We finally made it

So here we are, chapter number 2. Vancouver. BC, Canada.

After a busy and stressful last few days in the UK Friday was suddenly upon us and an early start saw us getting to Gatwick in good time thanks to a lift from mum. Excess baggage was the first task of the day. We knew we had a few kilos that we should have shed but we were going to push our luck and see. We managed to sweet talk our way into 15kg of hand lugguge instead of 10 and bit the bullet and paid for the main bags. With that task complete it was onto the next, make sure we get on board our flight. That was straight forward and a pretty uneventful flight saw us landing at Vancouver half an hour ahead of schedule. Lining up in immigration saw us bumping into a couple of familiar faces from the flight over albeit behind a queue of 15 recently landed foreign students who spoke barely any English so it was a long wait. Once we got stamped in we headed off in search of our first nights accommodation due to a mix up of dates on our behalf. We had visions of a nightmare situation, Friday night in a new country, big packs on our backs and nowhere to sleep. An aussie named Ross who had been on the flight with us had been recommended a hostel in the centre of downtown so we decided to go and check it out. The Samesun hostel seemed like a decent choice and would allow us to get our bahs offloaded and enjoy the rest of the afternoon wandering around Vancouver.

Saturday morning we set off relatively early and again had a wander to get our bearings in the city, banks, shops, stations, interview locations, etc. We had arranged a couchsurf with a local called Greg who came to collect us from the hostel at lunchtime. We got our bags dropped off at his place and then went to watch a football game followed by some Polish food at a nearby festival. Jet lag still present meant an earlyish night.

Sunday was a miserable wet day so we headed off a little late into the morning, saw Chinatown and picked up a Canadian mobile phone. The poor weather held up most of the day so we ducked in and out of shops and eventually found a decent book shop to waste a few hours.