Day 14-15 - Vancouver

Sadly, I missed the Sweden fireworks. I'm going to see Spain on Wednesday night and the grand finale on Saturday night though.

Sunday (Day 14) was the quietest single day since my holiday began. I wandered around the city idly for most of the day, and then went up the Harbour Centre tower, which is a lookout over Vancouver not unlike the Sky Tower in Auckland. The only downside is that the observation tower is actually lower than some of the surrounding buildings, meaning that you can't see entire sections of the city, but it was an awesome experience and well worth doing - on a clear day such as Sunday was, you can clearly see a snowy peak in the distance, that being Mt Baker in Washington State, 145km ESE of Vancouver, and Stanley Park in particular looks lovely. The lady told me that my ticket was valid all day, and to come back at sunset as it was supposed to be really good. She wasn't wrong. I spent most of the time with a couple of Australian girls off a cruise ship and a couple of Canadian Chinese who had a similar camera to me and we were trying to get the best shots.

Monday was BC Day, the "foundation day" for the province of British Columbia. Before I go on, I'm going to introduce this with some oddities about BC and Vancouver:

1. Nearly all traffic lights have a yellow frame rather than a black frame, and are like a big rectangular box with the lights "hanging" out the front. This seems to be a uniquely Canadian thing, and can be seen all over Canada. (There are yellow frame lights in the US too but they look more like ours, just painted yellow).

2. Vancouver, the city, is not on Vancouver Island. Some people call it Victoria Island, which is confusing as there is a Victoria Island off the northwest of the province.

3. The top half of the province's flag is a squished British flag, the bottom half is blue-and-white stripes with a sun rising onto it. This flag appears on all route number signs and numberplates.

4. Vancouver is a very young city even by Australian standards. It was incorporated in 1886, and before that existed only as a series of small settlements (including Langley, Daniel's home) and a rail terminus for the Canadian Pacific line. The city's first bill passed was to create Stanley Park as a defence against any future American attack. Click here for a much more indepth summary.

Anyway, I'll divide the day into two distinct parts:

White Rock
On a whim, rather than going to Lynn Canyon as was my plan (but I missed the bus), I headed to White Rock and Crescent Beach (getting to see South Granville and Delta on the way - the former is very classy and I may yet walk it, and the latter is entirely farmland). White Rock is almost right on the US border, about 38km SE of Vancouver (50 by the road system) and not dreadfully far from Langley, so Daniel was able to meet me at Crescent Beach.

Now, in White Rock, the idea of "beach" means quite different than the normal - it's more like a series of mud flats up to 400-500m wide, parts covered in seaweed and divided by little streams and populated by crabs and shellfish. It was still pretty cool, but neither of us particularly wanted to get our shoes dirty, so we moved on to White Rock proper, about a 7km walk away. By this stage, poor Daniel was exhausted, and his initial idea of crossing the border at Douglas-Blaine had basically wilted, so he ended up going home. I came down onto Marine Drive and walked the coast, getting some awesome photos - the place looked a tiny bit like Cottesloe or Manly, except for the totem poles and the odd-looking beaches. One thing we both noticed was the sheer number of Canada and BC flags hung from shops and homes - Canadians are certainly nationalistic, especially when close to the US border, but it's not the "in-your-face" kind of nationalism that usually grates when other countries do it. I have no idea why.

About another 6km later, after walking through the forested 8th Avenue (parallel to the border) near the Semiahmoo (SEM-ee-AH-moo) First Nation lands (translation: lots of forest and a big big caravan park) and down Highway 99, I was within view of the goal.

See next entry for the rest.