Last July.
We've escaped the Hermit Kingdom and are footloose and fancy free - woo hoo.
Given the pandemic had well and truly stuffed our travelling plans over the last couple of years we were quite looking forward to the up coming trip. The trip planned is Vancouver (stop over as no longer have the stamina to do the flight from NZ to the UK in one leg), UK (catching up with family and friends), then Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and Malta before getting back to NZ in late October (as had promised work that I would only be off for three months - sigh). Chose Vancouver as our stop over choice as Asia was still quite dodgy at the time of booking tickets, and going via the USA is still a bit of a no-no c/o our Iranian visa in our passports. One of these days we will get round to sorting out an USA esta.
Wasn't for a couple of months after booking flights that we booked our accommodation in Vancouver and found that it is one of the more expensive places in the world and hotels are eyewateringly pricey. Only saving grace was that the flights we booked jumped up by about 70% by the time we were looking at leaving NZ (c/o inflation, Ukraine etc....).
Given all of the doom and gloom from the media re flights, chaos at airport etc we were a tad apprehensive but flights to Vancouver went incredibly smoothly. Only hiccup was a few hours after landing got a "you have been randomly chosen to have a covid test" email. The next few hours were a very stressful as were quite jet-lagged and had to navigate various bureaucratic websites entering the same information before I got a identification number which I then had put onto a paper form along with all of the same information again, before joining a queue to wait for 45 minutes to get a pharmacist to stick a cotton swab up my nose. Luckily test came back negative two days later or our travel plans would have been well and truly screwed.
After all of this we opted for a stress free dinner of takeaway pizza and beer (were we twigged food in general is more expensive than NZ but beer is cheaper) and sat in the quite nice courtyard of our hotel.
Next day had a good wander around the city getting our bearings etc... Didn't really realise till we got there that the city centre is bounded on three side by water and hence land is limited (which kinda explains the cost of hotels). One side effect of all of this water is that small sea planes are a really good way of getting from a to b. Spent a happy hour watching these take off and land.
Sitting in the water is this large sculpture and must admit it took a good few days before we twigged as to what it was. It's a tidal gauge - as the tide level rises and falls so do the big metal's balls sitting in the water which in turn causes the large blue pointer to raise and lower.
Also near Granville Island are a selection of floating house (apparently calling them house boats will raise the ire of the owners). Once these were quite common and then in the 70's and 80's fell out of favour and our now quite desirable (and expensive) again.
One of the stops visited by the water taxi is Granville Island, a large market, food centre and major tourist attraction. It sits beside a cement factory which is not the prettiest of sites but had been improved by some quite cool artwork.
Our other notable meal was at a pub called GasWorks in an oldest part of the town (now quite a trendy, foodie place). Very good beer and our favourite was the one flavoured with pineapple and a whack of chilli.
Plus when ordering you could swap out your chips say for a side order of Poutine (chips with white cheese and gravey). Could not leave Canada without eating this.
