VanAussie Daily

Hopkins Landing

Author: Jared

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It has been many days since my last blog post. This is because we’re into to our last two weeks here in Canada and there is just way too much to do in our last small amount of time here.

One thing we did do two weekends ago was escape to Hopkins Landing, which is only a single ferry ride away from Vancouver and right at the very south end of “the sunshine coast”, but it may as well be a world away when you’re whiling the time away in front of the gas fire and the stars are peeking in through the skylights.

The sunshine coast is called that because apparently it gets more sun than Vancouver annually, and its a favourite escape point for Vancouverites. We chose Hopkins Landing as it was so easy to get to and we could walk to our holiday cabin from the ferry… We sold our truck a few months ago, so we’re down to public transport and our feet for getting ourselves around.

The cabin we rented was fantastic. Grand views across the water to the back side of Cypress Mountain, framed by Gambier island on our left and Keats and Bowen island on our right. You may have read my blog post from where we climbed up Mt Gardener on Bowen island this time last year. To save me describing the cabin in great detail, here’s a collage of the interior, taken using the Autostitch iPhone app.

Here’s a sunrise view from out the front:

After spending three nights at this place we didn’t want to leave…

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March 22nd, 2011  |  Posted in In and around BC, scenery, travel  |  1 Comment »

Come with me on my daily trip to work

Author: Jared

I thought I’d bring you guys with me on my trip to work, starting with the view from our patio and ending with the trip on the skytrain from Waterfront station all the way down to Riverrock Casino. My trip from there on is pretty uneventful, so this is all you get

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March 13th, 2011  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, scenery, Timelapse  |  No Comments »

Freeze line

Author: Jared

One of the nice things about being in Vancouver during the winter is waking up and seeing the north shore mountains absolutely covered with snow, all the way down to a certain point. This is the freeze line, and it’s such an obvious cut off most of the time that it is quite remarkable to see it cut across the faces of all the mountains almost straight as a die.

The lights of North Vancouver seem to shine more brightly and the place just seems so much prettier when the freeze line is low. I think so anyway!

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February 26th, 2011  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Going to miss, scenery  |  No Comments »

Timelapse: Drive up to Cypress Mountain

Author: Jared

I put together a quick timelapse of our trip up to Cypress the other day to go skiing. Was a great fun day, found a new run that was a lot of fun (trees then open with jumps to play on), got stuck on an intense run that was made up of 2ft by 2ft chunks of ice from where everyone had been carving up the powder the day before – sucks to arrive a day late!

Anyhoo, here’s the vid:

Music is “Dr Yang” by Ben Folds

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February 23rd, 2011  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver  |  No Comments »

Dog friendly

Author: Jared

One thing I’m certainly going to miss is just how dog friendly everybody and everywhere is over her in Vancouver and BC in general. Around town folks take their dogs with them everywhere, like for instance I saw someone last night taking their rather large dog into the bottle shop opposite our apartment.

The other cool thing is how comfortable folks are sharing their apartments with pooches. To an Aussie, if your going to have a dog then you HAVE to have a back yard with tall fences and a discreet corner you can try to train them to poop in. In Vancouver it’s the done thing to have dogs in apartments, many as small as 400 or 500 square feet with one bedroom or less.

In our previous building there was a Great Dane that lived there too. You know, the giant dog that you can almost walk under? Yep, one of them. Actually, there’s another one in the building just up from our current pad. There’s just something funny/weird about seeing a dog in an elevator. Sure, they’re acting all casual as if no dog anywhere else would ever get freaked out about it and it’s just the “done thing”, right?

When we first got here we were shocked, as we applied our Australian ideals to the Vancouver setting. That’s not right though, and if folks over here thought that they had to have a yard to have a dog then only a fraction of folks would be able to experience the company of a canine.

It would be an interesting life though, having a dog in an apartment, and quite possibly more social as you would be taking them out to water and run at the local park multiple times a day, running into other folks, talking dog, talking community, talking politics, talking whatever.

This is something that we wanted to try, having a dog in an apartment that is, but maybe it’s something we’ll have to try next time…

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February 18th, 2011  |  Posted in Different things in Canada, Downtown Vancouver, Going to miss, In and around BC, Musings  |  No Comments »

CanAussie Australia Day BBQ

Author: Jared

What a great day this was! We had a BBQ to celebrate Australia day on the Saturday following Australia Day, out in Stanley Park under Ceperley Pavillion near 2nd beach. Now, this may sound like a great place to host an event during summer when it’s warm, but during the winter when it’s cold and miserable outside you really have to wonder…

Still, what’s Australia Day without a BBQ? We had around 25 hardy souls turn up with ages ranging from under 20 to well over 65, and multiple countries too, not just Australian and Canadian!

Of course it rained for much of the day, so we weren’t able to have the usual game of football or cricket, but it was great hanging out with a bunch of other Aussies for the day. We also managed to raise over $100 that has already been donated towards the Queensland flood appeal. A big shout out goes to all those who do donated and the Clancy’s Meat franchisee in Nordel who donated a bunch of snags and patties to keep the BBQ cooking. A big thanks also goes to Brooke who baked 30 lamingtons, all of which disappeared within minutes of the covers being pulled off.

Here’s some happy snaps, courtesy of Anna and Ben,

Some of the crew earlier on – there was up to 25 or so later on:

Yours truly manning the BBQ, with Brooke and Richard monitoring quality control

And some pictures courtesy of Brooke:

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February 11th, 2011  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Food, scenery, Weather  |  No Comments »

The seawall & bright clear winter days

Author: Jared

One thing we’re going to miss for sure is the Seawall. This is the bike and walking path that skirts Vancouver for kilometers, stretching from the western corner of kits all the way to Science World on False Creek, then back out and around Stanley Park.

At the moment it’s great, as we live less than five minutes walk from the section that skirts the southern side of the downtown peninsula, so we can duck out there whenever we want for a stroll.

While it can be a little chilly in the winter, I think that part of the seawall is almost one of the sunburst parts if Vancouver on the really crisp, cold blue sky days that sporadically pop up amongst the dreary drizzly snowy gray days that we get otherwise.

We took advantage of one such day last Sunday, going for a stroll on the seawall, and even though the temperature would have been maximum 3 degrees c, lots of other Vancouverites joined us too.

I’m going to miss having such a wonderful, long, flat easy stroll so close to us. Every city should have something like the Vancouver Seawall!

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February 3rd, 2011  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Going to miss  |  No Comments »

Just Right

Author: Jared

Something I’m certainly not going to miss is some of the breakfast cereals over here. Just Right is a bland piss poor excuse for the toasted golden goodness that I remember in Australia, and Special K flakes look like they’ve been put on a Fatkins Diet, and are now pale, shaky looking things about 20% of their “normal” size.

If you want decent Special K you have to buy the Special K that has dried strawberries in it, as that has normal size flakes and the added tasty goodness of sweet petrified red flesh. Only problem is, that stuff is ‘spensive!

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January 28th, 2011  |  Posted in Different things in Canada, Not going to miss  |  1 Comment »

Less than three months

Author: Jared

It’s now almost two months till we’re on an airplane and heading back to Australia. Permanently. How crazy is that?

Like I’ve said before, this brings mixed feelings, as there’s some things I’m looking forward to doing at home, but there’s others that I’m going to miss from Vancouver. So seeing as I haven’t really got anything big that we’re doing right now to write about, I thought I’d do a few quick little posts when it springs to mind about things that I am and am not going to miss about Vancouver.

First thing? Something I’ll miss: The Skytrain. Generally clean, reliable and with a good amount of stops, it really brings this city together, you know? Like a good rug. As a matter of fact, I’m on it now, and have been catching it regularly to work for about the last 8 months or so.

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January 27th, 2011  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Going to miss, Musings  |  No Comments »