Lepod's Blog

The flight from NZ was actually not too bad, immigration and customs couldn’t have been nicer except Simon’s bloke was pretty grumpy. We had a hair raising taxi drive to the hotel in Westwood, LA as the driver was busy talking on his cell phone and nearly tail ended a car in front of us. Still, we got there and the hotel was very nice. After a shower and a bit of a rest we had a look round  UCLA, then grabbed some food from an excellent whole foods supermarket, then off for a well deserved sleep. Next day we had a Russian taxi driver who was a far better driver, and after the usual security shennanigans the flight on Air Canada to Vancouver was excellent, the plane was a spiffing Embraer 190 jet which was very quiet and like new inside.  We are now in our ritzy rented apartment in Vancouver, the  owner picked us up from the airport which was a nice touch.

Today Pauline and Simon had a meeting at the University of British Colombia, so I had a good look around the historic and waterfront areas of Vancouver, then when we met up we jumped in an outside lift up to the lookout tower at the Harbour Center, then we walked down to the gastown area which is a historic area near the waterfront with excellent shopping and food. I’ve posted a few pictures of our trip so far.