We’ve been in Vancouver for 4 weeks now and I think it’s about time I wrote an update on how we’re getting on.

We’ve spent the month in a beautiful apartment right slap bang in the middle of downtown, pretty much five minutes from everything.  We organised the apartment before we left the UK as we needed somewhere to call home for the first month while we set ourselves up.  We’d have loved to stay in this apartment for the whole year, but it is waaaay out our budget. In fact it’s pretty much double what we would be looking to pay.

We move out the apartment on Wednesday.  The big task was finding somewhere to stay in Vancouver and thankfully we succeeded within a week or so of being in the city.  We wanted to find somewhere within our budget, reasonably near the downtown area and furnished as we didn’t want the hassle of having to buy beds, couches, tv etc etc.  A pretty difficult task. Anything within our budget seemed to be miles out the city which would have added an excess in taking public transport all the time.  After scouring Craigslist and making phone call after phone call we arranged some viewings.   On the very first viewing on a miserable and soaking Saturday morning we found our new home. It’s a privately rented apartment on the top floor of a hotel, overlooking the Granville market and still on the downtown side of Vancouver.  It’s perfect. We can’t wait to move in. As nice as this expensive apartment we’re in now is, we are anxious to get to the place we can call home till next summer.

The next big task on our list was to find jobs. I fired off my resume to about twenty different potential employers and only heard back from one.  That one resulted in me getting a job in a cafe/deli. Emma had a bit more luck and on her first day of walking into shops with her resume she landed a job in the 3rd one she entered.  She now works in a clothes shop (well, a lingerie shop to be exact – but I wouldn’t know anything about that). Despite both being part time, Emma worked 40 hours in her first week.  We’re going to need to see how it pans out, we need to strike the balance of working enough hours so we have the cash to do everything we want to do, but not work enough hours that we never have a chance to do anything.

And finally our third task, find some people to call friends.  I think we, well certainly Emma, have found some potential people to socialise with.  We spent an evening with some of her colleagues and respective boyfriends and everything seemed to go well.   That was going to be the most difficult task of all, but a lot of people here are in the same boat in regards to finding friends!

Vancouver is an amazing city. Before we left the number of people we spoke to who had been or knew someone who had been and they all said they loved it, and I can see why.  It has the big city feel like New York does, but you can easily find more remote, quieter locations and places like Stanley Park is like being in a totally different world.

The month of August has been terrific weather wise. Sunny and around 20 – 25 degrees every day. I think summer is slowly beginning to fade, most locals can’t believe there is still great weather.  We’re looking forward to autumn and winter.  Being right on the coast, Vancouver manages to avoid any heavy snow, but in land that is a different story.  We will hopefully get a chance to experience that at some point over the winter.

We’re also pricing up cruises to Alaska for next summer at the moment.  They don’t seem to be as expensive as you’d imagine.  A week long holiday to Alaska on a boat… what’s not to like?

All is well and good in Canada, and I can’t believe we only have 11 months of it left.