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Crossing the border to Canada was more difficult than antipicated. The border guards seemed convinced that we were terrorists and delayed us for a long time while searching our car and interrogating me. Eventually they let us in, and we drove to Mission to stay with John and Hetty, who we only knew through e-mail. The following day we spent in Vancouver, a city that seemed to be completely dominated by the Chinese.

Adventure in North America 2002, Part 4: Vancouver

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-14 15:47:23

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have a very big Chinese community. There were signs in Chinese everywhere and in some places almost only Chinese people out in the streets. Later we would see that just about every shop was run by the Chinese as well! I had no idea that they had such a massive influence on Vancouver.

The downtown area at first looked rather empty, which at least it made it easy to find a place to park. We had some cake at a restaurant called White Spot before going out to explore the downtown. After walking around a little bit, we found some streets that were busier and the city in general started to become more lively as well, with more traffic.

There were trolley buses giving hop-on hop-off tours of the city. Not knowing quite where the most interesting parts of the city were, we decided to go on such a tour. It cost 25$ each and we boarded at somewhere called Canada Place. After driving around the downtown area for a while and being informed about the various sights, we reached a very busy street where we got off to have lunch. For simplicity, we just went to McDonald's. It was very cheap (roughly the same amount of Canadian dollars as it cost in US dollars in the USA), but also very poor quality (even for McDonald's).

We walked around the street, visiting several shop before getting on another trolley bus. This one took us through Stanley Park, which seemed quite nice, and around most of the city. At one point we drove past a race track where an Indycar race with lots of spectators were underway. A place called Gastown, close to where we started out, looked really nice, so we got off there and walked around for a while before returning to the the car.

Although there probably were more cars than usually in the city due to the Indycar race, driving out of Vancouver turned out to be no problem either. On our way back to Mission we stopped at a mall, which unfortunately turned out to be mostly closed (what, they close the malls on Sunday evening in this country!?). A large bookstore was open though, and after taking a look we went to a restaurant for dinner. I had fettucini with chicken and a Ceasar Salad, all of which was very good. Finally, we stopped at McDonald's to have an ice cream for dessert.

Despite going the wrong way at one point, we managed to find our way back to John's without any major problems, arriving around 2100. We talked with him for the rest of the evening, and both me and Tina also borrowed his computer to check our e-mail. Eventually we went to bed around 2320.