You thought the last one was long.....

Hi everyone!

It’s 6.24pm here in lovely Vancouver….Mike is at an open house (interview-type thing) and I thought I’d take some time out to go through our photos and pick out some to put on the blog and write another entry.

Vancouver
Before I get back to our US trip (LA and maybe San Diego), I thought I’d bring everyone up to date with Vancouver. We have now been here 10 days but it feels like forever (in a good way). It’s amazing how easily you get used to somewhere and start thinking of it as home. We haven’t really done much sightseeing, but a friend of mine from my trip to Thailand a few years ago, Bodhi, has driven us around a bit. Stanley Park – their big park in the city – is absolutely stunning. Everything here is sooooo green. And you look down the city streets and see snow-capped mountains…it’s absolutely beautiful.

There was a hiring fair the Wednesday Thursday that I arrived so I went to that and gave my resume to pretty much everyone (I had limits though!). I actually got 2 interviews and have been offered a job just today! (thanks to the QR dudes for all the reference stuff :-). It’s a waitress (sorry, “server”) on small boats that do sightseeing cruises around the bay area. Not exactly sure how many hours, but at least it’s a job and something completely different! Minimum wage is scary here - $8. I can’t remember how much minimum wage is in aus, but I’m pretty sure I was earning that in my late teens while at uni! Unfortunately, the price of living isn’t any cheaper than Brissy, so it’ll be interesting to say the least. Bring on the pounds!!

The other good news is it looks like we’ve found somewhere to live. It’s called North Vancouver, about a 12 minute “seabus” ride across the bay from downtown Vancouver (city centre). We would have liked somewhere like West End (near Stanley Park) or Kitsilano (Kits as the locals call it), both of which are minutes from downtown, but to get our own place was proving difficult. So, although it’s not furnished (that could be a challenge - bring on IKEA) we have a one bedroom apartment all to ourselves. We had to pay 3 months rent in advance, which we will go and do tomorrow – and then it should be ours!!! Now that we have a place, with enough room, anyone who wants to come visit, make sure you do!!!!

Mike has been taking his time :-) but managed to get three phone calls/emails from the 3 jobs he put in over the weekend (bugger!). Reilly – he’s applying for a games tester – 40 hours of game testing a week! The temp/contact agent he saw today thinks he shouldn’t have a problem getting a contract IT job with his “technical skills and personability” blah blah blah…..and the market is looking pretty good. So anyone in IT (reilly, benno, angie) if you want to come to Vancouver……J

I just have to have one whinge – c’mon, you all new it was coming. I hate the place we are staying at. Don’t worry parents, it’s safe and the rooms are clean, hell so are the bathrooms, but the kitchen just doesn’t pass my hygiene standards. The kitchen was the reason we moved from the other place! I also don’t like boys anymore, close the friggin toilet door when you’re peeing! Anyway, enough about Vancouver, I’ll continue the US story…

Before LA….
There’s a few more bits and pieces I should cover before LA. We explored the Grand Canyon from Flagstaff – which was bloody frezzing! We came from Vegas and when we arrived it was like 0! How rude! Colder than Vancouver is now that’s for sure. We were driving to the Canyon and there was snow in the fields of pine trees on either side of the road – snow! From a few days before. Anyway, it was a cute little town. So from there, we made our way to LA. We drove Route 66 and stayed overnight in some tiny town on Route 66 and saw Hoover Dam. Now I thought I wouldn’t be impressed by this because it was man-made and a bloody dam! Big deal. But it was pretty impressive I must say…not just to look at but form an engineering/construction perspective. I saw a few trains and couldn’t help but take a photo or two – they had the whole double decker containers happening (once a QR employee, always a weirdo). All of these photos will be in the next set of photos I send through.

LA
Ok, now because I am notoriously bad at reading maps (as Jess can attest to), and a fairly confident/assertive driver :-), I thought I’d drive into LA. Mike agreed this would be the best option. Now, we had been driving in Hawaii, and then from Vegas to the Grand Canyon and then along Route 66 etc. It was all going swimmingly…..then we started to make our way into LA……lots of lanes on highways, I could handle that…..lots of smog. It’s starting to get greener….there’s more traffic…..we don’t have a proper map….we didn’t have a hostel booked. All of these things added up to me losing the plot J. Now, Mike was doing a great job of figuring out where we were going, without really knowing where we were going. We took the wrong exit but mike was confidently directing me (I later find out he wasn’t really sure if we were going to end up where he wanted us to). Now, a thing to remember, you get beeped at in LA for doing anything that does not involve you planting your foot as soon as a light turns green and slowing down anywhere except to turn. So I got a bit flustered because I thought I’d done something wrong, but realised I just didn’t leave rubber behind and should have run a yellow light to get through. Ok, so I got over that and we found the hostel we were looking for….private rooms booked out. Right, so we had a bit of a dummy spit and ended up finding a hotel – too expensive for my liking, but we didn’t have much choice. Ok, so off we go, it should be coming up on the left….there it is, solid yellow lines – can we cross these?? I dunno. Better not, might hold someone up….we can turn around no dram….No we can’t!!! This road goes onto the freeway! CRAP, WHAT DO WE DO NOW! Burst into tears almost……pulling over, calming, calming down..relaxing…calm…calm. (Mike – might just add something here. The calming process didn’t begin without some caring intervention from myself – “Don’t flip out, we need to concentrate and think clearly. Calm down!!!” There, that’s done it. Drama overted. Back to my maps.) And we approach from the other direction about 30 minutes later. Needless to say, after this experience, I bought a DETAILED road map of each city we were driving in – LA, San Diego and San Francisco. Once we had an LA map, we ventured out again, and it was a lot less harrowing.

So, for the first day I felt like hiding away in our hotel room. But then, once we got our bearings we were cool. I actually really enjoyed LA in the end. We went to Universal Studios, saw Kelly Clarkson (I’m still not 100% it was her, Mike – I’m bloody positive!), did the Walk of Fame, went to the Clippers vs New Orleans (basketball), aimlessly wandered around older LA – civic centre, went to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) featuring a collection of feminist art from the 60s called WACK (Mike – Wack! Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh). We didn’t realise this was on but thought we would check it out. (Mike – Wack! Aaaaahhhhhh). Speaking from a female perspective it was actually quite disturbing, weird and at times just plain gross. Moving on to more mundane things, we also saw a baseball game (LA Dodgers) and did a star homes tour (saw Julia Rober’s old place, J Lo’s fence, Leonardo DiCaprio’s house, where Brittany was hiding with all the paparazzi hanging out the front, John Travolta’s place, Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams – with wine bottles and all), as well as sunset boulevard, molholland drive, beverly hills, bel air, rodeo drive and a few other places. Mike and I also drove to Venice Beach and Santa Monica. We checked out the Santa Monica Pier and all I can say is the beach looked like baywatch beaches. Nowhere near as nice as ours but very wide beaches, lots of sand. In the end I’m glad we went to LA, and it would be great to go back with a group of people and go out and eat, drink and spot famous people, but I would never live there unless I could live in the hills away from it all – i.e. be a millionaire.

The next stop was Disneyland!!!! This place really is magical – I know it sounds clichéd but there’s just something about it. We were each given a “1st Visit” badge when we arrived, which I preceeded to wear for the next 2 days, much to Mike’s disgust (and a few kids too I think, judging by the looks I got from some 7 year olds!). Going with kids would make it all the more special (and also a very lllooonnnngggg couple of days :-). Criag/Kerren – we kept picturing Kale running around – he’d love the place, there is so much Buzz and Woody stuff!

We spent the first day at California Adventure Land – more of a teenage fun park so it had lots of rides mostly. We got soaked on the very first ride went on, I mean down to my undies….don’t do that if you go. Our favourite ride was the rollercoaster – California Screamin’ and some of the shows (including 4D ones) were the best parts of day, for example, The Bug’s Life show had water spraying at your face and jets of air shooting at your feet to feel like bugs – it works – it makes you jump!

And then finally we go to Disneyland! This place is pretty awesome. The rides a very much aimed for the younger audience, but all except a few, we enjoyed just as much as the kids. There is sooo much to see! There’s this indoor rollercoaster which is pretty cool, we saw the parade, went on the teacups, the Toad Hall ride (crap!), the Peter Pan ride (so cute), the Mattahorn, the Alice in Wonderland ride and this the Buzz Lightyear game that you go around in this little train through a tunnel thing, shooting various targets with a laser gun. It keeps score and you can go and see a photo at the end of you in action. Another ride is the “It’s a Small World” which is a boat road through a tunnel with lots of “lands” and little people dressed in various native costume singing the “it’s a small world afterall” song. Now if you aren’t a Simpson’s fan, move on to the next paragraph, but if anyone has seen the episode where Bart & Lisa are taken to DuffLand by their aunts…they go this ride (I didn’t realise it was this ride until we went on it) and Lisa and Bart start to argue, Bart dares Lisa to drink the water, she does, and then has hallucinations and does her “Lizard Queen” impersonation (my personal favourite Simpson moment). Anyway, this is the ride they are taking off and OH MY GOD, I understand her pain….it goes on and on and on, and so does the song.

Ok, this is an extremely long blog, as well as photos to see, so we’ll do San Diego, the drive and San Francisco next entry.

Miss you all! Take care and enjoy your cooler weather.
xoxo