We left Seattle after 7 weeks of great fun hanging out with all of our friends! Thanks a million to Bruce for letting us stay for so long; we will be back!!!!! Cheerio to his girlfriend Deb and the dog Bella. It was really hard leaving everyone behind but we have gone on the next leg of our adventure. We are now in Tokyo, Japan! We left Seattle by train which follows the water’s edge for most of the way leading in to Vancouver 3 and a half hours later. The train moves pretty slow and rolls quite a lot from side to side (yes Darin you were right!); and hand on heart the grub served up by the buffet car is even worse than British Rail. But it was a nice trip and a huge train compared to English trains, double the height.
Back in the glamorous good old days of travel the trains were called Empire Builder and looked like this.
Amtrak is not as pretty but still pretty impressive. That’s Sherpa Dave behind that pillar unloading our bag. We had to line up for immigration to enter Canada and they sent a sniffer dog out to give us the once over.
Once in Vancouver we hopped on the skytrain, kind of like a small shuttle train/bus – which took us downtown. We stayed at The Blue Horizon Hotel on Robson St right in the centre of town, great price for such a good place. Sandra and Tony came over on the ferry from Vancouver Island to hang out with us for 2 days. We had breakfast in a cafe based on travel; lots of books to browse whilst stuffing your face with eggs and bacon. We didn’t take many photos as Dave and I were only in Vancouver last June and this time it was freezing cold and snowing. The 4 of us still managed to walk miles around the city and hopped on a little boat across to Granville island. Early Saturday morning we headed to the airport and a 9 hour flight, 1 hour train ride and 15 minute subway ride with one change later; we arrived here in Tokyo……..and it’s MAD!!!!!!
The Travel Diarist 