We arrived in Vancouver excited to see the city, we had heard so much about it on our trip and had some good advice on places to visit (thanks Jacquie) and also we had a TV interview about our wedding blog!

The interview was for Channel 9 news in Australia and we were going to be on their Weekend Today show filmed from the studio in Vancouver! We were nervous and excited and in desperate need of a haircut so we set off at a run. We
jumped on the sky train from our (amazingly clean, gorgeous, with pool
and hot tub) campsite and managed to arrive downtown unscathed. We wandered the streets trying to follow a street map which had handily altered the directions in which the streets ran so that the map itself would fit more tidily into the shape of Vancouver!! Needless to say it didnt take us long to get a little lost. Alex had found a hairdresser he would like to go to and had marked it on the (wonky) map. We eventually found it aided by a few kind Canadians who can spot a lost Brit a mile off and arrived with 30 minutes to spare before we needed
to head back to the studio ( which we stumbled upon whilst lost).
Typically it was busy so we waited and cutting it fine (no pun
intended) Alex got his trim! We ran back to the studio so we arrived suitably sweaty, nervous, myself quite unkempt in the hair department by now and Alex looking ready for a male model contest.

After the language…accent…barrier at the front desk we were led to
a seat in the news room to wait. The screens hung from the ceiling and people ran around urgently like worker bees yet there was an unerving calm all around. Sue came and collected us and led us around the large newsroom and then stopped suddenly in front of two chairs.

In the middle of the path.

In the newsroom!

So you know when you watch the news and there are the big TV’s on the ceiling in the background and people going about their jobs etc etc…THERE IS NO GLASS INBETWEEN THEM! I thought we were going into a room, a nice private room where we could make lots of mistakes and no-one would laugh at us but we were not. We were in the hall next to a woman sat at her desk writing the sports features! I was so nervous as Sue put wires in our clothes and our ears and made us look into the camera…which I might add was nearly impossible as there were monitors in the corners of our vision showing exactly how silly we looked on the TV so it was harder than it sounds. Finally the Australian presenter piped up in our ears and the interview started! Sue laughed and smiled and put her thumbs up at us, ever encouraging and pretending to be a mini audience. The interview seemed to go quite well and I didn’t sneeze, cough or yawn once! ( I
always wonder how people on the TV can control things like that? I imagine Alanis MOrrissette doing her thing and singing away and a long note turning into a yawn…but it never seems to happen! Weird!) So we survived and Sue insisted we had done well but time will tell, we never heard from the woman who set it all up afterwards so it might be “on the cutting room floor” who knows! Anyway it had been an exciting ordeal and we deserved some carbs as reward, we had Pizza and ‘soda’ and then hit the library…ROCK AND ROLL!!

The rest of our day we spent wandering, people watching, window gazing and enjoying the amazing yachts parked in the marina.

We strolled through Stanley Park and watched couples wobble along on their newly hired tandem bikes. Alex bought some running shoes and I ‘splashed out’ in the childrens water park. It was a beautiful day and we ended it with a treat of epic proportions!

We passed the most fabulous chocolate shop as we walked back through town and they were handing out samples (evil people!) of apple coated in fudge, chocolate, toffee and coconut! HEAVEN is the only way to describe it! The apples had such thick layers of all of these wonderful ingredients on them that they were the size of melons! That was it, they had us in the door and we looked around! This is bad news. Mr sweet tooth was in deep and had ordered a cashew, toffe, dark chocolate slab of some sort and was looking at me like a puppy and
urging me not to put on the fun police siren…so I chose similar, pecan, toffee and milk chocolate and we waited at the till. Now I had 
spied the price on our choices and $5.99 per 100g didn’t seem so bad so I estimated $5 max…when the till rang and the teeny tiny woman behind the till drawer said $10.22 I nearly hit the deck! These were some
heavy chocloates we had chosen. They were about the size of a small kiwi, flat and clearly deceptively deep and full of heavy nuts!!!
Luckily Alex was paying as I trailed my jaw out of the shop in disbelief that we had just spent $10 on A chocolate each…then I tasted it and it all went away! They lasted us about 3 days so I have
since gotten over the trauma of the whole thing!

ANYWAY, I digress as usual. After being in Vancouver for 12 hours and walking the whole time we were there we collapsed back onto the skytrain back to camp for a
glorious hot tub. It eased our aching legs and feet and I even managed a swim.

We met some great people in there, a couple who have travelled all over Mexico and had some great stories to share with us and Richard whom we met the next evening after yet another day of pounding pavement in Vancouver. Richard had spent the day on Wreck beach which is a ‘clothing optional’ beach topping up his tan. We spent the evening cooking nicely in the 40 degree pool and sharing travel stories with him too. We have learned so much from so many people and have loved sharing in their adventures as much as we have loved being on our own. We went back to his camper named Sophie by his late wife Penny and sat beneath the stars and shared a bottle of wine and laughed and chatted the night away.

The next morning we had to say our goodbyes to Vancouver, Richard and the hot tub, pool and great facilities to hop on the ferry to Victoria. We took the Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay crossing on recommendation and it was beautiful.

We passed so closely to the Gulf Islands I wondered if we would make it at times or end up on the beaches! The sun joined us for the crossing and followed us all the way to Victoria where we popped in at the campsite and then headed to find a beach to watch the sun set. The sand was soft and the ocean was cold so we enjoyed the last of the sunshine and headed out to an Indian restaurant as a real treat.

We arrived there at about 8, ordered our drinks and eventually our curries and were enjoying our meal slowly, making the most of our meal out when the owner came over and politley pointed out that they closed 10 minutes ago! It was 9.40 on a saturday night! We thought were in it for the long haul so had to quickly finish our food and drink our drinks and go home to bed! We spent the next day catching up on the blog and received a call for another interview! This time for the radio in Victoria at Kool FM so the next morning was an early one, we had to be there by 7.30 and were on the drive time show. Robin was great fun and a fantastic start to our day. She loved our love story and gave us wedding gifts and a card and wished us well on our travels. One of the gifts from Robin was an umberella each, we had laughed with her and explained that we had barely seen any rain. She laughed at us and said “you will need them sooner than you think” and sure enough as we stepped outside it was raining!!!

We left Victoria under a rain cloud in the sky but not in our hearts.
We were heading to Nanaimo that day to meet Clark and Angie. The story
goes like this.
You remember Autumn and Hazen whom we met whilst carrying Peggy’s battery down the street in Kenora? Well, they did a little blog about us on their blog and they also told their parents all about our strange adventure. Autumns parents Clark and Angie particularly loved the story (being a pair of romantics themselves) and immediately offered to throw us a wedding! We couldn’t believe it. The generosity and kindness in such a gesture was indescribable. We e-mailed Clark back and forth asking what we could do to help and he wouldn’t have any of it. He just kept saying it is all sorted and all we had to do was turn up. So, today was the day we were finally going to meet this
amazing family.

See what happens next in our wedding travel adventure!