CouchLogging

Vancouver and the Islands

It’s been a long and busy time since I left Montréal. Everything started with me getting on the plane, sick and cold, drinking tea and Pretuval C to help me get well again. After driving the whole round downtown Vancouver, that the Airporter bus offers, finally getting of the bus and meeting Scott I had to complete a “long” walk back to his place. It felt long, but was quite short, actually.

Scotte, whom I have been writing with since St. Augustine, but never managed to meet up with when he was at the east cost, was well prepared for me. He even baked brownies and made this strawberry and rhubarb sauce and opened a bottle of desert wine. But dumb me, I told him it was unwise to drink alcohol, when I have a cold and missed the whole trio of taste bud delights. Well, at least my cold got better after drinking even more tea and taking echinacea, vitamins and a warm bath.

So I could walk around, see town and do all the things I normally do, when I get in a new city. Like finding a nice coffee place. I found one on Davie street, just “around the corner” from Scotts place. Forgot the name, sorry.

Friday night, Scott took me to se the musical “The Producers”, that the company, he works for produced. He actually raised the funds to make that musical possible. Generally, he’s really into musicals and so we had a great topic to talk about… I had kind of split feelings about “The Producers” as it is about two guys producing the worst musical ever “Springtime for Hitler” and culminates in a 5 minute parody about the 3rd Reich. I guess it’s us Europeans, who still have a hard time dealing with the whole thing, where as - apparently - the North Americans have the needed distance (physical and also in time) to laugh about it. I mean, their history is no 200 years long, so “last century” is really far back, where as for us it’s just yesterday… Anyway I liked the stage design and the costumes a lot. And in the first half of the musical I was laughing a lot.

It seems to me, like I should really getting on the bike more often. Saturday we made this great bike ride. All around and through Stanley Park, and on to the Spanish Banks and Wreck Beach. Stanley park is a almost island just north of Vancouver down town and a wonderful place. Quite touristy, but nice. It does not take too long to bike around and there are a lot of nice places in the forest, too. For example, this one lake we passed by. There was this concert of a group of musicians who specialize on canadian music in outdoor settings. They played this wonderful piece for the flute, the trumped and vocals, really slow, douce and kind of meditative but really suiting the setting…

The back on the other side of the downtown island, we biked along all these beaches, where people were BBQing, playing, chatting and whatever else. I really felt like sitting down and staying for a while. But we would have BBQ later that night at Scotts place, so no use to stay. I decided to bike on, up the hill, where University of British Columbia is on and check out Wreck Beach. A nude beach, but on the weekends more like a meeting place for any kind of fun people with drums, surf boards, guitars and lots of beer. Really peaceful, but the sun just disappeared behind big clouds, when I came down to the beach. No sun and hanging out for me, but climbing back up the 444 steps to the street. This and the fact, that I’ve already been biking for about 6 hours, up and downhill, made me realize, that my legs were quite sore. So I gave my best getting back to Scotts place. Another 45 minutes, but not as bad as I thought. It’s all about the motivation and mine was a great dinner! And it was actually delicious! With a lot of red wine. Gosh, how I live wine! And food!

Ah yes, I also tasted the night live in Vancouver. But I could not really find “the place”. Some places were ok, some rather less. One place, I’ve been on Thursday night with these Mexican guys I met at this bar, I’ve been to with Scott and his frieds (long link here, huh?), this place was quite bad. It’s called Odyssey, looks a lot like last century and the first 5 (five!!!) songs, they played when I got in there were from Madonna, the next hour some strage technoy kind of noise. Saturday was a little better, some more clubs but nothing ground braking. Friday was the best. Just food and red wine!

And it was already Sunday, strange how quick time passes some times. Time to get on the ferry.

A long ride with nothing to do but taking pictures. Nice boat and nice nature. Ah yes there’s this bus company that drives from downtown Vancouver to downtown Victoria and takes care of all the Ferry tickets. Pacific Coach Lines was the name, I guess. Quite nice, too.

Victoria itself, located on the Vancouver Island, is actually worth more than just a day. Don’t believe people who tell you different. But as I had just a day and two nights (more than most people would advice you to stay) my experiences here are quite limited. To some great talks to my two hosts Danno and Sarra and a trip on one of these “greenpeace boats”, you know the rubber ones, to go and see some killer whales. Danno actually just moved in his place the day I got there and still hosted me! That’s probably the youngest couch ever hosted! I should get a record for that. And Danno a kind of certificate for being a great host! Next night at Sarra’s we played silly games, wrote and draw on the table and watched a movie. Thanks for the great night!

Ah yes and the whales! I saw them. Big boys! Was definitely worth getting on the boat, although it must have been a challenge for my body, that just recovered from this stupid cold. Well, I’m not cold again, so that’s good news. And there’s more animals than whales in the ocean around victoria. But the whales eat seals, so they win.

That said, it’s already all for Victoria. Next stop Seattle.
Flickr set Vancouver
Flickr set Ferry