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Day 91- 97, 10-17 Oct 2008: Totems, servers, sushi & parks in Vancouver

Vancouver is a nice city. Even though we had to get used to being in a large place again, we enjoyed the neighbourhoods, the bicycle lanes, the beaches, Chinatown, Sushi. I will keep this report short and just show you some images.

We were surprised by the large number of homeless people in the streets downtown and the lack of a real ‘tourist’ area. A lot is going on in Vancouver as the Olympic Wintergames will be here in less than 16 months: new buildings, houses and more.

We spend many days resting at Kristen’s place. I had to transfer many websites from one host to another, which is the electronic version of emigrating an entire family, but all went well and now www.BikeTravellers.com, www.ExposedPlanet.com and some others are finally reachable and fast again.

We went into some big outdoor and bicycle shops but did not really need anything. I commented about this on Bikeradar, a well-known website that had reviewed our Santos Travelmaster:

I am currently testing it on our ride from Alaska to Argentina. The bike is great, no problems whatsoever. My girlfriend, riding the same bike, and me were in a big Vancouver bikeshop after finishing the first 5000km, including about 800-1000km unpaved (Dalton Highway, Denali Highway and Cassiar Highway).

‘What do we need for our bikes?’ we asked eachother, looking hungry at all the nice gear and tools.

‘Ehhhh?’

In the end we realized we have to change the oil (recommended after 5000km) and as we already had the spare Rohloff oil with us, we bought nothing.

And once you have tried the Rohloff, you will never want to go back 🙂

(tripreports can be found on http://WorldOnABike.com).

After our first long trip on into town –on foot- ended up with blisters 🙂 we started using our bikes and toured around the city and through Stanley Park. The park is quite big and houses many trails for cyclists (one way!) and hikers. We saw raccoons, geese and met some nice guys who invited us for dinner after we managed to meet them again a few hours later

Of course we ate a lot, both in Kristen’s place as well as in town, the biggest find being an all you can eat Sushi Buffet! We found out that it was Canadian Thanksgiving (which is about a month before the US version), and Kristen and her housemates all went out to eat with friends and family. Just when we thought we would have to spend the evening alone, we got an email from Carol and Barry, inviting us for thanksgiving in their place in North Vancouver! It was great to see Barry again and meet Carol, who is full of wonderful stories; the food was delicious and we felt privileged to be there with them.

It was time to get to Seattle, but we decided that we did not want to go straight down, through the non-stop Metropolitan area of Northern Washington State. We decided to visit Victoria first…

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Comments

4 Responses to “Day 91- 97, 10-17 Oct 2008: Totems, servers, sushi & parks in Vancouver”
  1. Saludos desde Cancun, no dejo de seguirlos en su recorrido, Que buenas Fotos estan estupendas.
    Cuidense mucho y sigan disfrutando.
    Vero y Hector

    Regards from Cancun, I don’t stop to follow them in their journey That good Pictures are stupendous.
    Take care a lot and continue enjoying.

  2. Regards from Cancun, I don’t stop to follow them in their journey That good Pictures are stupendous.
    Take care a lot and continue enjoying.

    Vero and Héctor their guests in Holland remind Us?

  3. Janaina says:

    The pics are so very cool! No doubts you guys are having a terrific experience!
    But… er… mmm… where is Pablito?! Can’t find his blog either… =(

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