And i’ll sing it to the Pacific

I haven’t been able to update for a while partly because i’ve not had prolonged access to the internet – blogging takes more time than you’d think! – and partly because I’ve been spending time with Beth rather than sitting alone on buses contemplating things. So just a short post, mostly of photos from Vancouver.

After staying with Graham in Seattle, Beth and I took the Greyhound up to Vancouver. It was overcast and cloudy when we arrived, and I’d forgotten to print off a map of where our hostel was located, thinking that knowing the right street would be enough. I forgot that in North America streets tend to run for tens of miles, due to the grid layout of cities. Beth was not best pleased – but in the end we found the place, just on the edge of China Town. We got a real bargain at only $16 dollars a night each, but as usual with getting a bargain there’s an accompanying catch: we were sleeping in a hole. OK it wasn’t actually a hole, but it felt like one. We were down in the basement and our room had only the tiniest of north-facing windows in one upper corner, and the strip-lighting gave the room the feel of a soviet torture chamber, the kind of place which political dissidents are put in as part of a solitary confinement regime. Hence after a day in Vancouver we would speak of “returning to the hole”.

Being less melodramatic for a second, it wasn’t all that bad (and after all it was cheap, which is always the prime concern) but we both noticed how much difference it makes to have natural light where you are spending large parts of your time. Waking up was particularly unpleasant because you simply have no idea what time it is, and the artificial light creates a feeling of claustrophobia and depression. I can only imagine what life must be like for the poor souls who must find themselves – due either to poverty, crime or oppression – living in those kinds of conditions for months or even years at a time with no prospect of getting out and going to the beach, or even just going upstairs.

Anyhow, Beth and I didn’t do all that much worth spending time writing about in Vancouver, though I was relieved to find that my earlier impression of the city as being some sort of unwashed Heroin Central was unfair. There are bad parts to the city – like any – but generally Vancouver is clean, calm and unbelievably quiet. Furthermore, the people are friendly (for example, the bus drivers basically let us get on for free every time!) and generally helpful. Americans say that Vancouver is like a European city. I’m not sure about that, as it feels distinctively North American, yet it is certainly not an American city, in the way that e.g. Toronto could quite easily be described.

On our first full day Beth and I wandered around the various districts and when the weather improved in the evening we walked down to the waterfront where Vancouver (sort of) sits on the edge of the Pacific Ocean:

On our second day we got up as early as possible to escape the hole (when I say “as early as possible” I mean as early as Beth can manage to make me get out of bed, which usually isn’t very early) and started the day by spending a few hours on the beach:

After the beach we wandered through Stanley Park, which is an enormous public park in to the north of Vancouver covering an entire peninsular. Especially good were the enormous trees:

After the park we returned to the hole before heading back out to take some pictures of the sunset and eat:

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