The longest of days yesterday - it sure takes a while to get over to the West coast of Canada from the UK. Especially when your conncting flight goes even further into Europe, like mine did. Up at around 6:30am, then off to Edinburgh airport, which was extremely busy - groups of kilted Scotsmen off to celebrate NYE in various cities across the continent. After a short flight to Schipol in Amsterdam, a long series of queues later, I was again en route to North America, just under 10hrs away. I had a brief set-to with a pimply Dutch security guard about the bottle of water I was carrying - I'm fully aware of the liquid restrictions, but I'd bought it at Edinburgh airport and even had the receipt to prove it. He wasn't budging though "You can either drink it here, or we shrow it away" he said (Dutch accents are hard to type phonetically). I shrew it away.
I'm always entranced by the on-board map you get on planes, the little aeroplane graphic inching slowly across the world. We flew in a curving arc over the UK, Iceland, Greenland, and the far north of Canada, pictured above. It was like this for hours, just rock, ice and water, flat and featureless. I got talking to the woman next to me, who was from Vancouver and had just come back from seeing friends in Madid (I think her name was Zoila, or something similar). I aksed her if anybody lived down there. "Oh yeah, miners mostly. Gets to 50 below in winter. A tough place to live - they don't bring their families". We flew over the Great Slave Lake, which was the other side of the plane when I took this photo. Then over the Rockies and on towards the coast.
Vancouver is ringed with mountains, Zoila pointed out all the names, but the only one I can remember is Grouse Mountain. It reminded me of the time I flew over the Southern Alps in New Zealand, massive craggy peaks covered in snow. Winter sports are a major thing here, and almost every mountain had flat white ski runs sliding down the side from the tops. Large floodlights picked them out, so each looked like a shimmering white ribbon. We flew really close to them, getting incredible views of the city, before shooting past and banking hard right for the final approach. I managed to clear customs and immigration quite quickly, and amazingly my trusty Lowe Alpine ruckpack was quietly whirring around on the conveyor when I got there.
After a few buses into town, we arrived at our accommodation - we are staying here, and it's brilliant. I think Andy and Jess were so impressed they'd like to move in immediately. It's a fantastically-appointed studio flat with a seperate bedroom, all Ikea-d up and with a friendly owner who lives upstairs. He introduced himself whilst struggling to hold a large tabby cat that wanted to bolt out into the garden. We had a quick tour from him, then dumped our stuff and headed off to meet the others staying at the Sheraton (oh yes), then to a burger place downtown for some food and beers. The Canucks (ice hockey) were playing, and this place offered $2 beers every time they scored. I think they got 5 or 6 in the end. By then we were flagging, and we got the bus back. I started to unpack, and looked at my alarm clock - still set to Edinburgh time. It said 6:30am. 24hrs on the go...
