Day 6 - Hello Canada

Alan is writing the blog today with Sarah's comments in red.

 

We were up bright and early this morning to ensure that we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare to catch our plane to Vancouver. We chose to give breakfast a miss partly due to us still being full from the previous evenings feast and partly because Sarah was paranoid about missing our flight and wanting to get there as early as possible. As if we would ever miss a flight! We checked out of our Marina del Rey hotel just after 7am and made our way toward the rental car return place. The traffic at that time of morning was very light so it didn't take us long to get there at all. We dropped off the car and luckily a courtesy shuttle came along almost straight away and we were on our way to the airport. After arriving at the United Airlines terminal, we joined what we hoped was the correct queue to check in. After speaking to a United customer service rep, we were relieved to know that we were indeed in the right place. After a fairly short wait we made our way to the counter, checked our bags and printed out our boarding passes. Next up was the security check. The queue for this was very long and it took us ages to make it through. Lucky I gave ourselves so much spare time. Yes, it was lucky that I was prepared to get us to the airport in plenty of time.

 

So we made our way to the gate to wait for our flight. We went to a cafe and bought a sandwich while waiting and noticed an unattended suitcase in the cafe. That's a huge no-no in airports these days so we told the woman at the counter but when we came by again about 10 minutes later the bag was still sitting there. We boarded our plane, a CRJ-700 on which most of the 66 seats were full. The flight took almost 3 hours, but we slept through most of it since we had not slept much last night. We did manage to see Lake Tahoe as we flew over it, but we missed Crater Lake, Seattle and Mount St Helens. Not because we were sleeping but because it was on the other side of the plane.

 

After landing in Vancouver we made our way through the airport. There was a display of native animals made of wood in the terminal, although there were actually real birds nesting in there too. Strange. It didn't take long to get through immigration as it was very quiet at the airport, although the officer did ask us a heck of a lot of questions before clearing us. We left the terminal, found the Hertz rental car section and were given our Toyota Corolla. It's not as new as the car we had in Los Angeles, but it will do I suppose.  The car is registered in Alberta so we are taking it home.  We should have gotten a discount for returning it. 

 

By this time at was about 1.30pm, but we couldn't check into our hotel until 3pm, so we decided to check out a few Vancouver sights in the mean time. After driving through downtown Vancouver, we crossed the Lions Gate bridge and made our way out to Lynn Valley. Without too much trouble we found our way to Lynn Canyon and parked the car. It was starting to get a bit cold by this time but we wanted to see the suspension bridge. After a short walk we came to it. The bridge is a popular tourist attraction and there were plenty of other people around, many of whom had bought their dogs with them oddly enough. We ventured out onto the suspension bridge which was built in 1912, is 48m long, 50m above the canyon below and quite unstable. It really wouldn't be too hard to fall over, given that the rails are only waist height and the thing sways quite a bit. Not surprisingly there are warning signs telling people to be very careful as a lot of people have died there over the years. We decided against the 20 minute hike over rough terrain to see Twin Falls and made our way back to the car instead.

 

Back on the road and we drove to Cleveland Dam. The dam is at the end of Capilano Lake, Vancouver's main drinking water supply. It's surrounded by snow-capped mountains, most of which were covered by cloud. It was starting to get really cold by this time so we quickly wandered around the dam area, stopping for a few brief photos.

 

The rain was just starting as we got back to the car and as we drove to the hotel it got quite heavy. The drive was quite a slow one, especially trying to get back across Lions Gate bridge since 4 lanes of very heavy traffic had to merge into 1. We found our hotel and checked in. We've been upgraded to a king room on the 18th floor. We supposedly have views of the mountains, but we'll have to confirm this tomorrow as the cloud has completely obscured them this afternoon. Actually, as it starts to get darker, they are coming more into view.

 

We were really hungry so we left the hotel to look for something edible. Right across the street was a Mexican restaurant so we thought we'd give it a try. Not the best food in the world, but it was cheap. Unfortunately the dimwit of a waitress mixed up our orders, which meant that my food was smothered with sour cream, while Sarah's had none. Yuk!  It really wasn't that bad.  Alan scraped off the sour cream and gave it to me and it came with a good portion of his cheese as well.

 

It's just after 8pm here now and although it's not yet completely dark here, it's wet and very very cold. Tomorrows forecast is for a 90% chance of rain so we'll see in the morning what sort of things we're going to do. The weather forecast for our time here in Canada is not looking promising but we have our fingers crossed.