T R A V E L   :  I R E L A N D   2 0 0 4 

Monday 23rd June 2003

Photos Dan took: 1 (Link to pbase gallery)

An introduction

I, the author, am called Dan. This is my story of the events of our holiday in Western Canada (we are from England and most of us live there). There is a little artistic license here and there, but almost everything is true.

I have written this diary in a tense that I called the fifth person. There were four of us on this holiday, but it is written through the eyes of the imaginary fifth person. Hopefully it works and won't hinder your otherwise enjoyable experience of reading this.

The other people who travelled with me are:

- James, my Cornish house mate,

- Jon, a friend who I work with and is an extensive traveller,

- Dave, Jon’s friend who lives in Munich and had not met James and I until we flew out.

I have always wanted to go to Canada since I was a little kid. I’m not sure why, but I think it might have been my school friend, Malcolm Porter, telling me about his trip to Eastern Canada one winter. He told me how much snow they had and how he was shovelling it from their drive way. I love snow with a passion - we almost never get snow here in England, especially Cornwall and the South West. I have seen more snow since I moved to the London area in the South East, but only an inch or two. I think this is what sold me on going to Canada.

Preparation

The preparation we did for the trip was fairly minimal. We bought the tickets from www.ebookers.com for a reasonable price about four months before flying out, just as the war with Iraq was kicking off. We read the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet guide books and plotted a route we thought would be good. The only restriction was that we wanted to be in Calgary for July 4th for the Calgary Stampede.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it. If you do enjoy it or have any comments or questions, please click on the guestbook and feedback link at the top of the page.

Flying out

Dan had booked a taxi through work, which made it slightly cheaper. Dave and Jon had arrived in Guildford at Dan’s and James’s house earlier that day. The taxi arrived and drove us to Heathrow.

We checked in and waited in the departure lounge before boarding our Boeing 747. For once, Dan managed to sleep for most of the nine hour flight. He used his normal technique of drinking two small bottles of red wine to try and help him sleep. He was sat by the emergency exit too, which meant lots of leg room.

Vancouver International Airport, Canada

We landed smoothly after an eventless flight. We got off, went through passport control, collected our luggage and walked through customs.

We found the car rental place and filled out forms whilst they bought the car we had rented around to the front of the building.

"Hey look," said Dan, flicking through the brochure. "We’ve rented the biggest one available - and with a 5.2 litre V8 engine as well!"

"Cool," said Jon.

"Oh my God!" exclaimed James, looking outside at the truck which had just pulled up. "Look at the size of that thing!"

"Holy shit!" laughed Jon.

Dan and Dave just grinned.

The Beast

We took the keys and decided James should drive as Dan and Dave had drunk alcohol on the plane and Jon wanted to navigate.

"It’s a beast!" said Dan. "I hereby name it 'The Beast'."

James got into the driver's seat and started to panic. Jon climbed into the passenger’s seat and Dave and Dan got in the back and started playing around with the compartments and drinks holders.

James drove us out of the airport and onto Granville Street. This street ran from the airport straight into downtown Vancouver, which has handy especially as the youth hostel was on it.

Our first sight of Vancouver

An impromptu tour of the streets of Vancouver

We drove north on Granville Street with Jon navigating and Dan giving instructions from the back about how to drive - he had driven in America the last two years, so was fairly used to the driving on the right hand side. The map the rental company had given us was fairly useless, so Jon was using the map in the Lonely Planet.

We drove around and around in circles, turning into various streets and occasionally going up and down the same street, before Dave shouted, "Look! There it is."

We pulled up outside and sent Jon in to ask them where we could park. He came back and told us that there was a hotel on the next block with overnight parking. James drove there, Dan paid and we parked The Beast.

"That’s pretty difficult to drive," said James. "It’s so big!"

Global Village Backpackers Youth Hostel

Jon got his backpack from the back and put it on. "I’m ready," he said.

Dan got his camera bag out, large bag and smaller backpack. "I think I bought too much stuff," he said, straining under the weight.

We walked back to the hostel, checked in and found our room. We had the room to ourselves, which was nice, albeit very colourful. We put our bags down and left again to go and find somewhere to eat.

On walking down Granville Street towards the downtown area, we soon realised that we were in the red light district.

"Oh no, not again," sighed Dan. Last year, he had made the mistake of searching for "cheap hotels in Frankfurt" on Google, and had been rather surprised when the hotel he stayed in was rather seedy and right in the centre of the red light district.

There were also a lot of "bums" trying to get money from people.

The Lennox Pub

We walked around a few streets, stopping to get some money from an ATM. Dan was the only one who had brought Canadian dollars with him as he didn’t have a pin number for his credit card. After failing to find somewhere to eat, we ended up back on Granville Street.

"There’s a pub," said James, pointing. "Let’s go there."

"Looks good," said Dan, desperate to sit down as his camera bag was feeling heavy. "Can’t believe I have to carry this for three weeks." He was very reluctant to leave £3000 ($5000US) of camera equipment unattended in a youth hostel room.

First night in Canada

We went in and sat down. A rather nice looking Canadian girl took our order of beer and sandwiches. We ate our food and drunk our beer before leaving again and going back to the youth hostel. We were rather tired after the long flight and the time difference had added an extra eight hours to the day.

We got back, cleaned our teeth and gladly went to bed. We were staying in Vancouver tomorrow, but didn’t set our alarms as we could afford a little lie in.

Our route

This is roughly the route we followed: