The Blog of Lone

Coffee and muffin for a healthy breakfast, nothing fried today.  Left the Cambie with all my baggage and decided to walk to the Greyhound Station.  Very nearly died walking with a full backpack in the heat (had suddenly turned into something of a heat wave), not a very sensible idea.  Took a quick shot of the shiny science museum, which I’d never got to see.

At the station I caught the Pacific Coach Line to Victoria for $40, which included an hours journey over to the island by ferry.
Luckily enough I’d been to Victoria briefly before on a family holiday, so knew that pretty much everything in town was crowded along the waterfront, so found my hostel easily.
HI Victoria was clean and large, excellent showers and bathrooms, but unfortunately there were very few beds left so I had to bunk in a dorm with 40, yes, 40! other guys.  That’s a lot of snoring and noise at night I can tell you.
Victoria itself is a very self consciously pretty town, kept in pristine order down by the water front for the tourists.  Everything is green and pleasant and just so, but if you walk a half dozen streets back it looks much like any other largish Canadian town.  Is a little bit like a plain woman wearing a veneer of make up on a date.
Chinese for dinner.
Decided to head for a localish ‘pub’ called the Sticky Wicket several streets away from the tourist area.  The Sticky Wicket is a very strange place, being the Canadian idea of what a quaint English pub should look like.  So everything is wooden, with strange nick-nacks on the walls, but the place is huge with a couple of pool tables.  It looked to me how an ‘Irish’ bar must look to an Eireman.
Sitting at the bar, having a few drinks and chatting to those around me, (as you do in Canada) I ended up talking to a dude called Jason.  Weirdly enough he’d lived in the tiny teeny town of Harps for a while, and we reminisced about its pubs and the strangeness of meeting someone else who’d been there.  It is a small world after all it seems.
Got stinking drunk at a club called Luckys.

Luckily (no pun intended) it was directly opposite the hostel and the staggering distance wasn’t too far.  Even having drunk endless tequilas I could just about manage it with a minimum of bumping into walls.  Made good use of the excellent bathroom facilities that evening.

Despite hideous lack of sleep got up at 9am for my Frontier breakfast.  Went of the ‘net to try and sort out how to get to Victoria, on Vancouver Island.
Went for a walk over the bridge, amazing views of both bits of Vancouver, to the Public Market on Granville Island.  Quaint and full of odd shops and places to eat but very expensive and touristy.  Had a spinach pie with tzatziki for lunch while listening to an old guy on guitar play ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’.
After lunch trekked back to Stanley Park to interrogate the authorities and see if I could find my camera.  No such luck.  So off to the shiny consumer paradise of Pacific Centre shopping mall to buy a new camera from a lovely girl, who was oddly enough from Croydon.
Quiet evening, walked to China Town for some amazing mushroom soup and dim sung with kettles full of green tea; had the entire restaurant to myself.  Great authentic meal.
Went back to the hostel after a wander and caught up on some sleep mercifully uninterrupted by masturbating drunks.

Woke at 8, slept in ’til 9, before braving the showers.  Two separate knobs that seem to have no relation to the constantly changing stream of boiling hot or sub zero water being sprayed over you.  I think it may not be a shower at all, but instead some cunningly disguised instrument of torture, with myself an unwitting contestant on some Japanese game show.
Good hearty breakfast and coffee at the Cambie, cheap with the discount card.  Canadians can really make good coffee, offering three different kinds with breakfast.
After breakfast, off to do the tourist thing, see the sights, photograph them, and see what there is to amuse a lone backpacker in these parts.
Walked downtown to Stanley Park, somewhere I’d been before with my family on holiday.  Beautiful massive park surrounded by the sea at the tip of central Vancouver.  Took some photos of the totem poles.  Sat on a bench overlooking North Vancouver and started a poem in response to a book of poetry, entitled ‘Bone Flames’, that I’d picked up in a second hand book shop in Seattle.

Very good intentions to create a poetry/prose book with pieces from the places I visit (obviously unfinished, but several can be found on the Other blog.)
Sat on the grass, enjoying the sunshine and sea breeze with my top, shoes, and socks off.  Wanted to tell all the joggers, cyclists, skaters to stop their sweating and take some time to appreciate what’s around them.  There’s a lot to be said for just sitting still, and watching, and appreciating the world around you.
Somehow managed to lose my camera, with all my photos from Seattle on.  Most vexing.  Must have left it on a bench after taking some snaps.  Got a minute’s walk away, realised and went back for it.  Camera gone, but a very pleased looking tramp walking off into the distance.  Called all over seeing if it had been handed in, but no luck.  Apparently tramps aren’t that altruistic.
Few beers at the Cambie in the evening, then at the Steamworks.  Got talking to another Thomas, this time a kid few years younger than myself from Brazil.  Odd guy, very needy, gave me his number. Dropped it in the bin on my way out.
Spent the night relaxing in the dorm with my Irish stoner, watching Dylan Moran on his laptop.  Got an earlish night but got rudely awoken by two drunks from the bar who had paid for a bed when they realised they were too drunk to walk home.  Both huge fat bastards, both taking the two top bunks.  The one above spent an hour masturbating frantically, shaking the whole bed before falling asleep and the other had the worst snore I’ve ever heard.  It sounded like a cross between a man chocking to death and someone gargling with jelly.  Neither me nor the Irish fella slept a wink and not even kicking the mattress from below could stop the disgusting noise.

Groggy start to the day.  Had booked tickets on the Greyhound to take my sorry arse north of the border to Vancouver, Canada.  This was about where my forward planning for the trip comes to the end.  Winging it from here on it.
Had a good lunch at a Vietnamese place, got taught how to shake hands in Ghana by a school teacher.
Greyhound was mercifully pretty comfortable, only about 6 people on board.  Read a book or stared out the window most the way.  Canadian customs officers where very civilised, didn’t make you feel like a terrorist like the US. 
Got off at the Greyhound station in Vancouver (somewhere I was to get to know well) and could see the city centre in the distance but didn’t fancy walking with a backpack that weighed about as much as I did.  Instead I got the Skytrain, after spending several minutes working out how to pay for it.
Had to wander around for a bit to get my bearings.  Luckily in US and Canada all streets are on a block system and nice and straight unlike here in the UK.  Once you can find two parallel street names on your rubbish Google map and work out which way is east and which west from the sun, then you can find your way anywhere in an American or Canadian city.
Vancouver is very impressive, all bronze coloured skyscrapers and soaring buildings.
Eventually slugged my way to American Backpackers Hostel, a $10 a night place, swearing my backpack getting steadily heavier.  Got there, climbed the steps and saw it was as dirty as a dollar hooker, stank of weed and had nobody on the desk but plenty of signs warning against fleas.  Walked straight back out and headed for the Cambie.
The Cambie (300 Cambie Street) is a bar/grill/bakery/hostel right in the centre of the area known as Gastown.  For that $10 extra over the AmBackpackers, you get mixed sex 4 bed dorms, discount on breakfast from the grill or bakery, clean showers, an Irish roomate and a safe hostel instead of a flea infested rape pit.
Had a few pints of Canadian beer and one of the Cambie’s massive burgers for dinner at the bar while watching the Detroit / Dallas Ice Hockey game.  Finally feel like I’ve arrived in Canada.
Canada doesn’t like smokers.  Packets kept behind a curtain in shops and you’re not allowed to smoke inside or within 2 meters of a doorway or window.  Bit ironic considering the same shop is able to sell bongs, knives, and weed pipes in the window.
Went to bed after a post dinner walk, jet lag catching up slowly.  Only have to share the 4 bed dorm with one other dude, likable Irish chap I could just about understand who smoked a few joints out the window and fell asleep with the intro to the Father Ted DVD playing endlessly on his laptop.  Had to listen to the same three Father Ted catch phrases repeated hundreds of times before they eventually lulled me to sleep.