Vancouver.

So, you might’ve gathered from Beth’s post that I slept a grand total of ZERO hours between Adelaide and Vancouver. So I was pretty shattered when we finally reached our hotel more than 37 hours after we left home in Adelaide. Unfortunately I was also freekin hungry because there was no way I was touching an omelet that looked, and smelt like dog’s vomit. Canadian McDonalds (can’t believe I’m posting about fast food like it’s interesting…) is pretty much the same as here except they have ‘angus’ beef burgers (I ate half, then realized it tasted like a cow looks and smells like… and our large drink is their medium size, also they put a maple leaf in the golden arches… I think they tend to put it on anything they can… So after finally eating something familiar, even if it was junk, we headed back to the hotel where I fell asleep in record time.

Canadian Golden Arches

We went to a coffee shop downstairs for some breakfast and some well needed coffee at 10am. I was still pretty tired, but we had to get the most out of our day in Vancouver. We headed off down Granville St, towards Pacific Centre which is similar to our Bourke St mall and Myer complex in Melbourne, only much smaller.

Our mission was to get as much snow gear as possible from last season, as this would work out cheaper than buying current seasons stock.

On the way we visited a sports store with heaps of hockey jerseys including ones for babies, I mentioned to the guy who worked there who was clearly a hockey nut and probably in his 60s, that I had seen a few fights between Vancouver and Calgary last night on TV at the Airport and he quipped “Yeah, we don’t like Calgary very much”, and then smiled like he had a dead guy from Calgary in the basement… We also saw a shop that, from the outside looked like a standard skate shop, similar to Dangerfield or GP, then when we went inside we found a huge firearms section in the back, pistols, semis, as well as huge knives… right next to the footwear section.

We made it to Sears, which is pretty much the same as Myer only with more Cosmetics and old people clothes and less young people stuff. Beth tried on a few snow jackets and found one she liked for cheap. Since it was our first stop we made a note to get it on the way back, after we had checked out a few more stores.

We picked up a directory only to find it useless because we had no idea what kind of store it was from the name, but we did find Coast Mountain Sports, which is similar to Rebel Sport here. Dustin helped fit us for Snowboard boots and taught us what to look for in boots and boards (he was really helpful and nice considering we spent a lot of time here and didn’t actually walk out with anything). This store also had heaps of Ice hockey gear, including a truly massive bag for cheap. We put everything on hold and before we headed down to West 4th we grabbed some lunch, at the ‘Great Canadian Bagel’…(I thought that was a New York thing?? this coupled with the Golden arches and I was starting to think Canada had issues...)


A short bus ride put as on West 4th, the Snowboard capital of Vancouver. We tried some more boots at The Boardroom Clearance Centre, and found some that Beth was happy with, and I found a Jacket and a Pair of Pants that I was happy with, both with pretty huge discounts (more than $100 off per item). Next door at the Boardroom proper I decided on some boots that were real comfy only to have the attendant suggest better more expensive boots, I wish he hadn’t because I am the king of indecision - I spent way too much time deciding between the two, because I knew I had to get the most comfortable ones I could find, but I also had no idea what to look for. The expensive ones felt tighter which is good apparently but they also hurt my feet in a couple of places, the other pair were more comfortable but flexed more which isn’t good. But in the end chose the cheaper pair because they were more comfortable and got them heat molded to my feet. I grabbed an under shirt and we headed back to Pacific Centre to get our phones sorted out.

Me looking like a dork in my snow gear for Jono ;)

We got a phone for Beth and a sim card for my iPhone. In hindsight I should’ve got a phone too because the sim was way too expensive, not sure if it was a Rogers thing or a Canada thing but the sim on it’s own was $75 with NO credit. But we had heard that Rogers was the only network that worked in Jasper and it had the best coverage, plus we were running out of time so we had to move on – Also, we had no idea if we would have easy access to Wi-Fi in Jasper.

Our numbers are:
00111 780 883 9034 - Stu
00111 780 883 9036 – Beth

The 00111 will get your call out of Australia and into Canada, the 780 is the area code for Alberta – that’s why it’s so long…

We have a pre-paid system that gives us unlimited minutes on weeknights and weekends between 6pm to 8am on weekdays and 6pm Fridays to 8am Mondays. You pay the same for INCOMING calls as you do for outgoing in Canada, so if you want to call either of us, we won’t answer unless it’s between those times (we still have to pay big for outgoing international but incoming international calls are free for us during those times – as it would be for you if we called you anytime). To convert Melbourne time to Calgary time you just add 7 hours and subtract a day. So the hours to call would be 11am to 1am weekdays, but please don’t call after 5pm because that is midnight here. And 11am Saturday to 5pm Monday (again 5pm to 1am we’ll probably be asleep – Sunday and Monday before 11am is fine). I think International text from Australia is usually 75 cents and it’s only 25 for us, so we are cool to text, otherwise email and facebook is all good.

We then went back to Coast Mountain Sports to pick everything else up, and stuff it all in the hockey bag. My credit card didn’t work here and I couldn’t work out why because I didn’t think I had a daily limit, and I was pretty sure even with the currency conversion I hadn’t gone over my total limit. Turns out they had suspended my card as a safety precaution because of all the Vancouver transactions. Unfortunately that meant we had to use more of our cash than we wanted to. We then hit Sears to get some bits and pieces but we forgot to get Beth’s jacket!

When I got home I wanted to go over the receipts because there were a couple of things that didn’t seem to add up… turns out they have GST AND PST (provincial sales tax) in British Columbia and they don’t have to include it in the item price… it’s added to the total price on the receipt. That is illegal in Australia, but it’s just the way they do things in Canada. If I had known about the PST we might’ve been more likely to get snow gear in Edmonton, which is in Alberta, after we had settled in Jasper. But we still got some pretty good deals as it was anyway. All we have left to get are Snowboards and Bindings and a jacket for Beth, we might go to Edmonton or Banff for those, as everything we’ve seen so far in Jasper expensive. Anyway, back to Vancouver…

Just from walking around at night we noticed that there were a lot of homeless people around and Granville Street smelt like weed at night. I later found out from a local that the BC government had shut down a lot of mental health and general facilities for those people, and that they had already started to ship them out to other towns in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. I also discovered that it is just a $75 fine for possession of a certain amount of weed, as long as it’s not in multiple bags ready for sale, and that it’s never enforced. If a cop sees you smoking a joint he might wag his finger and say “ehh, put that out, you…” or tip his cap as he walks by. And no I did not find this out through personal experience, a local told me so… On Granville Street there also seemed to be an unusually high number of obvious Adult Shops and Entertainment, in some cases right next to each other or right next to a Pizza place…

That night I didn’t sleep at all, I’m not sure if it was the jetlag or just because I had a lot on my mind. Also, from the time I landed in Vancouver I felt like I was sitting on a train facing backwards and I could not get my bearings at all, I knew where stuff was, but had no idea where north, south, east, and west were. We left the hotel at 5am to get to the Bus depot in time to collect our tickets and jump on a Greyhound for Japser by 6.30am.