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Vancouver is quite a good looking, international, extremely friendly place. Perhaps due to it being Easter weekend, however, couchsurfing.org proved quite difficult for finding places to stay. After lagging around in Seattle at Kelly's before leaving, we finally decided just to book it north to figure things out from there. Online we had found that a hostel might be a relatively cheap option that could also provide some interesting socializing with other travelers. Sounded fun. The Cambie Hostel downtown was our pick and, right off the bat, we worked in some good introductions with some internationals over a few drinks. Nationalities included Germany, France, Australia, Canada, USA, and Ireland.
One of the folks, Markus, was from Munich and wandered the neighborhood with us to see a bit of Vancouver's nightlife and talk with us about our respective travel plans. Markus' plan is quite grand -- he's circling the globe . . . but his plans are quite open-ended, as ours are, so we really had a great time talking travel philosophy with him. He was really great with his English and always was extremely excited with our ability to understand him with harder German-English translations. His excitement was pretty contagious. Upon running into him again around the end of our stay, he offered to drive us out to where we had parked our car across town. Markus rules.
After getting hardly any sleep due to our Thursday night excitement with Markus and others, Kyle and I went for the discounted frontier breakfast at a sister hostel before driving the car across town for free parking. The area we chose was Hadden Park across the Burrard Bridge from downtown. The beach was filled with dogs and sun and was a perfect spot for a bench nap. Eventually we passed by Lily, a stranger who had called out as we walked past to see if we had a cigarette. Lily and her friend, Wayne, are Vancouver natives and frequent this particular spot as they live very closeby. Both are extremely welcoming people and for this very reason, having no agenda for our day, we chose to sit and hang out with them. Our relaxation and conversation with them extended all through the day to the evening. Wayne's friends came to join us and I pulled the guitar out for some blues and Neil Young songs. As dinner time arrived, we made our way over to hang out at Wayne's for a few drinks before finally heading back downtown to check into our hostel for another night.
It was quite a long and interesting day socializing with so many new and friendly folks. Kyle and I were really exhausted. With our new hostel room being just above the loud pub, we opted for a night cap while the The Whiskey Dicks, a local Irish drinking band, finished up their set downstairs. We had planned to pass out a little earlier than usual...BUT......
...Terry, the man seated in the the neighboring booth, turned to us after The Whiskey Dicks finished their set and sparked up some conversation. Terry was older and had just seen the Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks concert and was elated having gone. He joined us in our booth when he realized that, despite our age, Kyle and myself are actually quite knowledgeable about the 60's and 70's music and are young travelers. Terry had decided to fill the night with beer and activities instead of a hotel room since his flight would be leaving back to Whistler so early the next morning. Man are we glad those were his plans. The man bought two pitchers instantly for us to enjoy, no questions asked. He was extremely fun to be hanging around. He had been a roadie for a few different bands in the eighties and was pretty familiar with the Vancouver scene. Recognizing our own love of music, he opted to take us right across the street to the Railway Club where he quickly paid all of our covers and treated us to another few beers while a great local indie band Free City Collective finished their set. It was awesome to see the high energy of their close and to finally get some quality live music on our trip.
The night began to come to its end around 3 o'clock as the club started to close. Terry gave us his final recommendations that we head up to Whistler, wished us luck, and headed off with good wishes from us. Though Whistler has not ended up as part of our plan, our outstanding times in Vancouver should be quite enough encouragement for a return trip in the future. Perhaps Whistler will have to wait until I have my snowboard with me.
And back in the states now. Camped out in the Southeast Washington along our drive to Sun Valley, ID. Time to get back to some creative projects...
Assorted photos of our first 25 days on the road...
Soundtrack: Howlin' Wolf, Herbie Hancock, The Smiths' Meat is Murder, Spoon's Kill the Moonlight, The Specials, Beethoven, Talking Heads, Toro y Moi, Four Tet, Grizzly Bear, Bob Dylan, Apparat and his side-projects, The Mekons, The Replacements, Califone, Red Red Meat, Flipper, Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin, Beck's Mutations, House of Love's "Shine On" and others, and T54...
Great post and pics! Discovering a lot! xo
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