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325 – the summary of a trip around the world
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Category Archives: Canada
Halifax – a relaxed last week
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Toronto – Another Top 5 couchsurfing, friends of friends and a couple of famous waterfalls
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New London & Montreal – a Hungerian night in a Highschool and a Parisian reunion
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Vancouver – Bavarian reunion
We were quite lucky that we didn’t have to organize accommodation for Vancouver, as Johanna – a former study colleague of Tobi – left Munich a few weeks before us in order to live in Vancouver for a year. So we wrote her a few weeks in advance and of course she said it’s ok for us to sleep on the floor. It even became better, as she moved to a new apartment 5 days prior to our arrival which had a convertible couch. Luxury, ey?
After a long but beautiful drive through the fantastic landscape of Canada, we arrived at her location and she directly introduced us to the typical Vancouver Monday evening life. We went to the beach just a few blocks away, which offers countless free activities for locals. Volleyball, Beachball, picnic areas and Yoga, just to name a few. As we didn’t have dinner already, we chose one of the thousand Chinese restaurants nearby and of course we finished with a beer. Just like in Bavaria. Johanna also told us everything we need to know about Vancouver. As we also figured out the next day, the main thing is the following:
Vancouver is quite famous, not just because of the Olympic Winter Games five years ago, but it doesn’t have a lot of touristic attractions to offer. So not comparable to LA, San Francisco or Las Vegas. It’s more a hub for tourists and backpackers who take off to discover the wilderness of Canada from there. On the other hand, it offers a lot for locals, why we chose to participate to that after we discovered Downtown and the surrounding areas the following day. First we walked over Granville Island and its cute market, visited the Waterfront and the Canada Place with the Convention Centre (which looks a bit like a copy of the Opera House in Sydney), saw Gastown (which has the oldest gas clock in the world) and walked along Stanley Park.
The next day Johanna had a free day, why we drove with her and two of her friends along the beautiful coast line between Vancouver and Whistler to the Chief, which is a mountain we wanted to climb. Unfortunately, we were unlucky with the weather for our whole time in Vancouver. Like along most of the west coast, there were forest fires around Vancouver and that’s why Vancouver was covered with smoke clouds the whole week. Therefore we didn’t see anything of the famous coast line instead of some shapes in the smoke. The hike was great anyway (even though quite exhausting with 600m elevation change within 3km), because the smoke gave the area a quite mystic touch. In the evening, Kerstin and Johanna went to a Yoga lesson, while Tobi had a powernap on the beach 🙂
Johanna took us to her campus the next day, which is said to be one of the nicest in Northern America for a reason. After Johanna showed us her office and gave us some hints for exploring the campus, we went off. We saw the botanical Gardens, the Biodiversity and Anthropology Museum. But everything only from the entry, as the admission was really expensive. Don’t they get enough money from the students anyway? We continued walking around after having lunch together with Johanna and were really impressed. One can only dream of having such a nice campus in Germany. In the evening we all met at the Canada Place for a free Open Air Cinema to watch “Despicable Me”. Friday was more a relaxing and organisation day. After a lot of comparing we finally found a good flight from San Diego to Washington D.C. We met again at the Campus in the evening, as there was a presentation going on. Every second Friday, one grad student presents one topic, which could be anything but related to his studies. Quite funny idea, and that’s how we learned something new about time travels. Afterwards we finally wanted to try the most typical Canadian dish, Poutine. The traditional one is French fries with gravy and cheese, but there is a bunch of variations available as well. E.g. chicken, vegetables or even an extra portion of French fries 😉 It’s actually really good but extremely heavy and afterwards one feels like having eaten a few stones.
On Saturday, the big Khatsalano Mucic and Street Art Festival was going on in Kitsilano, so directly at Johanna’s place. While we were walking around trying free tastings, it even started raining. We didn’t expect that we’d be happy about rain once on our trip. Having had another beer with some other study colleagues of Johanna, we went to Downtown in order to watch a free Stand Up Comedy show. Another friend of Johanna managed to get 6 free tickets for the show and invited us. It was a really cool experience, especially because we understood almost everything, our English actually seemed to have improved 🙂 You see, we had quite an anti-tourist program, but got a really good inside view to the life in Vancouver, which might be even better! Vancouver definitely got part of our Top 5 city ranking so far!
Unfortunately that was already it. Our time in Vancouver was over and we left Johanna driving back to the States going back to L.A. along the coast. It was awesome to see a known face from Munich! After the (sorry) asshole at the border control finally let us back to the states, we drove to our first stop, Seattle. But as always, that’s another story.
Banff: a short trip to Canada’s wilderness
Actually, except of a short stop in Vancouver, we hadn’t planned a bigger trip in the west of Canada. But after the recommendation of Mike from Salt Lake City, we decided to make a short trip to the wilderness of this huge country. As it was only a marginal detour of 1000km, we decided to visit Banff national park not knowing that it is one of the most beautiful national parks of Canada ( as Lonely Planet says…), but one thing after the other.
We were probably quite lucky to cross the border on a public holiday, because the expected waiting time of 30 minutes turned into only 2-3 minutes. One realises quite quickly that Canada is a distinct to the USA. Everything is a bit solitary and more quiet compared to the relatively dense population of America. You are driving for hundreds of km without seeing one single town and if you do, it is most of the times a service station, a motel or camp ground. Close to the border to Banff national park it changes a bit, because apparently we are not the only ones who are able to hold a lonely planet in the right angle. The villages in and around the park (correctly spoken it is 3 connected parks) are quite touristy and full of appropriate shops. Now, the fortune we had during crossing the border turned around. Due to the long weekend (Canada’s national public holiday was the 1st of July) the park and all the campgrounds were completely full. After 3 trials of getting a spot for our tent, without success (this time we couldn’t find a couchsurfer), we randomly passed a parking lot signed as “overflow camping”. As there weren’t no facilities, it was quite cheap which was perfect for us, as we were just looking for a piece of land for our tent.
After a pretty cold and rainy night next to a snoring Indian, we discovered the main parts of the park, as we already got a first chance to see the beauty and natural landscape of Canada while driving the day before. One could say, it resembles quite a bit Glacier national park, but is larger, better and more beautiful (but that doesn’t mean Glacier NP wasn’t pretty!). There are countless 4000+ peaks, glaciers, lakes, glacier lakes, untouched pine forests and wild animals. We were quite hopeful to spot a bear, but this time the luck wasn’t on our side.
We made two hikes, the first in the Johnston Canyon with two beautiful waterfalls and the second one along the famous Lake Louise to a tea house at Lake Agnes (During the second hike Kerstin had a new hiking record as we did 3.6 km and 360m in altitude in 55 minutes!). Just awesome! Mainly Lake Louise has a crazy colour reminding us of Lake Pukaki in New Zealand, but a little milkier giving the turquoise colour a surreal effect.
Before we left the park, we made short stops at Lake Herbert and at a viewpoint without view on Lake Hektor (no idea about the weird names of the lakes). Afterwards we left the park in the direction of Golden spending there another night in the tent and driving the next day to Vancouver. As the reception of the campground was closed and 32$ were a bit too much, we were about to leave again, but then a Canadian girl named Enry talked to Tobi asking if we could share a tent side. She was on her way to Lake Louise but got caught in the traffic jam why she decided to continue the next morning. Of course we agreed and chatted quite long to her. In addition, she prepared dinner for her brother, who she wanted to meet at Lake Louise, but that food had to be eaten se we helped her! 🙂
The next morning we continued our journey to Vancouver to see Johanna, but that is another story…