Seattle to Vancouver
Time to take a break from the States, we're heading North for winter. Today we're off to Vancouver, Canada. It's about a 3 and a half hour train ride from Seattle. We pack up our stuff and walk to the station, stopping for a quick brekkie and coffee along the way. Wheb we get to the train station we're informed we're actually on the bus, which is a bit of a shame as the Amtrak trains are actually quite good and scenery is pretty epic, if the journey from Portland to Seattle is anything to go by.
Turns out it doesn't really matter, as we both ending up sleeping most of the journey! We wake up when we get to customs/immigration at the border, hastily fill in our forms and head in with all our bags. It ends up being one of the quicker border crossings we've had. Customs officer looks at passports, asks a few questions about where we've been, where we're going, stamps the passports and we're off. They don't even security check our bags!
About an hour later and we've arrived in Vancouver. We get ourselves some Canadian dollars, which are pretty much on par with Aus dollars, much to our relief. We take a short bus ride and walk and we've arrived out our air bnb. We're staying in an a room in an apartment in False Creek, a short walk from a harbour with amazing views of the city and mountainous backdrop. It's a stunning looking city.
We drop our bags and hit the pavement. Our luck with the weather continues. Whilst it's pretty brisk, the sun is out and it's a beautiful afternoon for a stroll. We see a bunch of Canadian geese which are pretty cool and seagulls that are almost 3 times the size of a regular gull. Must be something in the water. Speaking of which, the water is so clear. Despite the single digit temperature, it's almost tempting to swim in the harbour.
We head into the first brew house we see. Granville Island brewery is the name, a flight of beers is our game. The beers are pretty good and we later find out they're a pretty well liked beer around town. We chat with a young couple who are over from Winnipeg for a holiday. They also reckon the weather is pretty good for this time of year. They were stoked that Van would be "in the pluses!" when they were here. We laugh that they need to qualify the temperature with "plus" or "minus" all the time.
We continue walking along the harbour until we reach a ferry dock. It's a pretty small ferry which would seat maybe 8 people and takes us straight across the water in just a few short minutes. Very cool and convenient!
We head off to see a bit more of what Vancouver is about. We walk right across to the other side of town and notice two things. One, the amount of apartment buildings and how alike they all look and two, the city is ridiculously clean.
We reach our dinner destination which is another brew house, of course. We have a poutine (when in Canada) and chilli con carne for dinner, teamed with another flight of beers. Not as good as the Granville brewing ones. We're off to the casino next and stroll through Gastown on our way and make a note to come back another day. This seems to be where some of the night life will be.
We reach the casino which is actually in the city, unlike most other places we visited. The casino is pretty nice. Jeff plays a quick game of Poker (gets demolished as they are all literally pros) and we get a chip for the collection. Courts is starting to feel a cold coming on, so we call it night.