Hope to Vancouver
We got up quite early, did a final sanitary dump (of the van, not merely ourselves), then I did my share of today’s driving — all of 500 metres as it turned out, to the cafe across the road. I had bacon and eggs, and Debbie had bacon and toast. We wolfed it down, then drove to Vancouver. It’s not the most exciting drive. Soon enough we were getting a full urban overload, with businesses and their signwork everywhere.
We homed in on Fraserway RV Rental, missing it a couple of times before finally getting the right entrance.
It was busy but efficient. We were guided to a final parking place, where are mileage was checked, and a cursory examination of the vehicle’s condition was made. We spent an hour or so packing our bags, and found that we had a lot of stuff. We threw away a lot of rubbish and recycling, and we donated some left over cans and noodles to the food bank box in the office.
It was oppressively hot. The combination of this and heaving suitcases around soon made me drip with sweat.
Staff were spray-washing RVs as they arrived, and it was amusing to see the way they hared around in them as if they were golf carts, after we’d been so careful when ours was in our care.
After doing the final paperwork in the office, we were offered a shuttle bus to a downtown hotel of our choice. Although we weren’t staying at a hotel, nor downtown, we could have used this to get us closer, and hence get a cheaper taxi to Ruth and Dave’s. However, there were several large families also waiting for shuttles. They had as much, or more, luggage than us. It was hot (did I mention). So, we asked them to order us a taxi to take us directly to the house.
The taxi driver told us we must enter the national lottery — there’s some sort of huge jackpot. Time was, Britons could laugh in a condescending manner at countries with a national lottery. That privilege was lost a long time ago.
We arrived, let ourselves in, heaved luggage up the stairs, and found that their robot vacuum cleaner was on the loose. We placed our luggage off the floor in order to avoid confusing it. Then we took half an hour to recover from the effort in the heat.
We walked down towards Kitsilano Beach, and had a delicious late lunch of blackened salmon salad, at the “Fish!” cafe. Then we added a new item to our “things we have done” list, and queued for a swimming pool. This was Kitsilano’s outdoor pool, and it was doing a roaring trade. We did three lengths, slowly, with rests in between. We could tell it was more than 25 metres long. It was only later on that we learned it was 137 metres long, and Canada’s longest swimming pool.
Having cooled down, we managed our temperature for the walk uphill back to the house, by eating ice cream cones.
Dave turned up shortly after us, having taken an after-work swim himself, then Ruth arrived a little after that.
Later in the evening, they took us to Hapa Izayaki, a short walk away, for dinner. As is the Izayaki way, we ordered lots of small dishes to share. I think the highlight for everyone was the self-seared beef — eight thin raw slices of marbled steak, a very hot slab of marble, a pot of sesame dressing, and some garnish. Everything else was good too, and Ruth and Dave tasted their first kimchi.
When we got home, everyone was tired. Ruth and Dave are apologetic about going to bed so early, because of their working hours, but we were grateful for the excuse to sleep early ourselves.