After touring around through Chinatown & getting a bite to eat, we thought “why not just go and check out some of the REAL local sites? Those included the Vancouver (or is it the British Columbia Aquarium?)

Either way, we decided to check it out.

After paying our entrance fee (not cheap but we all got in as ‘students’ – the guy at the door taking our money was pretty good. I jokingly asked him ‘so, what’s the “cheap” route?’. He replied “Well.. are you students?” to which Mark piped up “Yes.. students of life”. The guy at the door cracked a smile and rang us through as students. Thanks! Finally through the door, I couldn’t help but get a ‘product shot’ of yorus truely with one of the Aquariums famous sculptures.

During my ‘blue’ phase….

Peek-a-boo!

One of the neatest things I saw was a re-circulating tide-pool. You can reach in, touch the sea anenome’s and starfish, then after about 2 minutes, the water would drain by about 20% and re-rill with a great big gush. The upside: it looked cool! The downside: THE WATER WAS DARN COLD!

While walking around the masses of people, I heard a fait yell over the crowd. “Aqua!” … what the hell? “Aquamarine??? CHRIS!!!” OK, what the hell? I look around and it turns out that one of the airsoft guys from www.airsoftcanada.com who has seen me in my multitude of photos recognized me in the crowd and decided to say hi. What are the odds?? So I met up with one of the guys by the name of ‘Some_Punk’ (on the right) and ‘Phalanix’ (center). What a concidence!

And it’s flipper flipper, faster than liiiigghhhnnnniiinnnnggggg…

yea, I can’t think up anything witty or funny for this little guy, but he sure was darn cute!

After FINALLY making it into Vancouver, we discovered that the private rooms I had booked at the hostel were no longer booked in my name. In fact, they had my reservation… but hadn’t set aside ANYTHING for me. What the hell kind of crappy place is this!??!!? Well, it was cheap… and it had a bed. That’s all we needed for the time being, so we grudgingly paid ($35/night) and off we went to sleep.

There were two main ‘rooms’ that people slept in, one upstairs for the women and one downstairs for the men. It was interesting sharing a room with so many others and it certainly had it’s downsides. OK… realisticially I can’t think of anything good, but here are the downsides: 3 people puked on the floor during the night (in the main corridor so you need to JUMP over it!), there was an orchestra of farting, and we think someone died due to the smell. I don’t think I’ll be taking Adriens advice & staying here again.

After a sleepless night, the three of us decided it was time to get some breakfast. We packed up our bags, stuffed them in the car & drove around looking for a suitable spot. We were already cruising on Broadway so figured that we may as well eat somewhere there.

Pozzy with 3 hours sleep at 8am waiting for the hippie restaraunts to open.

Later on in the day, I suggested we check out Vancouver’s Chinatown district. Well, it was a good idea in theory. We drove around Vancouver for a good two hours, accidentally making our way into North Vancouver before finally getting to Chinatown. It took a total of about three hours to get from point A to point B, but it was worth it. We walked up and down the area, checked out the mulitude of small import shops and asian boutique’s. Mark picked up some DVD’s (as did I – Shinobi, Initial D [the movie], and Battle Royale II), while Keiko just mingled amongst us, admiring the Vancouver city-scape. One thing that I don’t think I’ll ever get over though is the smell while walking past some of the outdoor open markets with the herbs, stripped chickens and gueyduk slithering all over the place! *gag!!*

Blame it on the artsy-side of me, but I thought this made a pretty cool picture. A mixture of Eastern promise, Euro industrialization and general clutter of the skyline.

Apparently the Chinese mafia lives in this set of apartments.

One reason I would like to live in Vancouver is because of the general atmosphere. Druggies and gangs aside, it’s a neat city and full of life.

I couldn’t help but think of the TV show ‘Family Business’ on Showcase when I saw this street sign. That aside, it’s a pretty cool street to go driving down too!

Before leaving the Okanagan valley, we decided it would be nice to take a somewhat leisurly drive along the lake. I must say too, it has some beautiful views!!!

We took off a little late in the day, but still made pretty good time while en-route to Vancouver. This is a view of the sun’s rays passing through the smokey sky (also from the forrest fires in the area).

Another nice shot of the sun setting for the day, and hiding behind the mountains.

While driving, we had to stop for gasoline a couple times. As you can see, Mark was pretty happy that they had a toilet. One of the nice things about travleing with Mark is that he has a great sense of humor. He kept me giggling and chuckling all the way.

Finally after driving for about 4-5 hours, we made it to the outskirts of Vancouver. Feeling pretty hungry, the three of us decided it was time to stop and look for someplace to get a drink and maybe even something to eat. I whipped out the GPS, fired her up and started looking for someplace close. I saw a McDonalds just up the road from us (on the GPS) and could even see the big golden arches up the road. We finally pulled into the lot, but for the life of us could NOT see the McDonalds!!!

Looking around a little more, we saw a nice big two-story with men in suits in the upper level and even a couple men with chef’s hats and chefs uniforms up top… what the hell?!?!?!?! We looked through the big bubble window and you know what we saw? MCDONALDS!!!! We stumbled upon the McDonalds Head Office of Canada! SCORE!!!!

We walked into the McDonalds… looked around at the leather sofa’s, hard-wood tables and granite counter-tops… it was like how McDonalds would look across the world, if they hadn’t become gluttons of greed! I went up to the counter, still not sure what to make of the place, and the guy behind the counter asked “may I take your order?” ‘Yes… umm… I’ll take the… umm… Coke and small fries…’ Obviously he heard us talking about how we stubled into the head office as the guy behind the counter said “Dude… you come to McDonalds head office… and you order a small fries and medium coke?” I was ashamed.

After getting our order, we traveled upstairs and looked around the “matine” level. WOW! Talk about posh!!! Leather reclining seats, granite table-tops…

Even a fireplace and LCD Tv… but it gets better…

We counted 8 plasma TV’s!!!! HOLY CRAP!!!! Needless to say, we were DAMN impressed!!!

Title: Day Six – Kelowna

So up early and off we went from the hostel. It’s not a bad place, except we had to deal with snorring people as we shared a room with 4 others (5 people to a room). Over-all, the price was good and the beds were certainly comfortrable, but I think I’ll book in advance next time and get us each private rooms. Then again, as you’ll read about in the near future, that’s not always the case (friggin hell).

I got top bunk.

This was just a big neatly-cut lawn. Nothing else was around it. NOTHING. Just…. a….. lawn.

Rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of grapes.

This is (apparently) where the grapes ferment… or something like that. Honestly, I’m not really sure what it does, other than look like a small nuke that constantly tumbles.

I really don’t recall her name, but she was one of the workers at the estate who gave us a taste of some of the wines. Sorry, make that ‘a very good taste’ as it was a 1/4 of a glass with seven wines. I’m glad I had breakfast otherwise I have this feeling that I wouldn’t be doing much driving!

Here’s a neat little view from inside of the wine shop itself. It was a warm day, the sun was shining, but as you can see in the distance, there was quite a lot of smoke from the various forrest fires that were going on at the time in the area. Thankfully nothing came too close to Kelowna this time.

I think it’s settled… this is where I’m going to be retiring to. This is our first stop when we entered into Kelowna. It’s one heck of a nice city and I’m seriously considering just spending my entire vacation here next summer-time. Honestly, it’s a toss-up between Kelowna and a lake I saw just East of Spokane.

Hey-yo!!! Each dolphin here was the size of a killer whale. I have a feelijng that it wasn’t quite to scale, but y’know, that’s just a hunch.

Apparently some of the condo’s near the bottom of the image are actually rental properties. Each has a walk-out porch that goes right to a small inlet if you want to tie up a boat or (as we saw) up to four Sea-doo’s. Very very cool! Now I just need to learn how to use one.

Did you know that ducks LOVE ‘Teddy-Graham Cookies’?

Canadian-Geese however, do NOT like teddy-graham cookies. The bastard in the middle took a run at me. I would have chased after it, but there were two bike-cops and they looked like they were tree-hugging hippies, so I decided it was a good idea to just let the goose win… this time.

Before stopping for the day and relaxing at the hostel, we decided to take a quick walk along the beach.

This is the front “yard” of one of the hotels. Funny thing is that as we were walking by, the ONLY accent we heard was that of Americans from the Southern states. Weird….

Yea, that’s me… I climbed a water-fall all by myself. ….. let’s leave the fact that it was nine feet tall out of it, ok?

At the end of a long day, we finally crashed at the hostel. It almost felt like Channel House, except with heated bathrooms and private showers. No joke.