Getting Settled - Our First Few Days in Vancouver!

The last few days have been so crazily busy, it's been pretty non stop! But things are beginning to fall into place, and I'm still really excited about living here.

Granville Street, Shaughnessy - where we're staying till June!

We're getting used to the transport systems, the buses here run like clockwork, and the Skytrain is pretty cool, and it all connects up, is really convenient and runs from early in the morning till late at night. Perfect!

Our first day in the city was spent, as I mentioned in Arrival In Vancouver, sleeping away the jet lag and then finding our AirBnB accommodation on Granville Street, in the Shaughnessy district, where we're staying in a shared apartment with 2 other couples, and 2 single guys. It's weirdly quiet, in that we rarely see much of the others, it almost feels like we have the place to ourselves.

Friday was Day 2, and we made it a mission to get some of the important bits sorted out as soon as possible. So we headed out early to our nearest Service Canada and got our SIN's (Social Insurance Numbers) which are required for us to work. Then we wandered to Scotiabank and opened our bank accounts. We inquired about the StartRight program which is specifically for newcomers to the country, and is free for the first year! (You have to pay for banking out here!) Then we headed back to Oakridge, the mall close to where we're staying and we did our food shop for the week, which was interesting!

Our apartment!

We've been looking at places to rent from June 1st, as most places rental start from the beginning of the month, so we booked up 16 nights with AirBnB and have till then to find somewhere. So Day 3 began with a trip to Nanaimo, to view a room in another big shared house. It was a bit of a trek from where we are and took the best part of an hour, and we got there to knock at the door and no-one answered, though neither of us were too bothered as we weren't keen on that area. It was nice, but very suburban and quiet, not quite what we'd really been looking for. After that we decided to go and get our phones sorted. We chose Fido as our provider as we'd heard pretty good things about them, We wanted cheap and cheerful, and think we got a pretty good deal. For $25 a month we get 200 mins and unlimited text, and in a few months we can merge our accounts and be able to call each other for free. We spent that evening perusing the internet again for accommodation and found one we love! Despite the fact the next day was my birthday, we set up a viewing as we were so keen!

Yesterday was my 24th Birthday! We spent the morning chilling out a little, I opened my presents and cards and then we got up and wandered over to Downtown to check out a room. We had a look, then went for a coffee to think and discuss, and I had a birthday Peanut Butter Protein shake for breakie. Delicious! We chatted about the room and both came to the conclusion that we loved it, and went back and paid our deposit! We move in June 1st! The room is a little on the small side, but the location is amazing, it's on the 15th floor and our night time views are going to be stunning, and it seems to tick every requirement we set for ourselves . The building also has a pool, and a small gym, so I'll make full use of those :D

Gastown's Steamclock!

Then we were finally in tourist mode! We took the Skytrain down to the Waterfront, and did our first proper sightseeing! We walked down to Gastown and had a walk round, and then went north, taking in the Olympic Cauldron and Digital Orca sculpture, then further north to Harbour Green Park.
We discovered a really good nutritional shop with protein powders on Robson Street, once we have jobs we're definitely going to look into getting some! From there we went to Zefferreli's Spaghetti Joint, where we had a table booked, and had an amazing Italian meal together, our first meal out in Vancouver! IT was delicious and not as pricey as we'd anticipated!

Overall it's been a hectic few days, but the most rewarding and fulfilling week I have had for a long time. It feels so good to be doing something different and exciting!

Anyway, below are a few pictures we took during our sightseeing wander!

Credit to my boyfriend Ian for the photography!

Arrival in Vancouver!

Eeeeek, we finally made it here!

After a hectically long journey (and not forgetting the months of waiting around for visas and planning) we have touched down in Vancouver!

It began yesterday at London Heathrow, I got up at 5am and bundled my Dad and 2 brothers into the car and set off! We decided to leave early, my older brother stayed with us the night before so that we could leave in the early hours and avoid the rush hour traffic then have breakfast together at the airport, we made good time and had a great last meal together!

Our 12 hour flight to LAX went without a hitch, although, I did have a small wobbly when I suddenly realised that we landed at Terminal 2 and our connection went from Terminal 6, and had no idea how long it would take to get between the two. But our first flight was right on time (hats off to Virgin Atlantic, your a pretty awesome airline actually, so much free food it's ridiculous!) and we dashed through US Customs, grabbed our bags then re-dropped them off and found that the Terminal is actually only a small bus ride away. Instant relaxation! We checked in easily and had a wait on our hands, steadily getting more and more tired as time passed.

Eventually we hopped on our LA - Vancouver flight, sat down and I fell asleep before we'd moved anywhere. Take off woke me up briefly, but I basically don't remember much about that one! We landed at 11:30pm so the airport was quiet, customs was easy, though it took us a little while to find the right place to go, but immigration was easy and quick, the guy disappeared with our passports and LOI's and came back a few minutes later with our freshly printed visas!

Day 1!

A quick taxi ride to Travelodge and we crashed, 28 hours on the go really takes it out of you! This morning, after the most amazing night's sleep, we woke up to our first real sighting of Vancouver. (Last night was pretty but honestly I was too tired to notice anything.

So this morning we took a shuttle back to the airport, then got on the Skytrain to Oakridge Station, the closest one to our accommodation. With time to kill we wandered a little, grabbed something to munch on, then headed to Granville Street, and our first attempt at their bus system! We eventually made it, albeit with a slight mishap in that we didn't get off soon enough, and had to walk back a few blocks. But here we are! We met our AirBnB host for the next few weeks, chilled out a little, researched where we need to go tomorrow, and met a lovely couple from the Philippines who we are sharing an apartment with. And everyone here is so darn friendly, it's actually incredible!

Vancouver, I love you already! 

Canadian Preperations!

So, it's been nearly a week since everything has kicked off and I must say I'm getting really excited already.
It's now less than three weeks before we go away!

Visas are all done, we now just need to sort out our ESTA thingies to enter the US, but that shouldn't be too hard. (Our flights are not direct to Canada, we fly from Heathrow to LAX, with a 6 hour layover and then LAX to Vancouver.) Our return flights are booked for next February, as apparently most airlines can only be booked 10-11 months ahead, so in a few months we will use our flexi ticket option, and push our flights back to May 2014 so we get the full year. I'm wondering if when we return we can split the flights to have a few days layover in LA rather than a few hours just for the hell of it! It would be rather cool to have a few days somewhere new at potentially no extra cost.

We land in Vancouver in the middle of the night, so we're going to book a cheap and cheerful hotel close to the airport, so we'll just crash and try and get some rest. (I'm not good at sleeping while traveling, I have never been able to, cars, trains, buses, boats, planes, you name it I can't sleep on it, so I should imagine I'm going to be awake for a good 30 hours.) So yeah, land, immigration, crash, will probably be our first day in Vancouver.

Next day we'll move to our proper accommodation. We're planning to use AirBnB, a company which describes it self as 'a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world.' At the moment, we haven't booked anything through them yet, they have so many listings for Vancouver it's mad, so I've set a general budget and sifted through the options, picked out a handful of places I liked and messaged them with our requirements. One big thing is that we would like to open our bank accounts and get our SIN's (sort of like our national insurance numbers) as soon as we arrive, but we would require addresses to do so. So far, quite a few of the property owners have said that yes we can use their address, so now Ian and I just need to go through them and pick one!

During those two weeks it's then on with the house hunt. We're booking out AirBnB accommodation up till the end of May, as most places begin leases at the beginning of the month, so hopefully by then we'll have found somewhere and can hop straight from one to the other. We're going to try and arrange viewings for our first week, it would be lovely to find somewhere quickly so we can relax a bit more during the second week and step up the job stuff.

After that, all I think is left to do is the little things... send a P85 form to HMRC to let them know we're leaving the country, send a form to Student Loans, get my family set up on Skype, rewrite my CV in a Canadian resume style and that's it I guess. I suppose I better start thinking about packing... I'll have to start a new list :D (I like lists, I'm a crazy list person!)

Then finally - the leaving do's! I've set up one for family and one for friends, and I'm really excited for them, I never plan events! Also, it's my birthday a few days after we arrive, so I've got two reasons to party on down!