Day 5 - Victoria

I was a bit grumpy-bear this morning. Someone blocked the toilet in our hotel room (I'm not naming names, I might be wrong), the waiting staff at Moxie's who have been superb for the last few days seemed to take ages to serve us today, and then after we'd checked out of our room and picked up F from the garage below the hotel, the sat nav wouldn't find a signal for ages. We ended up sitting in a car park opposite our hotel before it eventually locked on to a satellite. We should have had plenty of time to get to the ferry terminal (it said get there about an hour early to pick up reservations, of which I'd made one), but we ended up rushing it. Thankfully we were only about 5 minutes late in the end.

We boarded the ferry after waiting for about 20 minutes in glorious sunshine at Tsawwassen (don't worry, I can't pronounce it either), and without much ado the journey got underway. The ferry was huge, and it took us a while to make it off Deck 4 where we left F, and out into the fresh air on Deck 7. Almost straight away on its journey the ferry crosses briefly into United States territorial waters (you don't need a visa though), and it was there, as I looked north up the Strait of Georgia, I thought to myself... "what if?"

As if called by that thought, there, near a boat made tiny by the distance, a great horizontal tail lifted out of the water, remained aloft for a moment, and then languidly splashed back down. I quickly pointed it out to Sandra, and moments later it happened again. Now other people were pointing, here at a black hump breaking the surface of the water, there at a great dorsal fin almost the size of a man, and then, delightfully, a killer whale threw its 5 ton mass clear of the sea in a seemingly effortless and lazy backflip. It was as if, for a few brief minutes, the sea was full of whales. Then the ferry left them behind, pressing on to its destination.

The journey took about 90 minutes, passing through the southern Gulf Islands, before the ferry docked at Schwarz Bay on Vancouver Island. Disembarking was a straight forward process, and, barring a small traffic jam due to roadworks, we were soon checking in to our second hotel of this holiday, in Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia.

We then spent the afternoon walking around Victoria, getting our bearings. It's much smaller than Vancouver, with a population of about 80,000 in the city, and 330,000 in the metropolitan area as a whole. We've only been here half a day and we've already fallen in love with the place. It's small enough to make it feel personal, but large enough for there to be lots of variation and places of interest. We walked around the harbour area, checking out the restaurants and the boats and fishing trips and whale watching trips. We must have been walking for three hours, by the end of which both of us were ready for a relax at the hotel. We're cramming a lot into these days! (Our waiter tonight said, "when on holiday you should only commit to two things - eating too much, and seeing too much". We're doing both of those admirably.)

We ate tonight overlooking the harbour, a fantastic meal of local seafood and shellfish that restored my confidence in North American cuisine. And there's nothing like watching Sandra chowing down on a bowl of some food she adores.

Tomorrow, Canada Day in Victoria. Unfortunately the weather forecast is for rain all day.

Day 4 - Whistler

Multiple anxiety moments today. Have I really booked the car? Have I booked it for today? Will my cheap and codged sat-nav work? And, of course, the whole driving-on-the-right thing. Some people don't seem to bat an eyelid over this. I've always got my right and left mixed up (and I've always blamed that on being left-handed, but without any evidence), so I have to go through all manner of mental contortions when driving on the wrong side of the road and approaching a junction.

We caught a taxi out to the airport, which was the only place that had any hire cars left by the time I came to book one. We got a less talkative taxi driver than the one who brought us from the airport on our first day, but he did give us one piece of information that was to prove invaluable later on, and that was that they'd built a new two-lane road to Whistler for the 2010 Winter Olympics, to replace the old single-lane one.

He dropped us off at 4440 Cowley Cresent [sic] where, in contrast to last time, our booking was confirmed straight away, and we were outside and looking at our new travelmate within 10 short minutes. In my head I was going to christen him "J", following on from "H" (you don't want "I", too confusing), but he's a Ford Fusion, and Sandra named him "F". F it is.

I plugged the sat-nav in, containing legal software but hacked to run on a Navigo rather than a Tom Tom, and waited to see if it would pick up a signal. First message out - "satnav lost signal 5 seconds ago"... what? And then it displayed a map, and allowed me to key in "Whistler" as a destination. So the software works - Someone tell Bhav, I'll settle up when we get back!

Only one thing left... and that was to start the engine and get driving.

At this point driving - something that I can almost do in my sleep (and, on some Monday mornings, after a long weekend, I often do) - suddenly takes up 95% of the CPU in my brain. No easy introduction here; I'm driving from an airport, to a busy city I don't know, in rush hour, in a car I'm not familiar with, it's an automatic when I'm used to stick-shift, on the wrong side of the road, and with a sat-nav I've not learned to trust yet (the other 5% of my brain is occupied with breathing, circulation, and looking at pretty girls). It's not easy, and I wasn't perfect; F now has one less wheel trim than he had before we picked him up, thanks to a couple of close encounters with kerbs. That'll be a trip to a Ford dealership before we drop him off then.

Still, somehow we managed to navigate to and then out of Vancouver, onto Highway 99, where the sat-nav promptly had a fit. Thankfully I remembered what the taxi-driver had told us - that the old Highway 99 had been replaced by a new and bigger Highway 99 - and I plugged on. Eventually the old and the new roads merged, and we were sorted.

They call the road out of Vancouver to Whistler the Sea to Sky highway, by virtue of the fact that you're driving from the coast and up into the mountains. It's certainly more romantic than just "Highway 99". I suppose if you're coming the other way then it should be the Sky to Sea highway, but it's not.

We arrived in Whistler in the early afternoon, had a quick look around, then sat on the balcony of a pub/restaurant drinking coffee and eating nachos. It was interesting watching people walking past; Whistler seems to draw people who enjoy dressing up in Mountain Bike armour to the point where they look like Imperial Stormtroopers, and snowboarders who like to grow inordinate amounts of hair and wear clothes far too big for them.

After food we walked around Whistler town for a while, then made our way to Lost Lake. There were a number of signs around telling us that we were now in bear country, and once again the bins have those handles that are too small to be opened by bear paws. Whistler's okay, but it's the kind of place you need to go to if you're going to do some sporting activity there, like snowboarding or skiing or mountain biking. In my travel guide for Whistler, of the top ten "Things To Do In Whistler", eight of them are sporting, one is hiking, and the last is bear-watching.

We then drove back to Vancouver, got stuck in a traffic jam for 40 minutes, ate in a lovely Italian restaurant, and now we're packed and ready to move on. Tomorrow we catch a ferry to Vancouver Island. Four days we've stayed in Vancouver, and it's not been enough. There's so much more to see in this city... but if we stayed here we'd miss out on other great stuff. That's the compromise we made.

On the way back this afternoon we drove through a place called Daisy Creek. "Sounds like a polite name for a lady's fanny," I declared. Two minutes later we drove through a place called Furry Creek. Sandra just looked at me. "Okay," I conceded, "you win."

Day 3 - Yaletown and Granville Island

Today's Breakfast of Champions was a "breakfast enchillada"; scrambled eggs, salsa, black beans, corn, spring onions, diced tomatoes, guacamole and cheddar in a tortilla with the ubiquitous potato rosti. It nearly finished me, but again, in this battle of Man v Food, Man won. Sandra had a far healthier-looking yoghurt parfait - I think I might try that tomorrow.

And so out into a Vancouver that was once more damp with drizzle. The city of Vancouver began life just over 150 years ago as a cluster of wooden huts called Granville (or Gastown by its inhabitants). They built the huts out of wood because there are just so many trees here, but when a fire tore through the recently renamed City of Vancouver in 1886, destroying just about everything, they decided to rebuild it using bricks. In those days Vancouver had a population of about 1000. These days the population is approximately 2 million, or just under half the total population of British Columbia.

Until the 1970s, Granville Island was an ugly inner city industrial site, but following extensive redevelopment it is now a labyrinth of converted warehouses, a large public market, and an extensive marina, and it was here that Sandra and I had planned to visit this morning. However the weather was so wet that instead we walked south across the Burrard Bridge to the tagine-shaped Museum of Vancouver and associated H. R. MacMillan Space Centre.

The museum itself is closed on Mondays, but the Space Centre was open. I wasn't expecting much, but it was better than I'd hoped, with one of the only four pieces of Moon rock in the world that the general public can touch, and an actual J2 engine as used on stages 2 and 3 of the Saturn V rocket. Following a practical demonstration on how the different colours with which substances burn can help us determine what distant stars are made of, and a planetarium experience describing the First Nation people's reliance upon the Moon and stars to tell them when to move, when to stay, when to hunt, etc., we moved on to the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

Centre stage here, and rightly so, is the fully restored ship St. Roch. This amazing vessel, captained by the equally amazing Henry Larsen, performed some extraordinary feats; she was the second ship to negotiate the Northwest Passage from east to west, but the first to negotiate it from west to east (and therefore the first to negotiate it both ways). She was also the first ship to fully circumnavigate the North American continent, when she sailed from Nova Scotia through the Panama Canal. To walk upon the deck of that ship, trying to imagine spending two years of my life creeping through ice-packed oceans at almost the very top of the world, was almost impossible. The men who do these things are a breed apart.

By now the weather was much better, so we walked along False Creek (it's not a real creek - the Canadians seem to adopt the Australian approach when it comes to naming things) towards Granville Island. The air was filled with the smell of the sea, and we could see mussels clinging to the rocks on the edge of the creek. Indeed, at one point a crow dropped a mussel from a great height to land on the hard ground before us, trying to crack the shell to get the tasty flesh inside. We walked by the large marina, full of jostling boats, to Granville Island itself, festooned with adverts and posters for the upcoming Canada Day celebrations. There we spent some time looking in the shops, but most especially the wonderful indoor market with its impressive meat and vegetable and fish stalls. I've never seen so much salmon on sale.

Indeed I joked, before we came out here, that our diet would consist mainly of salmon and halibut. Following a short ferry trip across False Creek and a return to our hotel to freshen up, we visited Brix Restaurant (on Homer Street - true!), where Sandra had salmon and I had halibut. It was delicious, if a little pricey.

Tomorrow we pick up our first hire car and head out to Whistler for a day trip. I'm feeling a little nervous about that driving-on-the-right thing, this city seems so busy. But then so did Calgary two years ago, and that worked out okay.

Day 2 - Bill Shatner has avoided me all day

We both woke at about 5 o'clock this morning, then dozed, lying in bed with our eyes closed rather than sleeping, for a couple of hours. No surprise really, our bodies thought it was mid-afternoon. We gathered ourselves at 7 am, and watched the demise of the England World Cup campaign. I suppose it was a mercy killing really; at least now we won't have to concern ourselves about future matches as we roam around British Columbia.

We got up then and had breakfast at Moxie's. I elected to go for a huge sausage hash with poached eggs and hollandaise and potato rosti and toast; hey, I'd not eaten for twelve hours, I fancied a Man v Food moment (and in this battle, Man won).

Then out into a rather damp Downtown Vancouver. We made our way over to Canada Place, looking out over the harbour to the northern part of the city where it clings to the foothills of the Coastal Mountains. The mountains themselves were hidden by low clouds. The huge white sails of Canada Place lost some of their magnificence against the backdrop of white clouds instead of blue sky, but it's still an impressive building. We met some Texans from a cruise ship that was docked there. They wanted us to take their picture with the sails as a backdrop. "Are you guys from Australia?" they asked.

We continued our walk around the harbour area, discovering a huge Killer Whale statue that looked like it was made of Lego, watching the seaplanes take off to give sightseers a view of this city from the air, and at one point sitting outside a hotel that had important looking security guards at the door, just to see if Bill Shatner came out.

He didn't.

Still not really wanting lunch, we made our way to Gastown, the oldest part of Vancouver, and so named because of Gassy Jack Deighton (who in turn was so named because he liked to talk a lot and tell stories). The Vancouver International Jazz Festival is going on here at the moment, so we listened to one band for a while, before moving further into Gastown where we had a coffee and a snack. We then watched a street performer do an impressive escapology trick ("that has to be worth ten bucks!" - we gave him $5), before making our way to the far end of Gastown where another band was playing. I'm not a huge jazz fan. I can appreciate the skills that go into it, but I don't enjoy listening to it; for me, it's the aural equivalent of reading a text book.

So we came back to the hotel, where Sandra fell asleep while I sorted through some photos for the Flickr site, and then read for a while. Then, both feeling tired and not quite sure if we were hungry or not, we made our way to a Keg restaurant where I mimpsed my way through an averagely prepared ahi tuna steak, and Sandra wolfed an enormous grilled chicken dish.

[Aside - the observant among you will have noticed that I've learned how to put embedded hyperlinks in this blog; just click where you see underlined text, and it will take you to a page with more information on that topic.]

We had a final walk down to Canada Place and through the railway station (which we'd only peeked into briefly earlier, when we were trying to find a toilet; they have a hair dresser but no toilet, go figure), then made our way back to the hotel.

I thought I'd given Bill Shatner a fair chance to show himself, but he didn't take me up on it.

Day 1 - Vancouver, British Columbia

First thing this morning I phoned my bank up to let them know I was going to Canada, so not to block my credit card when claims started coming through from British Columbia. I ended up investing in an ISA and upgrading my savings account. Fantastic.

Mum and dad picked us up as planned, and got us to the airport on time. When you book a holiday like this yourself, there are a number of anxiety points, and the first is that you've booked the right flight and you've turned up on the right day. No problems there this time (Sandra's suitcase weighed in at 24kg and the check-in staff didn't even bat an eyelid!).

We did the airport thing, finally got called to our gate, boarded on time, and things were looking good. Then came the pilot's voice over the tannoy; "You probably heard a couple of clunks just then when we started to taxi..." I hadn't heard anything, but I had felt the aeroplane jerk a couple of times. It turns out that the vehicle they use to tow the plane out of its parking bay had done something wrong, and bent some pin on the towing bar on the nose wheel. The pilot was adamant (not Adam Ant) that he wasn't going anywhere until his aircraft was 100% safe - and rightly so. Hence the one and a half hour delay in setting off.

The first part of the flight, with a man sitting on one side of me who was the spit of Adam Richman, was the same as 2008; up through England and Scotland, across to Iceland (no sign of that volcano), then on to the harsh and unforgiving mountains of Greenland. Then we deviated slightly from the Alberta trip, as BC is obviously further west. So we flew over Baffin Island, the corner of Hudson Bay, then down through northern Alberta. I thought I saw traces of the Oil Sands, the source of that province's wealth, but also its guilty secret. We then flew over Edmonton and the great prairies, and were amazed when the Rockies reared up out of the flat plains, the landscape changing with no warning. We flew over this collosal mountain range for almost an hour, the snow that capped the peaks giving way to a covering of pine trees, miles upon miles of pine trees.

Then, as we began our descent, with the pine-covered mountains rising up out of the misty clouds as if in a King Kong movie, the captain's voice came over the tannoy again; "If any of our passengers is a doctor or has paramedic training, please make themselves known to a member of the cabin crew." What? Seriously? "Cabin crew to their seats for landing. Immediate landing." What?? Word came back that someone in the forward part of the aircraft had had a stroke. The captain shaved ten minutes off the descent time, produced a spectacularly smooth landing (I was expecting the nose wheel to collapse), and the paramedics were there waiting to take the unfortunate patient away. I don't know what became of that person.

We were finally allowed off the aeroplane (by now it was 16:30 BC time, half past midnight body clock time). We got through passport control, picked up our luggage, and were taken to our hotel by a lovely taxi driver whose North American accent was so thick I could barely understand him. And so to another of those anxiety moments; have I really booked this hotel, and have I turned up on the right day?

But yes, our reservation was there, all the receptionist needed was my credit card to confirm the reservation. No problem there, I'd told the credit card company we were coming to Canada, there was no way the credit card would be denied...

Of course, it was denied.

Foaming mad I called the bank. It was 2 am in England by now, but the credit card services are open 24x7. The poor bloke on the other end explained that there was no block on the credit card, and that the problem must be at the Canadian end. I got them to try the card again, and this time it worked, thankfully.

We unpacked, and decided to have a quick walk around to get our bearings. Stepped out of the front of the hotel to the sight of a digital news feed on the wall of the building opposite: "Marauding bear shot in West Vancouver". Is somebody trying to tell me something about this holiday?

So we stopped at a liquor store and bought some booze (woohoo, spicy Mott's Clamato), came back and ate a burger at the Moxie's Classic Grill associated with our hotel, and now it's 9 pm BC time (5 am body clock time) and once I've had a shave I'm going to bed.

Again ready

I'm not really ready. I need a day off to calm down after a few weeks of 9 and 10 hour days at work. Who would have thought when I started planning this BC adventure that within a few months I would be running one of the teams that's at the vanguard of the largest financial integration programme ever seen in Europe? In January I had 14 people working for me; now I have 23.

I really really want a day just to kick back, feet up, maybe have a bbq in the sunshine...

But no. Mum and dad are picking us up tomorrow morning at 9:30. I don't even get a decent lie-in because it's Sandra's hair-wash day, which means half an hour of vuvuzela hair-drying. She does it on purpose. Like the packing. She's been packing her stuff since last Sunday, I'm not joking. I packed last night. Weighed my case, 18kg (limit is 20kg). So I put a few more pairs of pants in, plus a couple of shirts. Weighed Sandra's case, 25kg. She took some pants out, weighed it herself, said it was down to 19kg. Her pants don't weigh that much. I weighed it, 23kg.

There will be tears tomorrow at the check-in desk.

Remember I said I would be booking that last ferry trip "in the next few days"? That was on 24th May. I did it last night. Finally filled the last little plastic envelope in my Canadian Fun folder (2010 edition). It was a good feeling.

I picked up the holiday money today too, that was nearly a disaster.

"I've come to pick up some holiday money."
"Name?"
"Dave Murphy."
"Reference number?"
"... what? You're kidding me, right?"
"You should have got a reference number when you ordered the money."
"Errr... it'll be Canadian dollars, does that help?"

It wasn't as bad as the time I ordered Egyptian pounds and they gave me Irish punts, but I had that same panicky feeling, that "aaargh no contingency days left!" feeling.

Had a moment of pure delight last night when I checked out my Twitter page. I follow Bill Shatner, of Star Trek fame, and his tweet last night said, "Fellow Canadians! Join me at the Creation Convention in Vancouver this Sunday http://creationent.com/cal/stvan.htm My best, Bill". Yes, there's a Star Trek convention in Vancouver on our first full day in the city. We won't be going (apparently), but it will be a nice little echo of our trip to Vulcan, AB, a couple of years ago.

And so, some information. Most of British Columbia uses the Pacific Time Zone, and employs Daylight Saving Time the same as England. Therefore BC is 8 hours behind the UK. So when we're over there, our bed time will be getting up time in England, and our getting up time will be finishing work time in England (for those people who work). It's a 9 hour flight, and we land an hour and a half after we took off. The England-Germany game is at 7 o'clock the following morning - I might miss it.

The weather: http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/cabc0308

The big things: http://www.bigthings.ca/bigbc.html

The road cams: http://images.drivebc.ca/bchighwaycam/pub/html/www/index-SouthernInterior.html

Shall we play?