Vancouver is quite a beautiful picturesque city. I spent my first day touring around with H, and by touring around I mean walking for oh about 6 hours straight. I think we walked the entire perimeter checking out Granville Island, Stanley Park, Gas Town, the East side....and everywhere inbetween. My feet had the blisters to prove it and his friends had a look of horror when we told them where we ventured. I had no complaints though as the views were absolutely stunning and the air so fresh and clean.

The East side was shocking....absolutely shocking, there are no other words for such a thing. We walked about 10 mins out of Gas Town which was a cute little area into the depths of despair. I work in one of the most impoverished cities in Canada and I was astounded by this area. It seemed as though every homeless person and addict had taken refuge in a 2 block radius. It was the amount of people in such a small area that really got to me. I've seen it on TV in documentaries, I have heard about the problems there but I was not prepared at all for what I saw. It was really quite sad.

In the evening we prepared for an upcoming road trip to Portland where we were to attend a circus/carnival themed party and were set to dress up as chickens. There were feathers all over poor H's apartment as we sewed these ridiculous headdresses well into the evening.



On Friday we ventured the 3 hours to Seattle to visit Wiwille and were lucky enough to catch a ride with H's friend. Wiwille was a gentleman in every sense of the word. He bought me a copy of Casablanca as I've told him about a thousand times "I'll watch it I swear" and I've never gotten around to doing so. Every time we were about to enter his car, he would open our door first and then make his way in. I really enjoyed our lunch on the water and can imagine the place would be great to sit out and have a nice cold drink on a beautiful day.

We wandered around the city where H was hellbent on me seeing the Library and this Olympic Sculpture park ..... which after walking through I despised. It was ridiculous, there were maybe 3 sculptures and the rest were these over sized orange cones, needless to say a fan I was not. The library was rather impressive; they brought their mascot ( a chicken doll) and took photos of her in every possible nook and cranny, it was quite amusing as I'm sure people were wondering what the hell they were doing.

In the evening we had some dinner and then my 3 companions seemed to fade quickly. I was ready for a night on the town and they were all yawning and practically falling asleep at 10pm, lightweights!!!

We headed out to Portland the following day for carnival fun. The party deserves it's own post and photos to accompany which I am not able to do at this time.

So all and all the trip has been good. On the way home from Oregon (6 hour drive) with lots of thinking time I started to feel bad about Seattle.....I had Wiwille take his time to give me this list of things to do....and then we didn't do any of them. Sorry!!! It was later in the day by the time we arrived, my companions didn't really want to spend too much moolah and I was a bit tired.

I think he should come to Van after work today and call in sick tomorrow to get his drink on !!!