Ottawa Return

We didn’t have much time today before our flight back to Ottawa so we spent it in the shops on Robson Street. We left Vancouver at 2pm but with the time difference we didn’t get back to the flat until after 11pm. An exhausting day.

Have YOU been to China?

We managed to get a lie in today. Hurrah! We’d decided to get out and do some outdoor activities as that’s what Vancouvians do best, so firstly we got a one day travel pass and got the ferry bus across to the North shore and then a connecting bus to go to Capilano suspension bridge, the highest suspension bridge in North America. However, when we got there the park entrance fee was $27 each (before tax remember). Just to walk across a bridge! There may have been more in the park but we weren’t interested in other activities so we turned right around and waited for the next bus back.

Back in downtown Vancouver we got the bus to Chinatown to go to the only authentic Chinese garden outside of China. We’d been warned that Chinatown was a bit rough, but when never expected that when we got off the bus in the middle of the day that we’d see addicts doing drug deals in shop doorways. Trying hard to hide our camera we made a quick pace the couple of streets to the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Chinese gardens. Our guide round the gardens was an elderly Chinese lady. It is fair to say that she wasn’t the best tour guide as she quickly forgot what she’d said and repeated herself constantly. The gardens are about half the size of a football pitch and it took her two and half hours to guide us round because she repeated herself so much. A particular favourite of hers was to ask if we’d been to China. After telling three times that we had not been to China, I thought maybe I was just giving the wrong answer and thought if she asked again I’d say yes. Instead she changed her questioning and constantly asked us whether we thought something she had just pointed out was beautiful. I countered by asking her if she’d been to China. By this time Sarah was fighting back the tears of laughter at the crazy commentary and had to wander off on her own to compose herself.

After the Chinese garden we got another bus across town to Stanley Park, the forest within the city limits. We hired a tandem and biked around the seawall for an hour or so and then cut through the middle of the park to find Beaver Lake and Lost Lagoon. It wasn’t hard to find.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped for afternoon hot chocolate in Mr Bojangles café and walked along Robson Street, Vancouver’s main shopping street. We had a really nice Thai meal at the Thai House. Having watched Paul Burrell down a kangaroo's testicle on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, I thought I'd give it a go (see photo album 7). Back at the hotel we watched Desperate Housewives, our favourite show and Grey’s Anatomy a new US medical drama about interns.

A Whale of a time? Orcas we did!

We were up early today to get the ferry across to Vancouver Island. The early rise was self inflicted: I reckoned that Vancouver Island was about the size of the Isle of Wight, but as we found out yesterday it is more like the size of England and therefore the journey across on the ferry and driving from the ferry port to Victoria, the city on the island takes a lot longer. About four and half hours each way, hence the early rise.

It was a pleasant enough crossing on the ferry and we enjoyed watching the Chinese tourists hand feeding the sea gulls (sorry, just gulls in this politically correct World). The Vancouver bus company is very well organised and you get a bus that goes from downtown Vancouver, across on the ferry and drops you off in Victoria.

Victoria itself is very British, or at least 19 century British, which is probably where they got the name from. We found out that Vancouver Island and the city are named after a Royal Navy commander who “first” sailed around the island. We’ve come across a lot of history like this: apparently nothing happened before the European arrived en mass in the 17th century. This really annoys me, so I’ve decided that it is going to be a mission while we’re here for us to find out about pre-European history.

After a short walk along the harbour front we had lunch in a shopping mall and Sarah decided that she didn’t fancy going whale watching as the sea sounded like it would be too rough for the small lifeboat sized dinghy we were booked to go out on.

I decided I’d still go as the brochures seemed to virtually guarantee I’d see a huge whale jumping clear out of the water and making a huge splash. Sarah waved goodbye as the little boat headed out of the harbour. After the sales lady had told us there was a 70% chance of seeing whales, we got the real story from the guide who told us it was really difficult to see whales this time of year and that they had lost track of them since yesterday afternoon. Great! We headed out towards a lighthouse midway between Vancouver Island and Washington state in the US, which is where some transitory killer whales had been seen. The proper name for killer whales is orca apparently. I think some of them were finding other whales to prejudice against the name Killer Whale. Anyway, the guide was mid-way through telling us the difference between transitory and resident orcas (it wasn’t a difficult one to work out) when we spotted a couple of tall black fins in the distance. I emphasise that this was in the far, far distance. The guide took the boat in the direction of the orcas but by the time we got there they had gone on a dive. We waited for five minutes or so for the whales to emerge and right on queue they did. About a mile away. We headed off in their direction again and again they had dived by the time we got close to them. This went on for twenty minutes or so and as two other sightseeing boats had turned up, our guide said we’d look elsewhere so as not to scare the whales.

We headed to the lighthouse and saw some sealions and cormorants on a rocky outcrop. But we wanted to see whales. We were running out of time but the location we’d last seen the whales was on the way back to the harbour so we stopped for a while near one of the other boats we’d seen earlier. We were just about to give up and head home when someone on our boat spotted a whale fin about 500 metres away. Too far away to get a good photo so I used our binoculars. I’d just focussed them where everyone was pointing and right in the middle of my view a killer whale breached the water line, nose first right up to fins.

Whilst I was all at sea, Sarah had walked around Victoria and visited the markets and town squares, which she said were nice.

We got the bus and ferry back to Vancouver and cooked the pasta we’d bought in the nice food store yesterday. It wasn’t very nice.

Rainy days out West

We arrived in Vancouver after the five hour flight from Ottawa (this is still the same country!) at 10am. The city looked a bit grey on the drive in from the airport: old apartment blocks and an overcast sky. After checking in to our downtown hotel we walked into town. Downtown is a lot nicer than we’d expected from the airport drive in. Lots of shiny glass apartment and office sky-scrapers with smaller brick town houses and churches in between. We went through the Pacific shopping centre (a bit small for the whole Pacific) to get to the harbour tower, the obligatory, elevated view of the city. The tower itself looks naff from the outside as it is just a tower block with an observation deck plonked on top, but the views are good. You can see Stanley Park, the bays around Vancouver and the mountains North of the city. The tower is educational too as it has plaques telling you about the city. The highlights being:

• British Columbia is 4 times the size of the UK (hey folks, this isn’t even the largest Canadian province) yet has a population of only 3.7million, 2million of which live in Vancouver,
• Vancouver Island is about the same size as Taiwan (for our Asian readers) or England (for our English readers),
• the roof of the BC Place Stadium is unsupported and is kept up by air pressure created by maintaining a higher temperature inside the stadium than outside.

After going up the harbour tower we took an electric bus to another island and went to the suburb of Kitsilano. This is a leafy suburb with tree lined streets. We bought some pastries from an organic food shop called Capers and then walked down a street lined with cherry blossom trees to the beach. We had the beach and views of the city, the forest and the mountains. We walked along the beach and the sea wall to Granville Island. An island in the same way as Colonel Saunders is a real Colonel. It has a lovely market and arty shops where the owners create their goods in open workshops you can look round.

We found that Vancouver is influenced more by its America cousins just across the border than it is by other Canadian cities in the East. Vancouver is larger than Ottawa and has a bigger downtown area. Ottawa is relaxed in a friendly, polite way, but Vancouver has a laid-back, hippy relaxed feel that can only have come from the clouds of dope smoked down the coast in San Francisco in the ‘60s.

Vancouver is blessed by its location and has many waterways, which reminded us of Sydney and Rio. There’s also an Asian influence in Vancouver as there is a large Asian population and lots of visitors arrive in Vancouver as the first stop across the Pacific. Our regular readers will remember that we said Rio and Singapore are the only cities in the World with rainforest. Well Vancouver claims to have rainforest too. I think this is stretching the definition of rainforest. Yes Vancouver has a forest and yes it does rain, A LOT. Does that make it a rain forest? We’ll leave that to the monkeys to decide.

We left Granville Island via the Aquabus and went back to downtown island for a pub meal in Yaletown Brew Pub. From there we walked back to the harbour tower and made use of the fact that tickets last all day and so saw the city at night all lit up. Photos in Album 7.

The Glebe, the Glebe (so good they named it twice)

We’ve moved into our new apartment now and put up all our furniture and our knick-knacks that were shipped over (see album 6a). It really feels more homely now and we’re a lot happier. The Glebe is an old area of Ottawa. There are lots of Victorian houses on the tree lined streets. An estate agent (realtor) would tell you how these houses have character, which just means there is something odd about them. Ours has sloping floors. The worst room for inclination is the dining room, which has a 1 in 50 gradient. You can see this if you look at the bamboo blinds in our photos. The blind is straight, it’s the window that isn’t! Sarah’s getting used to the floors now and only worries that the fridge will topple on top of her.

The neighbourhood is really nice too. A lot of North American suburbs have huge retail parks instead of high streets. We decided that as new comers to the city we wanted to be within walking distance to the centre of town and several people recommended we try the Glebe. They were right. We’re only 20 minutes walk from central Ottawa but we’ve got a high street with a variety of restaurants, cafes, bars and convenience shops. I haven’t been to New York city yet, but I’m sure the Glebe is modelled after it: we’ve got Central Park at the end of our road and Fifth Avenue is only five streets away!

Weather We Like It Or Not

The cold Winter weather has warmed a bit over the past week. It's a relief as I was starting to feel guilty for bringing Sarah to Ottawa. We've found out that Ottawa is actually the second coldest capital city in the World! That's second only to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. What have I done? I'm not looking forward to next Winter.

We've moved into our new apartment now. It feels a lot more like a home as we've got our furniture and ornaments. I was very manly and spent the weekend assembling lots of wooden furniture from Scandinavia. I got sore hands. Sarah made the bedside tables which look great and haven't collapsed. After the vertigo problems of our previous apartment, we've now got to contend with sloping floors. The kitchen and dining room in particular have an incline that requires a 4x4 to ascend. We make sure we put food in the back of the fridge so that it doesn't topple forwards onto us.

We met some new friends for breakfast on Saturday. Weekend breakfasts are a big deal here. The restaurant was packed and the pancakes were lovely.

On Sunday evening we saw Will Smith in the romantic comedy Hitch. It was an ok film. The cinema was pretty small and everybody clapped when the film finished. Sarah was not impressed by the lack of choice for pick 'n' mix sweets.

Sarah's had a busy week of three lunch dates. She is so exhausted by it all that today she stayed in all day and didn't get changed out of her pyjamas.

Restaurant Review

We've decided that one of the things we do best is eating out and as we're expecting you all to visit we're going to review restaurants we go to. We've been to three restaurants in Ottawa since we arrived so here are our first three reviews.

Imperial Palace (Chinese) - this has been Sarah's favourite restaurant so far. As Sarah is a great lover of food this is a real endorsement. We had hot and sour soup and chicken and sweetcorn soup for starters then lemon chicken and Szechuan chicken for main. The portions were large, tasty and not over powerful. Service was efficient and friendly and there were three photos of the restaurant owner with local celebrities and politicians. This restaurant gets a four star-fish rating.

Havali (Indian) - this restaurant is in a good central town location and had good decor and ambience. The food was ok, but we felt there was something was missing. Maybe it was the chutneys that didn't come with the popadoms. This restaurant gets two and half star-fish.

La Strada (Italian) - this restaurant is in our neighbourhood and has been visited by Pierce Brosnan (photo of Bond with restaurant owner). It is run by three generations of an Italian family and the chef wears a white singlet and pops out of the kitchen to make himself an espresso in the restaurant. The portions were too large, but the chicken stuffed with prawns and cheese in dill and mustard sauce was fantastic. This is my favourite but Sarah only gives it three star-fish.

We're Walking in the Park

We had a lovely evening yesterday. We went over to Sarah’s cousin, her husband and their new baby. She is lovely and sat and gurgled and laughed on Sarah’s lap. Sarah’s Aunt and Uncle were also there, having driven 10 hours (still within Ontario!) to get there. We had drinks round Sarah’s Uncle’s Sister’s house too, which is just around the corner. We’d met everyone when we came over in April and it was really nice to see them again.

I think the holiday feeling is starting to wear off now. When we woke up this morning, Sarah and I both felt a bit low. Part of it was the thought that another week would soon start and it would be back to working and sorting out home life. The only thing we fancied doing was going for a drive in Mica, so we went out to Wal-Mart to get cheap toaster, iron and kettle. On the way back home we felt we should get out and go for a walk and I remembered a nice looking park I’d driven past in the week. It was nearby so we headed over. We’ve had more snow overnight (see photo album 9) and there children sledding in the park and some people cross country skiing. We went for a walk along the river’s edge until we came across Hogg’s Back falls. Not the same scale as Iguacu, but still pretty. Sarah sat for a while and I got excited as I realised I’d not made a snowman for many years so starting rolling a huge snowball body. Sarah was very encouraging and once I added a head with eyes, nose, mouth and hair we thought it was a shame we’d not bought our camera…so we drove home, got the camera and went back to the park just to take a photo of Frosty for you all to see. Luckily the children hadn’t kicked his head off while we were away.

Notta-chitty-bang-bang

I'd not appreciated how much paperwork there is when you move to another country. We've had a busy couple of weeks signing on for health care cards, national identity cards, my driving license, finding an apartment, getting insurance for the apartment and for our NEW car! We picked her up yesterday evening from the dealer. It's very exciting. She's a Toyota Echo hatchback, better known as a Yaris in the UK and she's silver. Her name is Mica. She lives on the second floor (basement level garage. Only until next week when we move and then she'll live on the road, but that won't fit in with the song lyrics). We drove in the hire car to pick up Mica and had to take the hire car back to the airport before driving Mica home. This meant that Mica's first drive was a whole 15 yards across the dealership car park, where we promptly left her and drove off in the hire car! She's done a total of 9km now so I'm thinking she's a bit past it and we might trade her in next week.

Eye-Carumba!

Going about our daily life we've noticed that the Simpsons cartoon is pretty accurate about North America. The 7-11 corner shop on our street is laid out in the same way as the Kwiki-mart and even has the low counter in the middle of the shop with beef jerky by the till. Luckily I managed to stop myself from saying, "Thank-you Apu". One other similarity is the driver licensing office. Fans of the Simpsons might remember the episode where the wrinkly old man tries to get his licence and fails the eye test miserably. Well I was that man on Tuesday. In order to get a car I had to get a Canadian driving licence. It's not too difficult as there is a reciprocal arrangement with the UK so I just had to hand in my UK licence, show proof that I live in Canada and take an eye test. The vibes weren't good when I managed to drive into the licensing office through the one-way exit road! I then fumbled my words when I was asked for my address as I didn't know whether to give our current address, the address were moving to or to mention the move at all. I was still slightly unnerved when the licensing lady asked me to look into a large microscope and read the black letters on the white background. I looked into the scope and could barely see a blurred white light let alone the black letters. I decided I try honesty and told her I couldn't see anything, thinking there must be something wrong with the machine. She adjusted a setting and asked me to try again. Now I could see a thin black blur, but number? I had no idea. I thought I'd better at least try as I needed my license. The first figure looked quite wide, but with straight lines so I went with a 4. No comment from the lady so I carried on. A big wide round number with a line in the middle. 8. "Sorry what was that?". 3. "Good. Carry on". She must have been having a good day because I didn't see any of those numbers and was just lucky that we use a base 10 arithmetic system so there weren't too many options each time. I got my license and left, using the exit road.