Out and Aboot

Hi Folks,

Well now we know why the "O" appears before anyone says Canada. What an amazing place - and we've only explored Vancouver. We've spent the past few days exploring what is without doubt one of the nicest cities we have ever visited.

Despite getting the cable car up to the top of Grouse Mountain for cracking views across the city and surrounding area, aside from staying in some amazing hotels (including the Fairmont), irrespective of exploring the huge Stanley Park on bikes (which is 20% bigger than Central Park), the highlight has undoubtedly been seeing an ice hockey game.

We saw the Vancouver Canucks play the Chicago Blackhawks in the play-offs for the Stanley Cup (which was a very generous surprise which Emma organised - honestly, it's amazing what trouble she can get up to when i leave her alone for 5 minutes). What an amazing experience it was, even though our knowledge of the sport was a 5 minute look on wikipedia and a mis-spent youth playing EA NHL on the megadrive. That didn't stop us from getting right into the game - joining in the chants of "bullshit" every time the ref made a dodgy decision and "Puck off" when things weren't going their way (unsurprisingly that was my personal favourite).

We were probably the only folk to leave the stadium happy as the Canucks lost 4-2. However i definitely think that we could get into the sport in the future.

Aside from watching sport and sampling the city's different beers, we have been putting the finishing touches to our final few weeks of travelling. We had thought of extending our stay in Canada, however a quick call to Delta soon changed our mind - as it would have cost around $2000 to change our flights to Washington!! So we head for Seattle (with my new bag in tow) by train on Tuesday night before flying to Washington on Thursday night. After a few nights there, we hope to stay in a nice wee cottage/shed in Cape Cod. Then it's off to the Big Apple to max out our credit cards before heading home.

Anyway, I'd better get back to watching the ice hockey on TV.....

Ricky

P.S. I had thought to entitle the blog "Puck Off" but i thought that might be a bit offensive. So instead I thought I'd insult the way Canadians speak.