about – masuratti, mustang, lambugini, mercedes AMG, Porsche, and few classics. There was also some sort of ball – debutant evening with at least 100 very made up young women parading their finery and frequent musky clouds of marijuana to navigate through providing a juxtaposition to the scene. At this end of the waterfront you can see the Canadian Olympic torch, digital Orca (pictured) and the new ‘Fly over Canada’ attraction.

We chose to go to the Fly-over as we had done a similar one at Disneyland called Fly-over California a few years ago. It cost $19 each and I think worth it. Briefly you go into a room where you buckle into a seat which is hanging off a rack (only about 8 to a room/row) which is closely in front of a large imax style screen. When the lights go off, the movie comes on and your seat movies up and tilts and moves and well you are buckled into a ride in a fast helicopter over various sites in Canada. You get 3D effects like water dripping on you or spraying up from the sea, you get fragrance like hay paddocks, or pine forests as you fly over or through them and of course scream worthy thrills as you drop over cliffs or narrowly miss a rocky mountain snowy peak. WICKED. The experience or flight lasts about 20 minutes but its such fun it unfortunately feels like 5!

Moving on we walked to the Gas lamp district feeling hungry as a grizzly bear after hibernation as our last meal was breakfast on the plane some 9 hours before. For once I was not feeling too fussy and when discussing what the other felt like we both agreed we didn’t care and would take the first decent looking place no matter what the cuisine. I had said that I would love a genuine Mexican but didn’t think I was in the right end of the continent for that. We had only walked about 50 steps into the Gas Lamp district and we saw a Peruvian restaurant that had won a local 2014 award and a Trip Advisor excellence. Done.

The host who was the owner was so friendly and helpful in helping us slightly tired and very hungry tourists choose our food. Pictured is our meal – yep food blog has started! Drinks – purple corn with spices and inca cola (yellow) both yum and $3.50 each. I had three appetisers (he said the portions were small!) and Vern had a main of steak, egg, fried plantain and Peruvian rice. Dippings sauces were very nice, all had a nice small heat to them and my favourite was the green one which was coriander based and very fresh. We were also given a bowl of dried fried corn kernels which was also tasty like the fried soy beans you can get? Apparently there are hundreds of potato and corn varieties in Peru and the higher the altitude the more tasty the variety. The owner imports all the special ingredients for his meals directly from home.

My entrees were all very good. Mixed seafood ceviche – heaven for me, a seasoned meat with raisins and olives in a fluffy potato mash flash fried, and a steamed white corn mash with seasoned melt in the mouth pork belly. I do have to add just so you don’t think me a total guts that Vern did help me get through the entrees and we were unsuccessful in clearing all our plates.

The Gas Lamp district is the historic old town section, similar to what we saw in San Diego. the streets are cobbled and old lamps, now electric used to be gas powered. Of interest there is an old steam powered clock made in1870, which is still in operation and goes off every 4 minutes. The photo shows it in action but I don’t think the trip advisor resolution will show it too well.

Feeling very satisfied we walked the slight hill home, and got treated to seeing ‘our’ racoon down from the tree walking around – he was going to cross the road but cleverly saw a car coming and headed back to the church. Vern cautioned me not to try and get too close as they can be a bit nasty so the photo was the best I could manage in low light with him moving. They are quite big – in-between a mini poodle and a Labrador size and very cute with their ‘eye-mask’ and striped tails. We finally got to bed about 11pm local time feeling a little tired but not jet lagged per see. Must have walked about 7kms as well which is pretty good going after a 13hr flight.