The journey to Vancouver continues
From Portland - Short but sweet in Portland, United States on Aug 01 '06
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Dragged our carcuses out of bed out of bed at 5.00am (after just 5 hours sleep) and jumped in the showers to ry and wake ourselves up. Packed our bags in the dark and boarded the trusty purple helmet. We left the hostel at 5.50am for Seattle and yes back on the same road as yesturday (I-5 North). Stopped quickly to get gas at Calama and with out any wrong turns we arrived sfae and sound at the car rental returns in Seattle Tacoma airport at 8.20am. As we managed to get there within 24 hours we managed to save about $130 so we soon forgot about how tired we were! We caught a Muni bus from the airport to 4th St and Jackson in downtown Seattle and walked the short distance to the Amtrak station. We left at 10.55am had to get out at the Canadian border for yet more questioning by boarder control and arrived in Vancouver rail/bus station at 2.25pm. We rang John and learnt that he had very kindly booked us into the 5 star Westin Bayshore hotel for the night. We caught a sky train and then the no 19 bus to the hotel which over looked the marina and Stanley Park. We checked in and went to our room no 414 to see we had not only a bay view room but also a king size bed! (A bit different to our usual bunk bed and dorm set up!) We lounged for a while then freshened up before we went out for a curry for our dinner (abit more flavour than our normal!) Afterwards we went for a walk in Stanley Park where we looked at the Totem Poles. We then made our way to the other side of the park to English Bay beach and sat on the sea wall where we watched the fireworks at 10.00pm which were part of Vancouvers week long 'celebration of life'. The display was really good and went on for about 30 mins. When we got back to our hotel we had a tray had been delivered of cheese, crackers, chilled bottle of wine and a card saying 'Welcome to Canada love John & family'. This was a lovely surprise and we very kind. Weather was warm and sunny but got colder as it got dark.
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