City of Love, Romance and full French people!
So here we are in the 1st arrondissement, start of summer it’s hot, hot, hot! Tania’s pregnant and we are staying above a cheese shop. Rue Montorgueil (we still can’t pronounce it correctly) is a fantastic pedestrian street full of cafes, boulangeries, fruiteries, charcuteries, boucheries it really couldn’t be more french.
Vancouver what can we say? A travel guide book describes Vancouver as ‘the sort of town nearly everyone would want to live in’ and has been ranked in the top three best cities in the world. The weather is not fantastic; it rains here and then rains some more, although in fairness we haven’t experienced too much whilst we have been here. But it is the environment itself that makes Vancouver feel special; set between ocean and mountain, the city is scenically unrivalled, the waters of the Pacific surrounding the downtown core, the peaks of the Coast Mountains rearing majestically in the near distance. What feels so unusual to us is the fact that wilderness is just a short bus ride away from the hustle and bustle of the modern city centre. We have the opportunity to ski, sail, sunbathe (Vancouver even has beaches), hike, dive, whale-watch and much more, all within a few minutes of the city centre. We didn’t have all of these activities available to us in Colchester! One of our favourite places to go is Granville Island, a large public market that can be accessed via Aquabus and well worth the visit when needing any amount of fresh food from maple syrup to lobster.
We spent an afternoon in Steveston (south of Vancouver airport) which is a quaint fishing village whose speciality is selling fish & chips (especially battered salmon). It has some amazing fish restaurants, which like the public, buys its fish fresh from the boats every day. There were also numerous craft shops, some of which were a little touristy but we did find a nice shop where we purchased a pair of unique pictures, as a reminder of our time out here. Bryan has been sailing again with a local racing club on a Friday night, although with the nights drawing in it has been short and sweet after work. We have both continued with a coastal navigation course and have spent many an hour pouring over charts and plotting courses for our homework. We have taken great pride in impressing the other ’students’ with our excellent teamwork; some even seemed shocked that we could possibly be married and still be able to work cooperatively together! Around this time last year we were sharing a room on Fraser Island (Australia) with a Canadian couple and having a blast. Last week we had a fun time catching up on each others news as they stopped off on their way to a trekking holiday in Nepal. Colin and Kelly are originally from Vancouver but are currently living in Toronto, so it was great to see them again before we leave Canada.
Bryan’s parents and grandmothers arrived safe and well and apparently enjoyed their nine hour flight! Early morning insomnia did not stop them having a full itinerary of sightseeing, throughout the nine days that they were here. Including a 1hr horse-drawn tour around Stanley Park, a full day of whale watching, and walking over Capilano Suspension Bridge. The ladies also managed to visit most of the public gardens in Vancouver, although this was only to avoid playing Pitch ‘n’ Putt. During their stay Vancouver was host to the Molson Indy motor racing, so over the three days of warm-up, practice, qualifying and final racing the sound of engines was incredible. We didn’t buy tickets since our apartment overlooked part of the course; we were able to watch the race from the TV and out of the windows. We had another wonderful experience when we watched “Joseph”; the production is performed outside in the grounds of Stanley Park. The cast and singing of TUTS (Theatre under the Stars) was of a very high standard, and we kept humming the songs over the following days. The theme of open air plays was continued after Bryan’s family had left, when we enjoyed watching the company of Bard on the Beach perform “Twelfth Night”. The acting was good - although it took a while to adjust to the Canadian accents performing Will, but all was forgotten as we saw the sunset, over English Bay, behind the open-backed stage. During the interval, we were provided with a salmon barbeque, which was very tasty! The evening coincided with the Celebration of Light (fireworks to music/set off from a barge) and we saw the display after the show, which was fantastic. For our first anniversary, we celebrated by going into the country for the day to have a change of scenery. We stopped in Brackendale in the hope of catching sight of salmon spawning, but to no avail. We then went to Alice Lake, which is a picturesque lake where the locals go to swim, sunbathe and have fun. Over the last four weeks we have both been taking a sailing course, in order to obtain the internationally recognised Basic Cruising Standard. After passing the theory exam on Thursday, both with 93%, and completing the practical this weekend, we are now qualified sailors. Ahoy there!
At the start of the month it was the annual ‘Dragon Boat’ races, which we could watch from our flat, as it overlooks False Creek. It proved to be an exciting event for all spectators. The park seen in the first photo is where Tania fell whilst roller-blading, since her full recovery she has decided to not venture out on them again. She has now bought herself a bike which she cycles alongside Bryan on his roller-blades (he is very good now!) We have spent a few enjoyable afternoons in this manner going around the sea-wall with all the other fitter Canadians. Kitsilano Pool and beach is along part of our route; it is a heated 137 m length pool next to the ocean. We are currently trying to get in training to be able to manage a couple of these lengths, but we realise this may take a while as our apartment pool is only 15 m! It is hard to see from the photos of ‘Views from our Apartment’, but we overlook a huge stadium called B.C Place - it holds 60,000. Because of its proximity we decided it would be a nice idea to have a guided tour around it to learn about its unusual roof (it is purely air-supported and is only 5mm thick. The locals call it the ‘giant marshmallow’.) Big names have used the stadium in the past including The Pope, Rolling Stones and the Three Tenors, although usually it is the home to the B.C Lions ‘football’ team. The Canadians seem fond of fireworks and the Canada Day celebrations were no exception. There was a great atmosphere in town as everyone met to soak up the sun and carnival spirit during the day and to watch the firework show in the evening. We met up with an old school friend of Tania’s, Nicky Calvert (whom she hadn’t seen for 15 years) and we all enjoyed a mini-pub crawl before choosing our spot to watch the show. Nicky is planning to emigrate out here, so Tania has been able to enjoy her company before she started work last week. Tania has also been keeping herself busy with a nine hour course on paper mache spread over three weeks. The course is run by a lady who sells her paper mache models in Granville Island Market and has been making caricature animals for over 20 years. Tania has enjoyed being creative during these evenings and her mouse (Hugh) is now completed. Bryan has enjoyed having these evenings to himself!! We are now looking forward to Bryan’s family arriving tomorrow.
We have been delighted to have Tania’s parents to stay for the last sixteen days. Many thanks to them for having the patience to teach us Bridge and for kindly bringing out Cream eggs and Kit-kats, as we were missing ‘proper’ chocolate - it’s just not the same out here! During their stay we were blessed with the weather and enjoyed temperatures up to 32°C! We went to the aquarium in Stanley Park, enjoyed a trip over downtown in a float plane, ascended Grouse Mountain via cable-car and chair lift to its summit and visited Jericho and Kitsilano beach. We chugged over False Creek to Granville Island on the Aquabus and were surprised to see a solitary seal popping up beside us. Our luck continued when we were walking around Stanley Park, as not only did we see a family of raccoons who had obviously come to sniff out any tit-bits, but also were pestered by black (cute!) and grey squirrels, seagulls, pigeons and a peahen! We also revisited Victoria on Vancouver Island and took a boat trip out whale watching. It was a truly wonderful day seeing so many whales in their natural environment - we watched two pods, of roughly 10 whales, swim just off the coast and we even saw porpoises and bald-headed eagles! What an amazing experience for us all. On the last weekend, we decided to go further a field by driving to Whistler via Horseshoe Bay, both of which were well worth visiting and the scenery en route was just outstanding. We passed two huge waterfalls called Brandywine Falls and Shannon Falls - the latter being 1100 ft high and is the third largest in B.C. Fortunately Tania had her parents here when her cast was (finally) removed. Unfortunately, with the sunny weather she has been left with an interesting tan mark!
At the beginning of May we decided to get the ferry to Vancouver Island and look around its capital Victoria, which is steeped in English tradition (here you can find the old red phone boxes and double-decker buses.) It was a gloriously hot weekend and we enjoyed browsing at the stalls in the market place and having a pint in the ‘Sticky Wicket’ pub. We stayed in the Youth Hostel, sharing a quad room with a German couple who had just completed the Australia/New Zealand leg of their world tour, so we had plenty to chat about! The following weekend we had decided to make use of the weather and go rollerblading along False Creek, here unfortunately, Tania lost control and fell breaking her right wrist. The next 2 hours were spent in Casualty getting a plaster cast. Tania is already fed up with having to wear the cast (although it has been changed to a lighter fibreglass model) and is looking forward to June 17th when it will be removed. The timing of the fall was fairly convenient as Tania’s brother, Mark, and his family flew out to visit the next weekend and so he was able to extract the Michael on behalf of you all! Having the Davies’ to stay was great fun and we managed to re-explore most of Vancouver’s great sites with them. These included going to the aquarium in Stanley Park - where Rhiannon and Jack were fascinated by the dolphin and Beluga whales, Granville Island - Mark became Jamie Oliver for the afternoon and cooked a stunning array of fresh Chinese seafood dishes and going to Grouse Mountain using the cable car to see the amazing views of downtown Vancouver, whilst sitting in the pleasant sunshine surrounded by snow. We also splashed out and hired a float plane to fly us from Vancouver harbour over a nearby glacier and frozen lake, where the scenery was spectacular -well worth the money! Our last ‘adventure’ with Mark, Sue and the children was to Banff National Park….the distance looked nothing on a map, but it took us 10 hours of driving to reach our chalet! We were extremely lucky on the way there, as we saw a family of Black Bears on the roadside in the middle of nowhere and a Bald Eagle sitting on a rock. That doesn’t happen to you everyday! The mountains and lakes around Banff are totally stunning and we enjoyed walking around the half frozen lake of Lake Johnson in particular. The return trip was just as tedious, although we are now very familiar with children’s nursery rhymes and sing-along-songs!!
We have been fairly busy since our last update, but only at the weekends due to Bryan’s work commitment! Tania went for her first skiing lesson on Cypress Mountain (half an hour away) and really enjoyed herself, although her knees didn’t share her enthusiasm. It took a while for her to realise that falling on the snow wouldn’t hurt; once grasped there was no stopping her! There is Canucks fever in Vancouver at the moment, as the ice hockey team has made it into the NHL Playoffs. We were fortunate to go and see a game just before this happened as tickets are now like gold dust; the 18,000 capacity stadium sold out in 17 minutes for their first playoff against Detroit. We found the atmosphere very different from anything we have experienced before, as the match had lots of breaks with entertainment - a real family show. We were pleased as they beat the Coyotes and therefore the crowd was buzzing. ‘Go Canucks, Go!’ Tania has kept herself busy during the week with swimming, reading (mainly driving manuals!) and visits to some of the local attractions like Science World - a smaller version of the Millennium Dome/London Science Museum. Last Wednesday we had to take our driving test…..we are pleased to say that we both passed and are now awaiting our snazzy B.C. driver’s license, complete with picture of us after passing the test…. grinning madly!
We spent the first weekend looking for a car to buy! We were pretty much immediately caught by a black V.W. Beetle, as this has always been a car that we would have liked to own. ‘Charlie’ is a real joy to drive and has helped to make our driving experience in Vancouver an easier ride. We are trying to get around Vancouver as mush as possible in Charlie, as we have to take the Canadian driving test by the end of April, and we need to get used to the left-hand drive and many confusing signs - you can turn right here on a red traffic light…. We have both passed our theory test, although we shall not divulge who passed with higher marks than the other! Other than shopping in IKEA for basic kitchen equipment, we have also visited Seattle. Bryan had a Microsoft course there and Tania went for the sight-seeing. The drive took three and a half hours, although this would depend on Customs at the U.S. border, and was fairly easy due to the mainly empty Freeways. Seattle is as picturesque as Vancouver, but harder to get around without a car. Tania managed to visit the Needle, Pike Place Markets and Pioneer Square with nearby ‘Skid Road’. Bryan didn’t get to see much of Seattle, but will no doubt ‘pop’ over again. For Bryan’s birthday we went back to a restaurant called ‘Cardero’s’, which we had previously been to on our last visit three years ago. The food was just as fantastic as we had remembered and the local B.C. wine was excellent.
We are feeling pretty groggy at the moment having had our 10 hour flight from Fiji to L.A. It has been a real cultural shock arriving in America and we feel slightly disorientated. Anyway the last update with our travel news, so no more large emails to clog up your accounts!
The last time we wrote we were in Suva and just off to our paradise island ‘Leleuvia’. It took us an hour in a taxi and a 45 minute boat ride to get there, but when we did…Leleuvia was incredible. White coral/sandy beaches, palm trees by the hundreds and around 6 westerners and 35 Fijians all living in their traditional houses called ‘bures’ (thatched and woven huts with shutters). There were no modern conveniences except a few toilets and a generator. We had nothing to do all day except swim, stroll round the island (only 15 mins walk), read or ‘play’ the didgeridoo on the hammock. It was hell!! The villagers spent most of the day relaxing with occasional bursts of fishing trips or volleyball. It had a very slow pace and the concept of Fiji time became clear. The food was great, lots of fresh fish and rice/bread. It was extremely hot, although we did benefit from a refreshing sea breeze, and the mozzies were hungry even through repellent and mosquito nets!
We had arrived just after New Year and we couldn’t understand why everyone was constantly being ambushed by groups throwing water over them, until Joe (every Fijian male seemed to be called Joe!) explained that this is a fijian custom for up to a week after New Year - even people travelling on the buses will get buckets of water chucked at them through the windows. Very amusing to watch, not sure it will catch on in the U.K. We were invited to attend a Kava evening with the villagers, which was a real experience. Kava is Fiji’s traditional drink made from ground-up root which has soaked in water for a while. The taste is pretty earthy and it looks like mud, but the effect after several coconut cups is slightly alcoholic. If used regularly, the effects increase. Whilst drinking kava there is lots of melodic singing, clapping and rest bites. All in all a very social night, especially as the Fijians do like to have kava most nights!
Joe took us out snorkelling, whilst he went fishing with a harpoon, to a tiny island called “Honeymoon Island” where we saw lots of fish and coral. Unfortunately the coral didn’t look too healthy in places and is due, apparently, to the water temperature rising.
So we were a little disappointed to have to leave after our three days of paradise, but we had already booked our next accommodation so we had no option. Having arrived back in Suva (and discovering lots of police road-blocks, due to the attempted kidnap of the Prime Minister the day before) we had the joy of some local taxi drivers trying to rip us off, but fortunately due to our bus rides previously we knew that the prices being asked were extortionate. We did finally find a fair fare that took us to our final destination along the Coral coast. We had decided to book 3 days into a mid-range resort, so that we could see all aspects of Fiji (and have a proper bed/shower/toilet/etc..!) and so we ended up in Crusoe’s Resort, along with lots of other Brits! The resort had just what we wanted with really lovely accommodation in a ‘traditional’(!!!) bure, but it was so far removed from the Fiji that we had already seen that we didn’t enjoy it as much as the other two places…..and this was our treat to ourselves!! Never mind, we slept very well and sunbathed in comfort. We were also lucky enough to miss a nearby cyclone, but experience an amazing thunderstorm that lasted throughout the night. A god send to the local village who were running out of water.
So we are now in L.A. where the smog hangs over the city and everyone is running to a schedule - we feel a long way away from Fiji. We are just trying to shake off the jet-lag and adjust to the pace of life before we arrive back in Heathrow on Friday. We are both looking forward to coming home, but feel that our last 3 months have been an invaluable and fun experience.