In a spontaneous last minute decision, my friend, Mark convinced me to join him on his trip to BC. We came up with a plan to rent a car and road trip to various locations over the course of one week.
I arrived in Vancouver from Montreal. After picking up my bags, I took a bus from the airport towards downtown. Since the buss was packed and I had my large backpack, I stood up near the front with my bag rested on the wheel well. For a public bus, the bus driver provided some great entertainment! He talked to everyone, told jokes, and he really made it a fun ride! I got off downtown and walked around until I found the hostel where my friend was staying. This was the HI-Vancouver Downtown Hostel hihostels.
ca It was a nice place, and we shared a room with a young french couple. After getting checked in and dropping of my bags, we set out to visit the city.
We explored some of the city, and enjoyed a lunch by the water. There is some great scenery in Vancouver with the waterfront and the mountains in the background. We continued to wander around until we realized we needed a map. We stopped at a Holiday Inn to raid their tourist booth and pick up some information and a map. While we were there, one of the employees helped us out, as she thought we were staying in the hotel. She was very nice, and gave us some great information! We managed to find our car rental location and went to pick up our car so that we would be ready to leave early in the morning.
Armed with the car we were able to cover much more area around town and drove around for the rest of the day. We checked out Granville Island and the public market which was a nice location. We got lost driving around which was fine because we did not have a destination really, simply a mission to explore! We drove around Stanley Park and snapped some pictures along the way. We saw the BC Stadium, The harbour, and drove out to Jericho Park and UBC, to get acquainted with the area. Although we were leaving in the morning we planned to be back for another day at the end of the trip.
That night we met up with a friend of Mark's for dinner, and went for a walk around town, we enjoyed a tasty Gelato from mondo Gelato I think was the place. Later we would borrow some camping supplies from him so that we could use along our road trip. Our trip was outlined to visit Kelowna, Whistler, Nanaimo, Tofino, and Victoria before returning to Vancouver. With a limited amount of time, we planned to spend one night in each location, but had no reservations and therefore no obligations. We are both very good drivers, so with over 2000km of terrain to cover we planned to split driving duties.
For Day 1 on BC Bonanza it was very nice, but this was only the beginning of our exciting journey.We slept at the hostel that night before setting out the next day towards our first destination of Kelowna.
