Day one and we’ve already gone by car, ferry, train, metro, and foot and made it to Vancouver, BC from where we’ll fly out in the morning. It’s been smooth going thus far with us missing the only real excitement along the way. So there we were, sitting quietly on the train, minding our own business, reading our books when the woman across the aisle, who’s on her phone exclaims “there’s a naked man on the beach!” I knew we chose the wrong side to sit on.

Once we cleared customs we sat in the park across from the station for a bite of lunch then meandered over to the metro station. There we stood at the ticket machine trying to figure out the type of tickets we needed, with the machine continuing to spit out our money and no tickets. Finally a charming young woman asked if she could help which we gladly accepted. She tried the same things we did to the same effect. Finally she says ” let me just buy your tickets with mine and treat you as visitors to the city”. How amazing was that! We ended up having the funds to pay her back as long as we could stay away from the recalcitrant machines. A great, friendly start on our journey.