Spent the day waiting to catch the flight to the northern Hemisphere by mouching around Auckland. We caught a ferry to Devonport, as much to get a view of the harbour as anything - cup of tea and return.
Auckland is peppered with around 50 volcanoes, pretty much every hill you can see is an extinct volcano, they're all small, no more than a couple of hundred feet high at tops, but the ones we saw were perfectly formed with a crater you could walk around, sadly all are extinct and pretty much grassed over. As a piece of trivia, US's album cover The Joshua Tree photo was taken here of the "One Tree Hill" volcano.
Arrived in Vancouver after a 14 hour flight still wearing shorts and a tee shirt - rapidly changed in the airport! It's cold and wet here. The centre where we're stopping feels fairly small but the city itself extends for miles. It has a small town feel and is the most "unbusy" of big cities we've been to so far.
Due to the wet we're a bit limited as to exploring, so we booked a seat on the float plane flight that does the mail run up the coast, stopping at various places dropping of posts and passengers. Sadly high winds the next day cancelled the flight.
There is a huge chinese influence in the city, it has a long and sometimes traumatic relationship with chinese immigrants, but now it seems proud of its Pacific links to the East. This garden was created by traditional Chinese artisans using materials totally imported from China and gifted to the city. Apparently built very authentically to a Ming Dynasty design.
Don't think we've seen the best of Vancouver, need to visit with more time and better weather, its another city based aound a huge waterfront that obviously likes the outdoors. The surrounding mountains were just visible in breaks in the cloud and I'm sure would have been stunning.
We've sorted out a train ride south to meet up with my relatives in Oregon, US, looking forward to meeting them, despite 0500 start for the train.
As a last meal in Vncouver we decided to have typical local food - Japanese seemed to fit the bill as we've struggled to work out a Canadian identity.
Bob and Jan's Tenner came for the beer, Carole prays for guidance on what to eat first. Great food.
How about this for a top taxi? Sadly not for hire.
Vancouver seems to be swarming in Toyota Prius hybrid cars, apparently all new taxis have to be hybrid. Why don't more cities do that.
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