When I was talking about being worried about the travels, and hoping that I would be able to figure out what to do when I get somewhere, my brother Alain assured me that it'll be easy, and you'll look back at it and say 'pfft'. For the most part he was right.. Getting into YVR, getting my luggage, storing it (who wants to carry 150lbs worth of crap around with them?) getting a bus ticket to Victoria, finding that bus, getting across the ferry and finding the next bus, getting into Victoria.. that was all easy. Things start to get interesting when the cell phone of the person you're supposed to meet up with dies a few minutes before you get to the bus station in Victoria.. haha.
So my calls to Andrew go straight to voice mail, and I figure, well, I know his address, and we crossed his street on the way in, so I'll just start walking in that direction.. He's not answering his home phone either, but I figure I don't have many other options.
Good thing it's 5 degrees out.
I finally get to his street, which was a long walk for someone like me by the way (30 minutes I think), and start looking for his address. He lives in the Chinese district and it's absolutely beautiful there..
(The entrance to the Chinese district, Andrew lives just a few hundred feet into it.
(This is about 30 feet from his alley, and the location of this shot he took a while ago.
I find his place, ring the buzzer, and no one comes.. Even though I was pretty sure before that he wasn't going to be there, it feels a little different when it's certain, haha. I think fast and decide that I'll just go find a hotel somewhere, and I start heading back towards to bus station.
A 20 minute walk later I see a hotel called Magnolia and think, hmm, that should be fun.. At this point I'm exhausted, sweaty, likely smelly, and all I want is a warm shower and a soft bed, so I head in.
The entrance was gorgeous. Wasn't the largest hotel lobby I've ever seen, but it was probably the nicest. Mohagany everything, high ceilings, nice and clean, quiet. I go up to the counter and ask if there are any rooms left and what the damage will be for one night.. I'm expecting a pretty steep price for this place, especially since it took them about 2.5 minutes to work up the courage to tell me what the damage will be. They said that since it was pretty late, and they do have a few rooms available, they would be able to give me a discount, and they have all kinds of different types of rooms left, including ones with king sized beds, corner ones with king sized beds, and the diamond suites which are on the upper floors.. So after some one-sided negotiations (I didn't have to say much of anything) he tells me that he'll give me a 30 dollar discount on the superior king-sized-bed room (the cheapest one available) for a grand total of 100. I'm thinking (done!) but I decide to ask how much the corner room is, what the hell, I've never been in a corner hotel room.. he says it's 20 dollars more.. (done!!!!).
I tell him I'll take the corner one, and at this point I'm pretty excited and think it will be pretty fun.. especially if I get a corner room facing the water. As I'm handing him my credit card, Andrew, with impeccable timing, calls my cell phone. After some back and forth he convinces me to forget about the hotel and head towards him. Goodbye corner room... :'( He meets up with me somewhere on Douglass street and we head to his place where I meet his lovely girlfriend Carolyn, and see his wicked apartment/art gallery.
I take a shower (ahhh, so nice!) and go to bed.
I wake up at 6am local time to seagulls squawking outside the building. After this post I'm gonna go find the little bastards.