BootsnAll Travel Blogs

fairly uneventful trip today: went to the hills/mouintains around the city via various sites within the city (including the library which is a new building designed around the Roman Colosseum – its big airy and completely free to residents (up to 60 books/music dvd’s etc.)

the tour was led by Eric – an ex-danish fella….”hello, helloo, hello” (sorry, in-joke)
met Canuck Steve from just outside Detroit….nice fella…works in Baghdad!…and has been SHOT 3 times…..all ricochets, so he has the scars (including one on his foreheed) but none of the long lasting issues (apparently the compound he works on is fired on ALL DAY!!) – and he’s lost 3 friends to sniper fire in the last year
…suddenly working in a chocolate factory doesnt seem so bad, eh?

anyhoo….organised pub crawl from the hostel tonight……oh lord!

laterz

well….wot a nite!
…I was waiting in the lobby of the hostel ready to go out and who walks in?…..the Leicester lads Steve and Chris!!!…..wot a shocker! and some coincidence eh?
so, the quiet-ish nite turned into another drinkfest: we only went to 4 pubs (I think) but I managed to be the top pool player in the one -even with Canuck rules applied! and generally got smashed again with Steve Chris, Eefa(sp?) irish girl and Kev (indian/ozzie/scottish guy) Steve (see daytime tour) appeared to and was my occasional pool playing partner (between ciggy breaks (you have to go out on the street to smoke in Canada)
by the end of the night everyone was hammered and last I saw of the Leicester lads was a couple of piggy backing kiddies walking down a loooong road with no idea how to get to the club ‘Plush’
….me and canuck Steve decided to go find them to make sure they were ok, as there’s a lot of beggars/druggies around…we paid a druggy $2 to tell us where the club was and walked to it (behind the CFL stadium) however it was $10/5 quid to get in, so being a littlle bit on the tight side, we went into the club next door (Rebel) …which was empty apart from 2 girls, 2 fellas and a barmaid – however they did play THE best techno music Ive heard in a LONG time (hey Wull: I can dance longer and harder than you can…OK?). We got talking to the asian barmaid (almost every 2nd person in this town appears to be chinese/japanese/taiwanese) who must have been as bored as we were, cos she started giving us free tequila slammers!!!……….an hour and tooooo many slammers later, we left…actually we got chucked out, as the club had closed. We then managed to get into a stretched limo taxi with a group of girls and fellas – who agreed to take us back to the hostel on the understanding that we paid. Naturally being nice blokes, we got to the hostel ……and did a runner….nice ;^)
this morning (Tuesday 3rd) I wasnt very well and had to leave Vancouver city and get a bus and ferry to Vancouver island….that was a BAD bus ride….almost hurled a few times
anyhoo the bracing briney breeze on the boat (nice alliteration eh?) cleared the cobwebs and we (me and Cancuk Steve) arrived at Nanaimo on the island.
Wot a fab place Nanaimo is: its got a real fishing town feel to it and has a smashing harbour with proper fishing boats as well as pleasure boats on it…oh and sea planes of course.
we walked about a bit then stopped at a pub on the marina with views out over the island and watched the seaplanes taking off over a pint (Steve) and an orange juice (me) The cafe and restaurant prices seem good and the fish and shellfish are cheap too …Steve is considering staying here for good already – got to admit, its a really nice place. We’re staying at the ‘Painted Turtle’ hostel which is really nice and has a great feel to it too -cheap, clean and VERY friendly – the ‘dorm’ is a 4 bed/bunk room again (most have been this format) My roomie is Vince: a canuck who lives here in the hostel full time…seems OK, nobody else in the room

anyhoo,bedtime
laterz

today (Wednesday) I took a ferry over to Newcastle island: its a little island with an almost rainforest centre (its a wet and warm climate around Vancouver)..I saw either a whale or a seal swimming just offshore (I’ll need to wait to see the pics in big format to tell which) and then watched a bald eagle for 2 minutes as it flew around and stood on some rocks…again, there’ll be pics added to the albums. Anyhoo, it was a nice walk and the weather is still fab – 22 degrees in the shade still.

Tags: canada, canuck, chug, chuggy, hostel, nanaimo, newcastle, painted, Travel, turtle, vancouver

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.