From ritches to rags

Today was the day we began fairing it on our own. We left the beautiful 'burbs, fantastically accommodating relatives and our luxurious condo behind to head into the city to stay in our first hostel. At $55 a night, how good can it be? After all it was called St Clair hotel, the hotel part should stand for something right? Wrong.

But its not as bad as it sounds, luckily its clean. As you can see below, its functional, minimal but functional. You get two beds, two mirrors, a sink, and a window. And of coarse the obligatory hostel smell, kind of a backpacker cross old smell, all free of charge. So all in all pretty good deal. 

But we are in vancouver right? So the natural beauty of the city should overpower the aggressively average hostel? Yes of course,  so we've made the decision to stick to the outdoors. And that's where the fun begins. 

Within 23 seconds of stepping foot outside the hostel doors I am immediately approached by a man and asked if I were to require any magic mushrooms. I respectfully declined his rather generous offer and we were on our way. But thats a minority of people in vancouver (along with the homeless man loudly talking and bickering at the bottom of our window). The rest of the people here are fantastic. Perfect example, we were having dinner tonight at white spot, a famous burger joint which was crazy amazing, including poutine that was out of this world (see below). The waiter, a really nice guy, recognised we were overseas visitors and gave us the full run down on the restaurants history, then we began talking about hockey, which i find it absolutely awesome that everyone is so incredibly passionate about it, and he refered us to this open training session and two games for the vancouver canucks tomorrow all free of charge. He even went to the effort to organise the tickets for us which was awesome, so now we have to rise tomorrow nice and early for our 8:15am start.

  We were also taken around stanley park today by fred and jill which was fantastic, and as it turns out is massively huge. Its not something i can really describe in words, more of a picture kind of experience so that will come tomorrow when we hit the computer. Although I attached one photo below.

One notably awesome thing about stanley park are the squirrels, at times it looked like they literally fell out of the sky, but more on that tomorrow with the photos.

So bedtime, ready for an early start!

Night,

Kristian & Lauren.