Heya - it's been a while since I've last written. I've just been working and enjoying the last few months or so of my summer holiday before university starts again in March. Currently I'm in Vancouver, Canada! I'm staying at the University of British Columbia student housing whilst I visit Jamie on exchange. He's been here since early January, studying at the UBC Sauder School of Business and will be here until late May. I'm only here for a week, but trying to make the most of our time together until we have to say goodbye again.
At the moment we're coming into the end of winter here, so it's chilly but not so bad, between 5 and 8 degrees most days with the nights dipping into much colder territory. I've found Vancouver to be an interesting mix of all the places I've lived previously. The climate and nature is similar to that of Helsinki, while the culture is mostly American and the city landscape is a hybrid of New York and Melbourne. Jamie's been showing me around the campus, as well as places in Downtown, Gastown and Granville island. I've loved it so far!
On Tuesday, we decided to take a little trip to the Canadian Rockies, specifically, Banff. The journey started with a rough 5:30am wakeup to catch the 8am bus from the Central Station. What followed as a 13 hour journey all the way to Banff - it wasn't as bad as it sounds. We slept some of the way, watched intermittent episodes of The Office and had regular stopovers for lunch at A&W. They have a brilliant Beyond Meat burger which I was thrilled to find. It really does taste like meat. We could feel the mercury dropping at each stop and were greeted with a lovely -11° (felt like -17° with wind chill) when we arrived at 9:30 pm. The following 20 minute walk through the cold was a real struggle, and I forgot how much the cold begins hurting after some time - I've really lost my tough Finnish edge when it comes to the cold. The next morning, we woke up to the beautiful mountains that surround Banff, and the charming town that it is.
We got lunch at a small local pub, which was mainly waitressed by Australians. They served great tomato soup, something so perfect with the cold climate that just hit the spot. We walked around, explored the shops and marvelled at the scenery and I enjoyed my first cinnamon sugar Beaver Tail and hot chocolate.
Jamie managed to capture some of the beauty with his camera.
The next day we headed out to Lake Louise, an hour drive outside of Banff. The lake is normally known for its stunning blue water, but was frozen over this time of year.
There was a garden of ice sculptures which caught the afternoon sun so perfectly.
There were also horse-drawn sleigh rides through the snow:
The scenery was absolutely stunning.
We left Banff on Thursday morning, making the 13 hour bus trip back home again. I'll be posting again detailing my time here in Vancouver but that'll have to wait a few days until after I arrive back home. Stay tuned!
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