Mountains

I finally made it up to the mountains on sunday, I'll shut up and let the pictures speak for themselves

This is the view from about halfway down Cypress looking back over Vancouver

Hangover cure

Today we had a wander along the beach to clear our heads after Matt's birthday assault on the beer menu at the Morrissey last night.

Along the way we bumped into these chaps, I don't know what they're so happy about, standing around with no shirts on in the freezing cold.

Ah, now I can see what they're smiling about...

Fighting on ice

On sunday Amy and Leigh took me to see the ice hockey. First a small girl comes out and sings the canadian national anthem, cue much shuffling of feet and looking around embarrassed. At least I had an excuse for not knowing the words. Then some men skate around very quickly chasing a rubber thingy and each team want to put the rubber thingy up each others goals. Like this...

Then you get a hotdog and some beer and a zeppelin comes out and drops things on the crowd

Sorry there's no pictorial evidence of the hotdog it didn't hang around very long. The zeppelin is then followed by a big hairy man in a buggy who shoots t shirts into the crowd

Then the men come on again to have a big skatey scrap, this is the moment when the vancouver men (I think that's what the teams called) nearly put the rubber thing up the other mens goal. But didn't

Anyway, I'm now an expert on the ice hockey as you can see. For those who are interested it was Vancouver Giants 1 (quite short for giants) Red Deer Rebels 3.

My new addiction

This stuff is amazing. There's a clue in the name but just in case you didn't get it, here's the ingredients

Dried Clam broth, yum yum. It's actually a lot nicer than it sounds, a slightly salty tomato juice, it makes amazing bloody marys

Breakfast

In between all the work and bumping into people I used to work with, I like to stuff my face. This morning we found an excellent face stuffing emporium.

The Templeton is a fairly authentic 50's diner. We both had eggs benny...

I realise that I've effectively just blogged about what I had for breakfast, but I don't care because it was so good. They're open till 11 at night and they serve beer, so I've made it my mission to work my way through the menu.

The hills are alive...

...with the sound of Matt hurting himself.

Matt went snowboarding up one of these on sunday. I was far more sensible, I went to the pub with Amy and Leigh to watch the rugby with hats advert break that is the Superbowl.

The Fog

The weather changes really quickly here. We got home from work yesterday and it had been bright sunshine for the whole journey, and then within five minutes it was like this...

Check out our wheels..

This is a Chevy Impala which according to Drive, which I watched on the plane over is the commonest car in the north american continent. And that's Matt, he's the commonest blah blah blah....

Today was our first clear day and the first time I've properly seen the mountains. Aren't they big?

This is the sky train. It's a train... in the sky