North America has the best bad TV

Day #4

Ourselves and the other Irish couple we've met in the hostel have pretty much the same routine at this stage.

1. Wake up at approx 6am, fail to fall back asleep and go have breakfast in the kitchen here using food bought in a place called London Drugs (Boots with a food aisle) or one of the small shops on a side street. We don't buy food from the 7-11 anymore, regardless of how American it makes us feel.
2. Spend the next few hours either online looking for houses, replying to emails about viewing or wandering around looking at apartments/suites and in our case yesterday buzzing the manager of each building and asking if there are any apartments for rent.
3. After a few hours of this we generally give in to curiosity and check out some shops (if we haven't done so already en route) and get some food in one of the infinity amaze restaurants/cafes around the place.
4. Repeat stage 2.
5. Be a tourist for a while. This place is amazing and has so much going on with every subculture, race, creed, sexual orientation you could imagine.
6. Stumble back to the hostel and take over the common room (it takes 5 Irish people to take over the typical hostel common room) and watch terrible TV until we pass out at about 10 PM.

This brings me nicely to WORLD'S WORST TENANTS.

'Here, token woman, try to look feminine will you..? Ok...that's the pose you're going for? Ok...'

This is a programme where a Stone Cold Steve Austin lookalike bring his team to properties where there has been noise complaints/eviction notices etc and usually ends up tackling some half naked drug dealer before the cops show up, ask wtf is going on and arrest the tenant for CRIMINAL DAMAGE or something. It's mental.

Then there's also REPO GAMES a reality/repo/crime game show where repo men turn up to a house as usual but...get this...ask the unfortunate people general knowledge questions in a game show style. If they get the questions right, they keep their stuff, it they get them wrong, then the stuff is repossessed!

But we've done other things too. Yesterday we visited the West End, the gay-friendly district in Vancouver. Gay pride flags are everywhere along the telephone poles etc, the bus stops are painted pink, everyone is friendly and there are lots of quirky, independant food stores, shops, cafes and restaurants. It's a really relaxed area with amazing views and we'd love to live there if the rent wasn't so bleedin' high.

Things we've learned so far:

•  The price of pretty much everything is BEFORE TAX. That Tsunami Bomb t-shirt is still a bargain but is gonna cost an extra $2.
• You should explore a bit before you buy food. Paying $10 for a fruit salad and an apple is not the way to go.
• If you buy a monthly bus pass you can take 5 kids on the bus for free on Sundays.. Srsly. What?!
• The bus is $2.50, but you can use it again within 90 minutes. Also, if you give $1.75 into the on-bus machine by mistake and tell the bus driver it's $2.50, this generally works as well.
• Most apartments are UNFURNISHED and expensive.