Trains, planes and automobiles

Granville Street, the heart of the the bars and clubs it would seem we were staying right on it!

Sunday was spent stroling about Vancouver. We visited Downtown and found a great salad restaurant for lunch. Sounds dull doesn't it, but after hours on planes and stodgy pancakes for breakfast we were longing for some fresh food! Stanley Park proved to be the highlight of the day. The Totem poles were very impressive. Only Central Park in NYC is bigger than Stanley. A trip to the visitor centre that afternoon left us very light in the pocket but excited about the next day.

Whistler by train and plane. One of my previous posts talked about the abundance of attractive Canadian women all over the world that we had bumped into, one of the common themes coming from meeting them was that Whistler was worth a visit. Monday morning had us rise early, we skipped breakfast as pancakes at 06.30 weren't appealing, and headed to the Sheraton. Here we met our rather swish coach that took us to North Vancouver and the train yard.

The red carpet was out for us when we arrived at the train (we had decided to travel in "Glacier Dome" the first class service on this train). No security probing was required as this is Canada, I think Tom was greatful for not receiving the latex glove treatment! We were welcomed on board by our rather camp host Joseph. I was immediately struck by the number of old people! This was retiree turf the 2 of us lowered to the average age to at least mid 60s. Breakfast followed some bucks fizz, prepared by Joseph and we were soon crawling up the railway to Whistler.

We arrived at about midday. Downtown Whistler (the term downtown overused here perhaps!) was enchanting and almost Alpine. The striking thing was its age. Recently developed in terms of modern history and all the architecture was from a prescribed style of the time, however, still most interesting. Over lunch we decided to catch a cable car to the top of the mountain and then walk back down, however, the bloke in the tourist info centre told us it would take 6 hours! To the top we went anyhow to explore. Well the summer sun turned into summer snow! Tom had prepared to climb a mountain by not bringing suitable clothes, so we stayed in the warm til the snow subdued and we carried on to the summit in a rickety cable car.

Wonderful views from the top were shrouded in mist which cleared and reappeared in 20 minute cycles. We enjoyed cheating death (well the signs said we might die!) and wandered back down to the lower cable car station. When we got there the thunder and lightning combined with snow had set in and we were stuck up the mountain. Now usually we wouldn't mind but we had a flight back to Vancouver to catch and were starting to get quite concerned when we heard radio chatter about evacuations! As I mentioned though, the weather was changing every 20 minutes and soon we were on our way back down.

A quick tour round Whistler to buy a new golf glove and then to the shuttle to the lake. We were flying on a float plane and Green Lake was our runway! A rather 'large' american woman was on our flight and was offering round a half eaten cookie - surprisingly no one took her up on her offer! The flight was fantastic, a BA 747 it was not. We were flying only a few hundred feet above ground with superb views of the route back to Vancouver - catch the pics on the slideshow.

Towers. We have climbed many and I feel we will continue to climb more, however, Vancouver's is most likely the shortest one we will climb, so Tom felt at home! A scout over the city before a scraping of shopping marked the end to our time in Vancouver.

Onwards we must go for the colonies need further inspection.