Okay, so we spent Saturday afternoon, night, and morning in downtown Vancouver, BC. I have to admit, we didn’t really like it. I don’t understand why – everything we have heard made us think it would be a ton of fun… were we in the wrong area?
We stayed at a hostel right in downtown – this was one of the problems. It was the cheapest downtown place we could find (at $60/night just for a bed), and it was probably the worst night of sleep I have had on this trip. The bed was uncomfortable, which usually isn’t too big of an issue, but I had lots of time to notice it while I was tossing and turning and not sleeping because it was so freakin’ loud. Seriously – people banging on our door at 3:12am, babies crying, sirens, peoples’ conversations that sounded like they were in our room… it was ridiculous.
I would also like to tell you about a guy who Ben and I have named “Purple Pants.” We first noticed him when we went out to the car after checking in at the hostel. He was an older, wandering type of man who was just pacing that area of the sidewalk. We got in the car and started looking at our map and a couple minutes later noticed that he was just standing at the back corner of the car staring at it. In fact, when I glanced in the rearview mirror, it was like he was looking me right in the eyes. As you may have guessed, we drove away at that point. We went out to eat and drove around and then came back to the hostel… he was still there, and that is when we noticed the purple pants. They were the tightest, thinnest, purple spandex pants I have ever seen – think aerobics style. Holy cow! He was still pacing. We saw him a few times over the evening, but never really had any interactions with him, which I’m kind of thankful for.
And! Let me tell you about the fiasco with overnight parking! So, apparently break-ins are very common in the city, so we were warned to be careful about where we park. The hostel staff suggested a lot a few blocks away, so we went there. Well, all the parking garages in the city have a height limit of 6’6” – this is not tall enough for the car with the rocketbox on top. We pulled to a little side area to try and figure out what to do. We really didn’t want to park on the street because it’s impossible for us to empty the car and make it look barren.
So, with reluctance, we decided to take the box off and try to fit it inside of the car… not easy. We really should have emptied it first, but out of laziness we didn’t. Ben freed it from the roof rack, and we slowly slid it off the roof until we were supporting it in an overhead press position. Right away, I could tell it was too heavy for me, but I already couldn’t put my end back on the roof. Ben started to lower his side in order to switch his grip, and my elbows just buckled. Knowing the box would crash to the ground if I tried to switch to an underhand position, I clumsily lowered the box to rest on my head. This was not a smart move… I mean, what the heck do I do from there? And then, I started to laugh uncontrollably. It was all just too much ridiculousness for me to handle. Ben, mostly frustrated and also in problem-solving mode, ended up doing this fancy move where he balanced the box on his thighs while in the squat position so that I could collect myself. Then, somehow, we managed to get the box into the car. Geez.
Oh, and then it turned out that parking for the garage was from 6am-6am. So, we had to wake up at 5:45 this morning and walk to the car to renew our ticket (which meant paying for another entire day) so that we could sleep another couple hours.
Other than that, nothing was really bad, but just kind of underwhelming. We ate a decent dinner, but it wasn’t anything special. We walked around, but nothing was very impressive. We went out this morning and had a good breakfast and watched the Panthers game, and all of it but the price was awesome. Oh well! Maybe we’ll try again another time, Vancouver!
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