Vancouver trip cont'd...

Monday

During our stay at Victoria, we had a hotel room and we crammed the 7 of us. I guess I neglected to specifically mention who was on the trip, so let me do so now. We had Tom, Helen, Dev, Ant, Kevin, Megan, and myself. Anyways, before going to bed the movie American Beauty came on. Most of us ended up staying up to watch that movie. Previously on the drive I had watched Good Will Hunting so now that was two new movies for me. Both really good movies, at least in my opinion.

Anyways, back to Monday. We woke up and breakfast was a bagel. Nice!! To kill some time we went shopping again. Finally, we all went whale watching. The regular price I think was about $75, although I could be wrong. However, there was a student rate of $50 and Tom had some kind of coupon. At first he couldn't use it because he neglected to mention it when reserving spots for us, but after some Jedi mind tricks he was able to use it. Now for some killer whale watching!!

So we boarded this open boat thingy while wearing a jacket and a nice bright red toque they gave us. The reason for the clothing was because it would get really cold once we hit certain speeds. It was a fun ride in the boat and we saw some nice scenery (spelling?? and dammit Alberta and your flatness and lack of coastlines...). We travelled in the boat thingy for about an hour or so until we stopped to look at the whales. Due to regulations, we had to keep a certain distance away from the whales, but we got a bit of a close up when they swam toward us. This one lady seemed angry that the whales decided to swim closer to another boat, and vented a bit at our guide. She asked well how come their boat got to be closer to the whales?? Well, frick, I don't know... I guess the whales decided to swim closer to that boast to piss you off. Anyways, I believe Dev has some nice shots and I got to see a whale breach (basically the whale jumps out of the water and does a flip). When we were leaving, our guide said okay lets go back! So we all looked away and of course a whale decides to breach! Man, screw that! I'm going to Seaworld again for Shamu.

We also visited Mile Zero and to my understanding... actually... I still don't really know what the hell it is. But anyways, we ventured onto the coastline and took some pictures on the rocks. It was also a very nice scenic area.

After some ice cream stops, we need to make it back to the ferry back to Vancouver. Its a bit late so everyone is worried about the ferry being full. And being the super prepared people we are, we are taking the last ferry out. As we're driving theres a whole bunch of cars zooming through. It seems everyone is trying to make the last ferry!! Now somewhere along the stretch of road there is a big looming sign. On it all I could read was ....%....Ferry....Full. There is a big silent collective "oh crap!!" in the van! We get closer and there is a big silent collective "phew!" because the sign says the ferry is only 31% full or something like that.

The ferry we're on is a new one and its fairly nice. So we have another nice cruise and we go back to my cousins house for a night's sleep.


Tuesday

Dammit, my mind is drawing the biggest blank in the world. What the hell did we do on this day?!? Oh wait! I think we went to Metrotown. Basically the biggest mall Vancouver has is really two malls that just happened to be built right next to each other. The other one is called... Metropolis! Yay! Right next to these malls is an area called Station Square. We happened to park there and we saw a Thai restaurant in the parkcade. Yeah... okay... For the most part the stuff we saw there was pretty much the same stuff we'll see in Edmonton. However, they had a Nike store!! I'm convinced I would have bought something if I had stayed there more. Usually I hate buying clothes because I have to try it on and crap like that. I probably would have gotten a hat.

Afterward we hit up Granville market... place... thingy... whatever its called. On the drive over we would take East Hastings street. It was a street we would get a bit familiar with, as it is notorious for being a very seedy and dangerous area. Once, my dad unknowlingly took Tess, Keith, and I for a quick walk there. Some hilights include a guy who was literally pissed drunk. But carrying on, we managed to pick up snacks while at the market. I mainly picked up apples, I believe it was oranges for Dev, berries for Ant, and Tom had pepperoni sticks. There were a lot of neat little stores (like the kids area!) but there wasn't really anything that screamed, "buy from here!! Totally what you want and you won't find it in Edmonton!" Although Kevin did pick up a nice colouring book about the history of swords. Yes, a colouring book that was all about swords.

For our dinner, we would goto a Chinese restaurant called Number 9's. Yeah, I don't know why you would call yourself that, but whatever! I thought it was one of the better Chinese places, but about the same as a place like Good Buddy. It was good enough to come back here again though, I'll say that much. So after we filled our stomaches up we called it a night, which would lead us to...

Wednesday

Okay, this is for next time!