Day 17 - Vancouver

The border!
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Today Charlie and I made it across the border to Canada and Vancouver. We attempted to go to the first ever Starbucks for breakfast but it transpired that it doesn't sell food which rather limited that idea. So instead we found an artists' cafe which sold Gunpowder green tea so I was very happy, before hitting the shops for the final time. It was then time to take Thelma to another country so we headed up Interstate 5 towards Canada. We passed the edge of the Northern Cascade Mountains which I will be visiting next week so that was quite cool to see that. There are no signs telling you that you are heading towards Canada until you actually hit the border which I thought was a bit strange. We then joined the queue of others hoping to be allowed in the country for about an hour or so. We picked up some Canadian radio stations and listened to Michael Buble and Nelly Furtado as we approached the border which amused me (if only there had been Celine Dion the circle would have been perfectly complete!). We finally reached the front of the queue and then were directed to another immigration queue for a while. After answering questions such as 'how do you know each other?', 'how do you know the person you are staying with?' and confusing the man by the fact we are leaving at different times and by different means our passports we finally stamped and we arrived in Canada.

Canada this way!
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Vancouver is just over the border so it didn't take us long to get there and apart from the SatNav getting confused by one-way systems that are only in operation for part of the day we managed to find Lauren's house without too much difficulty. We chilled out for a couple of hours and got some dinner before making the trip to the airport (I feel like I've visited so many airports since I've been here!) to pick up Laura. We were casually looking at the arrivals board to find out when she would be arriving when she sidled up beside us and said 'hi'. We were all so confused as to how come she was already there that she received the most underwhelming welcome I think anyone has ever received at the airport! It transpired that her flight had arrived really early.

Distance travelled today - 141 miles

My lame attempt at photos of fireworks!
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We returned to Lauren's flat, which is really near the beach, and took a walk down to it as there is an international firework competition going on at the moment. Last night it was the turn of the Czech Republic to show how good they are - they were very pretty but I was more amused by the gentleman who took a shine to Laura, even though she was really jet-lagged and had only been in the country 2 hours. She was informed that her 10 day stay was plenty long enough to get married and have children. This I found absolutely hilarious and was laughing too much to assist Laura in extricating herself from the situation. However, Laura can handle herself pretty well in such times and soon the man was retreating to chat up some other unsuspecting girl.

Tomorrow we are off to Whistler for the day which should be good fun.

Distance travelled today - 141 miles.

Bearwatch - 0. (But might see some in Whistler tomorrow, who knows!)