All aboard!!

The first mission for our last day in Vancouver was to repack all of our luggage again.  The theory that we had already packed up all that we won’t need until England was a fine one, but that suitcase was getting on the heavy side.  We have pulled out a lot of clothes that we won’t need until England and put them in the backpack.  Now it is quite heavy but the suitcases are more manageable.  Packing complete, we checked out and caught a taxi to the train station.  The people at Via Rail were very friendly again, and we were able to check in our bags, and even the hand luggage that we wanted in our cabin.  This left us free to wander Vancouver not too weighed down with stuff.

The trickier task was then to find some way of filling in the day until we could go back to the train.  We got on the skytrain and headed for the Pacific Centre.  It is a big underground shopping complex with a multitude of shops.  We had a stupid experience at Tim Horton’s coffee house with someone who couldn’t speak English, so lesson learned, we went in search of better coffee.  At a place that we’d had great coffee, we had another less than favourable experience with someone who could speak English but didn’t know the difference between one shot of coffee and two.  On being told that the coffees were only served as singles, I asked for a double.  So Siobhan got a double and I got a coffee that had either three or four shots in it.  Still we had to stay awake to catch the train at 8.30pm.

After wandering the shops for a while, we quickly worked out that we needed to go walking instead.  We thought that we’d wander around the various waterfronts in Vancouver.  On getting part way around False Creek, we found the World of Science.  It is a really cool looking silver dome.  While the place was infested with little kids, they promised some cool Lego displays and we thought that we could put up with the noise.  When we got in there, there was a free Omnimax movie that we could go and see.  This explained what the big shiny dome is for.  Omnimax is like Imax except that it is projected onto the inside of the dome.  It is quite immersive, but only the centre part is in focus (and seemingly in HD), and the peripheral parts are fuzzy.  It was difficult to take it all in and I felt a bit motion-sick in parts.  Siobhan really enjoyed it though, and it was an interesting account of the building of the rocky mountain railway.  It was never really clear whether some of that line is what we will be going on on our trip, but having seen some of the bridges and other constructions, I hope not.

Following the movie we got to see some of the Lego sculptures.  I really liked the big red dragon.  Unfortunately some of the other kids did too and wouldn’t let me play with it on my own.  They had some other sculptures of knights and castle walls too.  Some of the better ones were smaller scale models of real castles, and hopefully some of our photos of these will turn out.  After the noise of the kids, we found somewhere to get a cup of tea and retreated from it all.

While we were having fun, time wasn’t really flying.  We continued our stroll around the waterfront.  We got to see the apartments called the Village.  These are left over from when Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics a few years back.  They still look very flash and I’m sure it would cost plenty to live in these.  Amazing and very convenient apartment living.   Of all of the places that we have visited so far, Vancouver is one where we could imagine living.  It has really good public transport like Wellington and everything seems to be right there for you.  One of the things that we’d need though would be a dog.  Not a big dog – it seemed that nearly everyone walking around the waterfront had some little trophy dog that you could easily carry around if it got tired.  Maybe they are all apartment dogs and so can’t be too big.  When we made it through to Charleston Park, there was an area where the dogs can all be let off their leads for dog frenzy. 

The waterfront is very beautiful though, and made more beautiful by the placement of their public houses.  Here you can sit overlooking the water and have a beer or two.  So I did.  Siobhan is being very tolerant on this score.  In fact, it was so pleasant sitting on the waterfront that we stayed for dinner at the Wicklow Pub.  After that, sufficient time had passed so that we could head off to the train.  They have a number of waiting lounges and so we could get a cup of tea before boarding the train.  We met an Australian couple, Vivienne and Ken (from Perth) who were very nice.  They must have been starving for company other than each other’s too, as we had an extended conversation with them about our respective travels to date.

Once we boarded the train, we got shown to our cabin.  It is very nice, in a micro machines kind of way.  I’m thinking that you couldn’t swing a cat in there, as only a Manx cat would have fitted once we were in there with the door shut, and then what would you swing the cat with – without a tail?  Anyway, our room was made up with bunk beds which were very comfortable.  We went and socialised for a while down the back of the train, but the demographic on the train is either old people or young hippies.  When they started getting guitars out for a sing-a-long, it seemed like it wouldn’t be long before we were into Kumbaya and I hadn’t had nearly enough beers for Karaoke.

We headed back to the cabin and jumped into bed.  Lying there with the blind open and watching the world go by was very hypnotic.  The sort of thing that would make you drift off to sleep – if it wasn’t for the incessant noise of the bells at every level crossing we passed and the raucous din made whenever we went over a bridge.  There are a lot of bridges.  Still I woke up about 4 times in the night which must mean that I nodded off on occasion.  The art of sleeping on trains is one that I am yet to master.