18.06.2013Bienvenue à Vancouver

After nearly 24 hours of traveling we finally arrived in Vancouver. Our 5 hour stopover in Dallas was long enough to easily allow 2 hours of queuing in the immigration line for U.S. citizens and close to 3 hours for foreign citizens/Germans. However this did not significantly affect our mood as we saw that the airport is already well equipped with the official TINDY visor cap:

Since this is our first visit to Canada we were also quite impressed by the very concerned Canadian immigration officer. She insisted we give up our self-defense pepper spray, because it is too small (seriously!). Instead we should get a BIG can of the same pepper spray (~0.5 liters can size), which is then called “bear-spray” and used to minimize injury due to bear-human interaction …
Probably she was afraid that the bear breaks out into uncontrollable laughter once he sees our small sprays. But seriously: Apparently the Canadians treat those small pepper sprays the same as fire arms, which is why we had to abandon them.

Apart from these interesting travel experiences we had a great first day! The weather was just perfect and we rented bikes and went on a 28 km Vancouver discovery tour among which we drove around Stanley park:

Stanley parks beautiful water-flowered beaver lake (bicycle helmets are mandatory in Canada):

For lunch we had a delicious Poutine burger and a salmon filet (not shown on the picture) close to False Creek:

We also tried some local beers which was quite an experience. Being used to the German purity law for beer brewing our “Wistler Honey Lager” and “Chocolate Porter” tasted very interesting, to put it neutral. No offense meant, but who wants a beer to taste like chocolate? Luckily Tini had the chocolate beer…
After this chocolaty desert we continued to Kitsilano Beach and did some digesting while napping in the sun. From Kitsilano beach there is also a nice view of the Vancouver skyline:

In the evening we enjoyed Yamato’s Sushi special for 5.95 CAD consisting of 22 pieces of sushi:

a Miso soup and a cup of tea. What a day.