The Bell Family

G’day All

For those who didn’t know, I am currently in Canada for a work conference (AG Retreat – See http://www.accessgrid.org/retreat2008 for more information if interested). I am fortunate, or unfortunate – depends how you think of it, to be presenting.

Sunday – Travels

Anyway, thought I would give an update on my travels so far. I caught a Taxi from home around 5:30 Sunday Morning, this enabled me to catch a flight to Brissy, with enough time to go through security, grab some breakfast and board the plane at 11 to L.A.X. For some reason, I find it difficult to sleep flying over to this side of the globe. I even tried forcing myself to have little sleep the night before, thinking it might assist me with sleeping on the plane. Unfortunately, this only made me more tired. I only had a couple of hours sleep and arrived at LAX on Sunday 7am (LA Time). I was surprised to see how booked the flight was,… I don’t think there was a spare seat! The bad news was, when I arrived at LAX, I then had to wait for a 7 hour layover to Vancouver. This was the most difficult part of the trip, I did try and lie down for some time, but I was afraid that I might sleep too well and miss the flight, or something!

Interestingly, there were quite a number of people on the flight to LA that were also heading over to Vancouver, so I got chatting to some of them to help pass the time. Like me, most of the people felt completely stuffed and simply couldn’t wait until they arrived in Vancouver.

I did manage to get a couple more hours sleep on the Vancouver flight, but unfortunately, I seem to have come down with a cold, or at least the start of one, which meant my ears were blocked and the descent nearly killed me!

After 28 hours in and out of airports and planes, I had arrived in Vancouver. From first impressions, it was one of the prettiest cities I had ever seen from the air. Everything was nice and green. It also boasts one of the nicest airports I’ve been too as well. It had waterfalls, statues and many other things to look at. Compared to the dodgey LAX, it was a pleasant change. I grabbed a taxi and headed for Simon Fraser University, as that is where the guest lodgings are, which had been suggested for the conference.

Anyway, disappointingly, the campus was very quiet and by the time I arrived and got things sorted, I couldn’t find anywhere to grab something to eat. Additionally, I had gotten out some Canadian money from an ATM, but it was only $20 notes and the vending machines didn’t take them (only coins or $5 and $10 notes). So I ended up going to bed without any dinner, as I was just too buggered to find any alternatives. Though, I did try some walking around campus to find something without any success. Anyway, I crashed out around 8 – 9pm.

Monday – Having a look around

As you would expect, I woke up around 3:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep, my body clock was still out of whack! Unfortunately I woke up hungry and there was nothing I could do. I did manage to have a quick chat with home, checked my emails and tried to get some additional sleep without any success. I tried working on my presentations, but my head wasn’t up to it. Around 5am or there abouts, I decided to go for a walk to see what I could find. Unfortunately everything I could find was closed until around 8am, which meant I had to go hungry for a little while. After around an hour of walking, looking at everything, I decided to go back to my room to get changed and then head to Vancouver City. SFU (Simon Fraser University) is located in Burnaby, which is a large city in itself and is basically connected to Vancouver, which is located towards the Mountains. Anyway, I caught a bus which took around an hour to get to downtown Vancouver.

I visited an Information Centre, got a stack of brochures and then grabbed some brekky. I thought you couldn’t go wrong with some Macca’s, but sadly I was mistaken. I am not sure whether I was jus used to a certain ‘type’ of Macca’s, but the sausage McMuffins tasted very weird and I could barely eat them. The sausage meat was some strange chicken, cross beef, cross something else, I’m not sure! Even the hash browns tasted weird… Maybe I was just very jet lagged, but it was a struggle!

Anyway, I then decided to visit the Lookout Tower (for more info, feel free to visit http://www.vancouverlookout.com/). This gave me a good view of the city and its surrounds, as well as where I wanted to head to next, which was Stanley Park (more info, see http://vancouver.ca/parks/parks/stanley/).

View of Cruise Ship Terminal

View of part of Stanley Park

After visiting the Tower for around 45 minutes, I then walked to Stanley Park following a nice riverside pathway. The walk took me around another 45 minutes, but it was good to get out and about.

Picture of a sight whist walking along the riverside pathway

Picture of one of the many parks along the riverside pathway

Picture of a Sea Plane landing

Stanley park has to be one of the greenest parks I have ever seen in my lifetime and once I arrived, I headed towards the Aquarium (http://www.vanaqua.org/home/). This place was pretty cool, lots of different types of fish, most were native to Canada and there was also a section on Southern America types of fish. They even had Piranhas!

Stanley Park

A picture of a sloth

Piranhas

South American Fish, huge fish!

Sea Turtle

One large Sea Lion, it gives people a fright as it swims by!

Same Sea Lion

They also has some Beluga Whales and different types of Dolphins (pacific white-sided dolphins) and I was able to catch a cool dolphin show as well. This place was pretty good, but in my opinion, not as good as Sea World or the Shedd Aquarium (Chicago), but still well worth a visit. Whilst at the Aquarium, I grabbed some lunch and then decided to head back into the city.

Beluga Whale

Pacific White-Sided Dolphins

My next stop was the “Edge Water” Casino. I thought I would walk through Robson street on the way (http://www.robsonstreet.ca/), as this place is well known for all your shopping needs. They even had all the major brand name shops and a lot more, although I couldn’t see any good book stores unfortunately.

After walking a fair bit, I had almost decided to call it a day but ended up finding the Casino on my way back anyway! By this time it was around 3pm and I didn’t want to stay to long, as I wanted to get back to SFU before the last bus etc. The casino is relatively small, but they do have nice customer service, like free bag holding facilities. Obviously I headed towards the Blackjack tables and was surprised to see they had $5 tables. I found the closest one with a free seat and sat down. I decided to play with $40 and it didn’t take long before I was ahead. I wanted to get to $85 as this would have meant I would have doubled my money and could take a $5 chip home as a souvenir. I got very close (I think I got up to $80), but for some reason, I started to feel a little sick, and after a few losses, I decided to leave while still marginally ahead. I still had my $40 I began with and a souvenir $5 chip, so I can’t complain. Although I was a little disappointed to be feeing ill, as I had been playing well and was having some luck.

I thought I might have been a little dehydrated, so I grabbed a glass of water before heading back to find a bus to catch. Unfortunately I had some distance to cover, but I knew I simply had to head north and find “Hastings Street”, as this is where the SFU bus route travels and the bus stops every 500 metres or so. Unfortunately, the part of town where I finally came across Hastings Street wasn’t the best part of the city and reminded me of some areas in San Francisco (where the homeless sleep on sidewalks and there are many drug users on the streets). I must say that I felt rather uncomfortable, as I thought I saw a fight and I was glad I found a bus after 5-10 minutes or so.

Another 45 minutes or so saw me back at SFU. Given past experiences for getting a lack of food, I decided to head out straight away and grab some food as it was after 5pm already. I stumbled across the Student Bar and was excited to see that they served food and that an ice hockey game was on. Obviously I had a couple of drinks, some nice food and watched the Game. Having never watched a full game before, I must say that it is pretty cool and pretty full on. Ice hockey is about two things, how good the goal keeper is and the “fights”!!!!

I managed to get back to my room around 9 and it didn’t take long before I crashed out!

More to come.

Cheers,
Jason