Vancouver

So on our way to Vancouver Brian got his first full body scan in the naked scanners.  He went back through security to grab money out of the ATM as we had loads of time.  So the guy got suspicious the second time around.  Getting from Vancouver airport to the hotel was pretty easy.  We were staying in a hotel cause the hostels in Vancouver are so very very expensive.  It was a choice between a hotel outside of downtown right beside the subway/tram or a hostel for the same price in a very bad part of town which was'nt very clean.  On the plane we were told by the friendly guy next to us that it never ever snows in Vancouver just in the surrounding area.  We took the Skytrain from the airport to our hotel and as soon as we got off it we were covered in snow.  It was a downright blizzard.  In the end only about an inch stuck but the receptionist in the hotel also told us it never snowed and we must have brought the weather with us (not sure where from...).  The hotel was really and for some reason had two double beds like a lot of hotel rooms we have stayed in which we booked just as doubles. 

The next day we went shopping in Wallmart as we had a fridge and food was expensive. That was the first day I tried to fix my laptop. I had downloaded a program to create a bootable linux formated usb and the new netook OS. We asked a guy in a laptop repair shop to use the programs to create the disk (my laptop at this point could do nothing and it's really hard to repair a laptop without a pc of some kind. In internet cafes you don't get admin access to pc's so you can't install programs or format us sticks. Anyway the guy actually seemed to know what he was doing and created the bootable usb. I spent a lot of the day working on it and still have a few things which I gave up on in the end. While I was doing all this Brian skyped his family to say hello and because he had sent a parcel that had just arrived with them. A few other bits and pieces happened but mostly the next day a we went to do the touristy thing and look around Vancouver. It's a massive city but it's very functional. People kept saying there was loads to do without being specific. They are definitely some of the nicest people in the world though. Whenever we opened a map for longer than a minute someone would ask if we were ok. While waiting in line at Tim Hortons for donuts, we were giving out that we couldn't find a book shop and a fire fighter behind us gave us directions to one and asked us how we were getting on. Tim Horton's donuts are really nice in Canada, I don't really like the ones in Spar back home. They don't seem to travel well or they don't take being left out. The shops are really busy over there and very similar to Starbucks in style. We went up the Skytower in downtown. It was 15 dollars and tax and so boring. That left us a little down heartened about tourism in Canada. We spent the day wandering the city but it was freezing so in the afternoon we decided to buy some beers and head home. It turns out 12 bottles of Miller is 28 dollars and then tax. (This seems to be getting a bit down We did have a great time here and once the skiing and stuff gets going it really picks up). Next day we headed to the traditional Chinese garden in Vancouver's Chinatown. It was about 10 dollars in but we got a tour of the place which a history of the founder and information about what makes it a Chinese garden and some traditional tea. Turns out they have to import the rock in the garden from a specific place in China in order for it to be a traditional Chinese garden. It looked really beautiful but the weather was pretty cold and crisp. A lot of effort seems to go into the fine detail and getting a ying and yang element throughout the garden. After we went inside for our tea which was great to warm us up. While we were there we got to try out Chinese calligraphy on these really cool things called budda boards. They almost feel like slate on one side and soft on the other. They have a paper like appearance on the soft side and when you paint on with water to the paper like side, it appears like black ink. They seem to be set up to have a lot of groups of school kids in there so I think they were aimed at teaching them calligraphy without making as mess cause the most they could do was spill water. We had fun messing about with them.

Eventually we organised an over night bus to Penticton which was the nearest town to Apex Mountain where we were skiing. We arrived at 6 in the morning but we hadn't counted on the hotel (it was more of a motel but it called itself a hotel) not having a 24 hour reception. We got a taxi down from the bus station as we didn't have a map and saw the sign saying the hotel wasn't open til 10. We didn't really have an idea what to do as it was absolutely freezing at that point. The taxi driver stopped when she say us standing outside the door and we told her that they weren't open so she phoned her head office and found out where the nearest 24 Denny's was. So we took her advice and headed over there. We got a really big breakfast with tonnes of food. It was really nice but seriously heavy. That took up about an hour but we had three more to burn. Brian was talking to the waitress and she was fine to let us sit there until out hotel opened except to offer refils on our coffee. The hotel was quite nice in the end. It was on a beach at the edge of a lake and was really orientated towards a summer resort. We thought that was a little unusual considering it was right next to a ski resort. We had heard there were shuttle buses up to the mountain so we asked where to get them at reception. Turns out they only run on the weekends. No one goes to Apex during the week which is why we paid 69 dollars for out accommodation and got free 60 dollar a day ski passes from Monday to Thursday. We had no idea how to get up there as the only options were to rent a shuttle bus which cost 150 dollars or get a taxi at about 75 dollars. In the end the receptionist phoned us and said that the husband of one of the other receptionists had offered to drop us up the mountain after he got off work as a baker for the price of petrol. We assumed when we first heard that he was going up anyway but it turns out he was just doing it because we didn't have another option to get up the mountain.

Las Vegas

We arrived in Vegas on Friday night. When we got the shuttle from the airport we got a book a vochures. As we were only staying three days we decided to take advantage of the offers. The first night we went to a comedy gig called Finding the Caveman. It was an observational comedy thing on the differences between guys aand girls. It was very funny and in a kind of venue similiar to Vicar Street with tables and stuff. We got free buffet dinner after which was really good. The rest of the night and before the gig we spent on the slot machines as all the shows are in casinos. We got up fairly late the next day and messed about in the hostel a while. Later on we headed out to the casinos before heading to a comedy magic gig. I'm not that big into magic shows but it was quite good. I think Brian was a little disappointed cause it wasn't really any magic that he hadn't seen before. It was free though. Then there was more time in the casinos and finally we headed to a knight's show thing. They had knights jousting and we had a big dinner we had to eat with our hands. We got to eat a whole chicken with it (it was a little smaller than the normal sized ones in a rotissary but I didn't come close to finishing it). That was absolutely brilliant. I really enjoyed it. We were sitting in the Irish section cheering on the Irish knight. Some of the guys in the crowd got really involved and started up chants and we spent our time booing the French knight and then there was an evil dragon knight who they all fought. It was a really good show that I would definitely go see again. They had really well trained horses as well and they had sparks and stuff when the swords were clashing and indoor fireworks at the end. That day Brian and myslef did really well on the slot machines and on the 1 cent machines I made like 12 dollars after putting in 1 dollar (that is pretty good for me) and Brian made like 35 dollars on 1 dollar. Definitely the best haul. On the last day we got up and I pottered around for the morning. Brian went off and got himself a scaffold in his ear at the piercing shop. It looks really great but it was very sore for the first few days. Brian also wants me to mention he looks really hot. That day we spent in the casinos. We decided to go all out and spend a bit of money getting involved in proper table games. Brian played a little roulette and lost all the money he had for roulette in two spins even thoguh he bet on like 8 things. Then he played Black Jack. He started with 40 dollars and went all the way up to 150 dollars over the course of about half and hour to an hour and then over the next half hour to an hour he lost it all. It was a good way to spend the afternoon. After loosing my Black Jack money I moved to Roulette and had a great time. I made about twice my money and then lost it but really slowly winning bits and pieces here and there. It was a really enjoyable way to spend the weekend. We got free dinner in the hostel and that was the end of our holiday in Vegas.

Laptop

For those of you who may not know my laptop has been broken for the past few weeks. I didn't really use this laptop a lot before coming on the holiday. It has Xandros as a OS and it seems to follow a horrible cycle that I eventually got sick of. I factory reset it and then it works perfectly but it has very old versions of programs. Eventually I want to view a new document or open a website that supports a newer browser version then mine. So I update it. Once I start to update the OS I only have a while before it stops working. In the end I created a USB boot disk for the new Ubuntu netbook but it didn't correctly support my wireless card. Eventually I remembered I could tether my phone to it and update the drivers so in the end everything was sorted but I haven't updated teh blog since the start of it.

Pictures!!!

Finally, I know!  Please find pictures of the trip so far, split by country at my Picasa account.  Brian has promised to add them to facebook as soon as he has that sort of time which may be when we  get home.  For now, here you go:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113757691164438550487?feat

Orlando

I'm going to keep the details on Orlando pretty short. Its been awesome. We have a 14 day pass to the two Universal Studio parks, Wet and Wild, SeaWorld, Aquatica and Busch gardens. We have only been in Orlando ten days but it was so worth getting the 14 day pass. Some of the highlights were a squirrel jumping on Brian's lap in order to get chips, the sea lion show at Seaworld, Hogsmeade and the Harry Potter castle in Universal Island of Adventure (wow they went all out on it, it feels like you are really there), the Karken rollercoast in SeaWorld in the front seat, the Chinese Fireball Triwizard ride in the front seat, the Men in Black ride and Simpsons ride in Universal Studio, the absolutely giant turtle in Busch gardens, the hungry stingrays trying to rub us and nibble our fingers Kumba in Busch gardens and the tigers, kangaroos and giant crocodile in Busch gardens. We also played some crazy golf (18 holes is great fun, 36 is too much crazy golf). I thought the Aquatica was a better waterpark then Wet and Wild and they have the coolest dolphins I have ever seen in my life but I'm not one for water parks. Aquatica also has a few fish features and a beach with the wave pool. America is terrible for food. Food which is really bad for you is available the whole time in over large quantities. We tried to buy fruit and eat health but it was so hard and we ended up eatting a lot of junk food. We have been doing really well up to now on the holiday eatting very well and exercising. The one thing to be said for the theme parks is that they are exhausting and we spent full days at them so hopefully we will burn off a good bit of the stuff we ate while here.

Orlando

I usually don't share the details of the trips between places but as ths one was so eventful I thought I'd share. As we were queueing in immigration at Miami airport to get an internal flight to our final destination we were followed in the queue by a big annoying American man in what looked like pjamas. On the way in the sign had very clearly said US citizens to the right and visitors to the left and above us in the queue were big yellow visitor signs. He stood behind us and complained to his friend about how long it was taken and how they were in the right place as they were only in Miami to visit another friend of theirs. At this point we turned around to explain to them that Americans had to go to a different queue. Finally we got through immigration and then customs and then moving our lugaging from one machine to another (I dont understand why we had to do this but it seemed very important to them) and then we were in the queue for the metal detector to our departure gate after about an hour and a half. After some really grumpy people told us to go various places and changed their minds and stopped to talk to people we got through the metal detector and I went to the bathroom. When I came out, Brian was gone and the area we were in was empty. I walked to the middle of the room and a man ran over from the metal detector and asked to check my back pack. He kneeled on the floor and searched it. Then he ran off and I went back to the crowd at the metal detector where I found Brian. He had been called back and had to wait by the machines while he and a number of other people had their bags re-examined. They didn't tell say anything be he overheard that this was the second time toda something had gotten through that shouldn't have. After being ignored for ten minutes we moved on to our gate but they had locked down the whole area so we were stuck. We waited hallf an hour, in which time our flight took off. I had been bored earlier and read the American Airlines terms and conditions and it turns out you can be rescheduled on another flight free of charge when things like this happen but its on a first come first served basis. Brian asked an attendant where we could rebook a flight and found out it was at gate 37. So once we were free of the lockdown we ran to the rebooking desk where the lady apologised for the fact the next flight was 4 hours away and booked us on it. A queue formed as we were booking our ticket. It was actually really easy to sort out. While exploring the airport burning 4 hours we saw the American in pjamas from before. He was surrounded by airport security, Miami Dade policy and homeland security who had taken his backpack off him. He was the annoying reason we missed our flight.

Mexico

After checking into hostel we headed off to see Isla Mujeres. We had heard it was one of the locations of an underwater museum/art exhibition. Every website recommended going with a tour guide and as part of a tour package there was a trip to see it. So first we went snorkling in the Garrafon Natural Reef Park. We got to see all sorts of fish which swam around us including a big baracuda. We were told that when they were in the reef they weren't looking for food so we were safe :) It was amazingly clear. You could almost 20 metres I'd say. Next we got to go to one of the pieces in the underwater museum. There were about 203 sculptures about 8 metres underwater. They were made of artificial reef and had shoals of fish living around them. The underwater camera took loads of great clear pictures it was perfect for Cancun. We also met a woman from Pentiction who came scuba diving with us. Pentiction is a little known ski resort in Canada which is exactly the resort we are going to. She was telling us how no one in Canada knew where the resort was but she was so surprised that it was advertised abroad (Brian had seen an ad for it in the paper on the floor of a dart going on a night out). That night we had dinner in the hostel with everyone else staying there and had a few drinks as we got to know a few peeple.

Next day we went to visit Chichen Itza. On the way we stopped at a cenote. It was an underwater cave with a pool of water in it. The Mayan's believed they were holy. There were some people in traditional Mayan outfits doing traditional dances in a platform in the middle of the pool. There are still quite a lot of Mayans in that area of Mexico around the Yucantan peninsula and they still wear the traditional clothes We saw a lot of women in white dresses with colourful patterns around the rims. After a buffet lunch we got to one of the seven wonders of the world. We had a very good guide take us around. He refreshed my memory on the whole place (I had been to Chichen Itza before with my Mam, Dad and brother years ago). Its quite a big site with loads of interesting bits to it. I had a great time even though it did lash rain for about half an hour on and off at the end of the tour. We did a bit of exploring ourselves and bought a few souvenirs. We got back to the hostel at about 8. We had planned on going to Coco Bongo that night. However some of the guys in the hostel went there the night before and were disappointed. The few people who had been thinking of going decided to go to a club called Bulldog. We followed suit and headed out. We paid about 48 Euro to get into the club and get a wristband. The wristband was an open bar wristband so we got free drinks all night. It was great, the put a full bottle of vodka and tequilla on our table and four jugs of juice. One of the girls got strawberry daquiries and a few of us got beer and they put about 4 glasses of these per person on the table to start. We had a great time hanging out with the guys from the hostel, among them were three Australian guys, three German guys, two Italians, two English girls and a Dutch girl. They were all really nice and we had a great time. We spent a great long time on the dance floor. Before the night really got started there was a booty shaking competition up by the dj which was very funny. Very late in the night we headed home having had a fantastic time. Brian did dedicate a good few minutes negoiating with the taxi drivers outside to get us a very good deal to get home.

Our last day in Mexico Brian spent very hung over. We got up about 12 and we were both feeling a bit iffy. After get a good feed in MacDonalds I was feeling much better but unfortunately Brian got a headache so we decided to spend the day in the hostel. Brian watched a bit of the superbowl and I read a bit. We had a few drinks with the gorgeous free dinner provided by the hostel. The food there was great and I would really recommend it. Also the beer in the hostel was less than a euro a can and there were always a few people in the common area to share a drink with.