Welcome to Vancouver

01/15/2018 First day in Vancouver. Specifically, East Van, as the residents lovingly call their neighborhood. We have a working holiday visa, so there's a lot of organizing to do. So what do you do on the first day? You should get up early to be able to take care of everything that needs to be done. Well, actually, you can also sleep in. That's what we did, and then we went straight to... go shopping. It's hard to get through the day on an empty stomach. Haven't our parents and grandparents always told us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? Exactly! So we left the apartment, searched the area for supermarkets. It went pretty quickly. Within 5 minutes, there are 4 or 5 grocery stores. Paid $100 for what felt like nothing. Back 'home', had breakfast. And off to downtown we went. Taking care of organizational matters. Apply for a social insurance number (SIN). Open a bank account. Sign a mobile phone contract. In that order. Applying for a SIN quickly turned out to be impossible. In the Canada Center, we saw a very long line of people who also wanted to do something similar. Waiting time 3 hours. No thanks. Next! Off to the mobile phone shop, sign a contract. Of course, that doesn't work without a bank account. Something about the order. Well, we're outlaws and don't follow rules. Muhaha. Next! So off to the bank. Something has to work. And we were lucky. They could help us. After a lot of paperwork and formalities, we finally had a Canadian bank account. Unfortunately without money, but still. It was already 2:30 p.m. and we had to keep going.

We had arranged to meet Susi in North Vancouver. She really wanted to show us the Capilano Suspension Bridge. The Capilano Suspension Bridge is not just a bridge, but much more a park area. In addition to a free-swinging rope bridge, about 140 meters long, that spans a 70 meter deep canyon, there's also a cliff walk along one of the canyon walls and a so-called treetop adventure, a walk in the crowns of really tall trees. And all nicely or Christmas illuminated - not necessarily something for the Grinch (Patrick). But it gave us a first impression of the impressive nature we had been waiting for. After exploring almost every corner of the park and taking many photos, we took the bus back towards downtown or East Van. And so a very eventful day came to an end.

PS: The next day, we didn't get up so late, we drove to the Canada Center and got our SIN number within an hour. And we were also successful with the mobile phone contract.