Vancouver, BC (continued)

Been here for a couple of days now. On Saturday I walked into town; my hostel (Jericho Beach) is a few miles out of town, west along 4th Avenue, but there are plenty of things to see and do along the way. Yesterday I hired a bike and rode it round Stanley Park. Tonight I'm going out on a pub crawl downtown. In amongst all this there has of course been plenty of eating and relaxing and reading, playing pool and watching Euro 2008 and talking to various people. Er...that's it really.

Some miscellania, as I approach the 1-month anniversary of me jetting off into the unknown:

THINGS I MISS ABOUT ENGLAND
Family, friends, real ale, Greggs, cool rain

THINGS I DON'T MISS ABOUT ENGLAND
Paying over the odds for everything, going to work, chavs, New Labour

BEARD PROGRESS
It was getting a bit overlong and unkempt so I had it trimmed on 4th Ave by a very nice Croatian-Canadian lady. It's still reasonably sizeable and it's doing a surprisingly good job of keeping half my face free from sunburn.

AUTHORS I'VE READ WHILE ON MY TRAVELS
Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Swift, Erwin Schrodinger, Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, EM Forster

TOP THREE FAVOURITE SUBWAY FOOTLONGS (all on Italian, not toasted)
1. Tuna (pronounced 'tooner', not 't-yooner' or 'chooner')
2. Cold Cut Combo
3. Meatball

LIFE IMITATING ART
'Last Exit To Brooklyn' (Hubert Selby Jnr) - yes, did that on my last night in New York
'Going To California' (Led Zeppelin) - yes, obviously
'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay' (Otis Redding) - will do it as soon as I get back to San Fran
'Midnight Train To Georgia' (Gladys Knight) - no, haven't been South, and the timing is impractical

I could go on but I don't want to lose any more readers. Hopefully something interesting will have happened by the time of my next update! And I'll include pictures.

North Vancouver, seen from Stanley Park, under Lionsgate Bridge

Locarno Beach (outside my hostel)