From Routine to Poutine: My Canadian Adventure

So you may be asking yourself; what the heck is Poutine?! Well let me tell you, it is the most delicious thing on the planet. Its pretty much the same as cheesy chips and gravy...but better. The hole in the wall type eatery 'Mean Poutine' in Vancouver served nothing but the best for our first try of the good stuff. We even topped ours with spring onions and sriracha sauce, can it get any better? Believe it or not, it does...

Day one: As you can probably imagine, day one was pretty much a write-off, we had traveled for 9 hours on a plane to Vancouver and we were 8 hours out of whack with our timings. We ordered pizza to our AirBNB, which took 1 hour 40 to get to us (which was bang on their estimated time, crazy I know) and the pizza was god awful. Being pescatarian I was already slightly concerned about the amount of choice in foods I would have in a foreign country, and this terrible pizza and the frankly ridiculous waiting time didn't help these fears. However while I was waiting, classic Annie told me to get my camera out to keep me distracted from the hunger that was slowly killing me. Seeing the beauty of the city from our widow only made me more excited for the following day to come, and seeing a sunset made me excited for a good nights sleep (even if it was only half eight at night). 

Day 2: Yes we did go to bed at half eight, and yes we woke up at 5.30 am. And when I say woke up, I mean wide awake, ready to conquer the world type of awake. So that's what we set out to do! We were desperate to see what this beautiful city had to offer and while the sun was rising, it gave to us in abundance! We headed down to the harbour for an early morning walk and then headed to a lovely bakery that served the BEST Pain au chocolat which I devoured and James my partner had a lovely Blueberry bread with a nice helping of peppermint tea. We then hopped on the bus to the suspension bridge and tree walk at the Capilano river. There's something so freeing about being hundreds of feet above the ground on a sturdy wooden walk way, even surrounded by tourists. You can do this for a healthy $42 each. 

Day 3: Jet lag starting to wear off, but still early rising and rain pouring. We decided to head over to the recommended Granville Island. This place in the rain is very interesting. It reminded me of my days as an art student in Kent. There is an art school, which is obvious just by the type of students that are there. The place is filled with small shops with trinckety things in and lots of workshops where you can see people working on art (very cool). There's also a food market, where they see the biggest strawberries I've ever seen, and some other lovely food. We met an American couple who love to go to Canada for the sport and food too, and we very obviously avoided the conversation on guns...
We then hopped on a delightful little boat back over to where we were staying, which was nice to see the city from a different perspective. 

Day 4: How a place can go from freezing cold rain to 'I think I've burnt my face' I have no idea. But thats what happened on our 4th day in Vancouver. We came to Canada to mostly to have a break from the 9 to 5 but to also see somewhere new and to get outdoors and use our brilliant muscles that we sadly neglect when we slave away at a computer. So a hike it was! We had been told that there was a walk in Whistler around Lost Lake that was beautiful. Turns out Lost Lake is a great name for it, especially when I'm involved, as some of you know I very easily get lost. This was so worth it. The prize of a gorgeous lake with picturesque mountains in the background is just stunning. In fact as much as I  love photography, as I've mentioned before, the worst bit about it is there are some things that you just can't capture on a camera as well as your eye does. See for yourself:

Day 5: Another rainy day! I told you it was different weather every day, its a good job I packed every sort of clothing possible! I'm not going to lie, we probably stayed in Vancouver too long. This day was pretty much a write-off, considering it was blasting down with rain and we were in low season, which meant not much to do especially in this type of weather. We did try and do a walk round the famous Stanley Park, but if I'm honest, we couldn't see anything through fog and rain, and it was miserable walking in the rain. SO what did we do?!! WE WENT AND ATE POUTINE! Of course we did. We didn't stop at poutine either, we went to a 'pub' and ate fish tacos and chicken wings for James and drunk large pints of cold beer, which by the way they are really good at too. 

Day 5: ROAD TRIP! We literally spent the whole day driving, and I am not going to lie, it was one of my favourite days. Not only did we have a Jeep Wrangler (dream car material) but we found hidden beaches off the motorway and we drove through the most incredible mountains. Reaching Revelstoke was a blessing (Revelstoke is beautiful) and a curse (I never wanted to stop driving).

Day 6: The day of the Hike. This was the day we went on a real adventure. Up Revelstoke national park to reach the viewing point 10km up a steep mountain. no chance, I mean we could have done it but it was impossible. When we got 7km up (with the help of Dave, a random man we met on the way and master hiker and bear handler), we were knee deep in snow. We made it a nice distance and we were sufficiently knackered. We then did another drive over to Emerald lake! 

Day 7: Emerald lake was insane. It needs no words. 

Day 8: Off to Banff we go! Banff is a great city, there is loads of wildlife but a great city. We did an amazing ice walk up in Jasper which is about a 2 hour drive from Banff, which I would highly recommend. We used the time in Banff to really embrace Canada and prepare for the long trip home. 

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