Vancouver

Ok - this one was a long day. Woke up on Monday Australian time at 540am - flew to Vancouver between 9am until past midnight, and due to the flight essentially being a day flight both Lloyd and I didn’t get any sleep on the plane. The Sydney to Vancouver flight is a long flight about 16hrs. Since we arrived at Vancouver at 630am Canadian time and practically travelled back in time. Lloyd and myself had to start the day anew, but with no sleep.

This lack of sleep combined with having airplane legs was plagued with what Lloyd and I coined as earthquake legs. This phenomenon first started when we caught the Canada line metro from the airport to Vancouver city bay. As we were buying our tickets I noticed the ground kept shaking randomly, which I thought at first was because we were on a raised train platform and the platform was designed to move with a little bit of flex. I asked Lloyd if he was feeling it and he said yea so we both were like, okay no dramas just the trains moving the platform a bit. This kept occurring until we were on solid ground in Vancouver city at which point we realised that no, Vancouver doesn’t have mini tremors every 30sec to 2min it’s just a combination of our lack of sleep and airplane legs. The earthquake leg would continually hit either of us until about 5pm the next day. I can only think that my past self, that was used to very little sleep. Doing long night shifts on farms and continual days of no sleep no food in the army, would think of my current optimised sleep schedule elder self as nothing short of a pampered princess having wobbly legs after only 2 straight days of no sleep.

The Air Canada flight was okay - quite underwhelming, minus the landing, touching down at VA was the most scenic and beautiful landing I have ever experienced in my life, the view of the coast mountain range with the silky sun rising, white capped mountain peaks, with what I can only describe as 1000s of whales in the water beneath, the view was nothing short of gobsmacking, I was glued to my window like a child.
- okay back to whining -
the seat had this really annoying seatbelt with a built in airbag that kept pushing into you, and compromising your space between the side of the seat and you. Lloyd also had the pleasure of a little kid in front of him with helicopter parents blasting an extremely bright screen in his face the whole flight not that it mattered much as we both got no sleep anyway. I’ll stick with Qantas I think.

We must’ve been the first plane to land in VA that morning and we were within the first 10 people off the plane so we had an entirely empty airport to ourselves, and a very smooth immigration process. We got the train to downtown Vancouver where we had some e-bikes and luggage storage booked so we could tour VA. However, this didn’t open until 9am so we sat around at a cafe until 9am in this little building park which was really pretty, full of flowers and greenery. Lloyd was able to show his true Australian tradie instincts by enjoying an 8am beer.

Once 9am hit we went and stored our very large luggage and rented some e-bikes, this place must’ve been very popular because it was quite crowded, and we got a lot of funny questions about why we were hiring bikes when we already had bikes with us albeit disassembled. We did a large loop of Stanley park and all of downtown, down to Granville island. In Vancouver harbour there is basically a plane terminal with constant sea planes taking off and landing, it was extremely cool. Lloyd says they fly all over, up to whistler and back too. I’ll put photos in of the ride with descriptions in the photos however VA is one of the nicest places I’ve ever been to it’s like a mix of Perth mixed with a European cities ease of transportation with public transport and bike paths, and then just add a gorgeous mountain range backdrop. The footpaths and bike paths were so large, such a rideable and walkable city. Easily my favourite city I’ve ever been to, everything was so clean and non smelly. There was the odd “folder” essentially a fully comatose crack junkie folded in half in their own world. But they were sparse and harmless. Just a bit sad to witness.

After midday we took a bus to whistler which was an amazingly scenic drive, however within 10mins we were fast asleep, I woke up for a few seconds to take a picture of Squamish (an amazing mountain bike location) to prove I’d been there then went straight back to sleep, until we arrived at Whistler. Which I will cover in-depth more next blog. However, we arrived at about 3pm and had to check into our hotel , sleep deprived dragging our heavy cases up some steep hills. Once there we found our room was not ready, which was due to some random system where the hotel implements Air BnB, and some other booking system that they could not tell us whether our room was ready or not until 4pm (apparently physically checking was out of the realms of possibility?) So we had to assemble our bikes in the lobby while we waited. We got 4 laps done in 1.2hrs (about 22kms) then had some wings (which Lloyd quite literally hadn’t shut up about for 2 straight days). Whilst eating it was fairly obvious we were now beyond ready for bed, with myself giving smart ass answers to the waitress when asking about the chips included, she asked if I like garlic to which I responded - “well I’m not a vampire.”

So far the people here are incredibly nice and welcoming I’ve had a splendid time. The Canadians will literally just strike up convos with you and they’re so pleasant and welcoming they’re so proud of where they are from and want to show it off as much as they can.Meer informatie