Whistler, BC, Canada

I went to Whistler for a weekend with a couple of girls from work and an Australian girl from the hostel. We had a fantastic weekend, Whistler is such a lovely place and I can’t wait to go back! Only two of us went up Blackcomb, I skied and my friend boarded, we had perfect weather for our day on the slopes!

Life is great!

I have been back in Vancouver for 3 weeks now after my little road trip to Naramata-Calgary-Edmonton for Christmas and the time is flying by.

My job is going well and I am being kept busy organizing board events, dinners and travel arrangements, but we do get time to go for lunches and relax a bit! I am still enjoying life at the Samesun Hostel, it is very busy at the moment, lots of people coming through on their way to the various ski hills around BC and Alberta.

I have started a Photography course with Vancouver Photo Workshops, it is a 10 week course on every Wednesday for 3 hours, We are on our second week now and already we have been out on a field trip, we went to Granville Island to do some night photography, which was great fun, but very cold.

I went up Grouse Mountain with a group of friends from the hostel, I think there was about 15 of us in all! We were very luck with the weather (it rains a lot in Vancouver… ) it was a gorgeous sunny winter’s day with completely blue skies, I skied along with a couple of others, but most of the group boarded, we were up there from 11 am till about 7 pm, they have night skiing with flood lit runs so you can ski till 10 pm if you want! It was an amazing day and I plan to go up a lot more over the next couple of months, I am going to take boarding lessons, which means I will spend a lot of time on my butt.

I went to a Vancouver Canucks hockey game, they were playing the LA Kings and unfortunately lost…for the third time that week…! I also went to another Vancouver Giants game, they were playing the Seattle Thunderbirds and they won, again! The Vancouver Canucks play in the NHL (National Hockey League), which is the top league, and the Vancouver Giants play in the WHL (Western Hockey League) the lower league. I found the Giants game to be more entertaining than the Canucks, way more fights and it is in a smaller stadium so you are way closer to the action, everyone was so intense and serious at the Canucks game.

Vancouver

What a whirlwind of a month!

I am still living in the Samesun Hostel on Granville Street and haven’t made any move to get a place of my own, I am enjoying staying in there, meeting loads of new people from all over the world, (well mainly Australia).

Vancouver got it’s first big snowfall on December 1st and I went up Grouse Mountain for the day with one of the guy’s from the hostel, it was so much fun, it snowed all day, we ice skated on the frozen pond (I dint know it, but I can ice skate)! Santa and Mrs. Claws were there in Santa’s Workshop (no, I didn’t go and visit them, I just took their photo)! There were also two very cute reindeer! We saw carol singers in the lodge and there was an open wood fire beside the ice skating rink! All very Christmassy.

After a couple of short term temporary jobs, one was in a construction firm and one in a layers office, I’ve now got a full-time job till the end of March! I’m working at the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV), the office is on West Broadway and looks over False Creek to Downtown Vancouver, and the view is amazing.

I have been in the job for almost two weeks now and I’m getting to know all the people, this was helped on Friday night by the Office Christmas Party! It was a fun night, with music bingo, party games and dancing, and I won a huge canister of Starbucks coffee in the raffle! I joined a few of the staff who went downtown after the party to pubs and clubs and had a great time.

Vancouver is the only place in Canada that they have Ceroc classes (the dancing I do in Inverness) so I went to a class at the Billy Bishop Hall in Kitsilano, it was great to get back into dancing, but it just wasn’t the same as in Inverness.

My Aunt came into town for a couple of days, we had a great time catching up! We viewed the condos she bought, they are gorgeous! She hopefully takes possession of them early next year, maybe just in time for me to stay in one till I have to go home! We went to a party thrown by her realtor Jacky, at The Sandbar on Granville Island, it’s a seafood restaurant, which was great fun and interesting, as I don’t normally like seafood, but I tried a lot (still avoided the raw fish..) We were supposed to go and see “Moving Out” a show with music by Billy Joel, but the cast trucks got snowed into Edmonton so it was cancelled…

I went to a Vancouver Giants v. Kamloops Blazers hockey game, with a girl from the hostel, it was a great night, and we had beer, hotdogs and bought a Giants foam finder! The Giants won 7-1, it was such a wild game, players being slammed into the side of the skate rink and fights breaking out all the time.

That’s all for now, will keep you posted!

4 Months on the road

I have had such a wonderful time travelling over the past 4 months, I have seen more than I ever expected and I got to see and travel with most of my family along the way, which was great!

I am back in Vancouver now, job and flat hunting! Hopefully it wont take me long to find work and a place to stay!
Will keep you all posted!

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Soul2Soul Concert in Vancouver

We drove to Vancouver on for a couple of days, we crammed in as many tourist thing’s as we could.

We went on a two-hour sea safari from Horseshoe Bay up the Howe Sound, It was great fun, we saw loads of Harbour Seals just lazing about on the rocks and we saw two Bald Eagles. The trip took us around Bowen Island and along Vancouver’s North Shore were all the expensive houses are!

Then we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge which was so much fun, It spans 450 feet across and 230 feet above the banks of the Capilano River and It sways as you walk across it! Then we went to the Vancouver Aquarium.

In the evening we went to GM Place to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Soul2Soul Tour 2007, It was amazing! GM Place was packed full and what a noise, the music was great and so was the atmosphere, It was the best concert I’ve been to!

Sunday wasn’t as much of a rush, we went up the Vancouver lookout Tower in Downtown, Which gives you a 360-degree birds eye view of the whole of Vancouver. Then we went to the Vancouver Art Gallery to see the Monet to Dali, Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art Exhibition, I am not a huge art lover but it was interesting to see.

Then we went to see Dr. Sun Yat-Sen`s Classical Chinese Gardens, They were very pretty and in contrast with the high rises just over the road it was interesting.

We were running out of energy by this point so we took a horse drawn tour around Stanley Park for an hour, We saw the damage that had been caused by the storms last December, Just after I had visited the park in November.

My flight, arrival in Vancouver and bus to Penticton

After saying my good bye’s I got my flight from Glasgow at 2:30 to Vancouver via London Heathrow, I arrived in Vancouver at 6:35 and got the bus to Downtown, were I walked to my hostel, which turned out to be in a bit of a bad area, but I was so tired I just wanted a bed for the night!

Woke up very early due to jet lag and got ready to go to my orientation with BUNAC, I had a few hours to spare so I wandered around downtown for a couple of hours getting my bearings before going to the SWAP orientation. The orientation wasn’t very interesting, but I applied for Social Insurance Number, which I must have before I can start work and got information on opening a bank account.

My friend Fiona from Inverness who has been in Vancouver for 5 weeks now came and met me and we spent the day together, wandering around Downtown, we had lunch and then we went to her apartment for the evening, I stayed over there before heading to Penticton in the morning!

I got the Greyhound bus from Vancouver to Penticton, it’s a 6 hour journey through the Canadian Rockies, it’s a very scenic route, there is even snow still lying in the higher parts! My Aunt picked me up from the bus and we went home to play on the Wii, wow that is an energetic game!

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