Observations from Canada

February 11, 2005 ·  

I took a quick spin up to Vancouver, BC yesterday. I had never really been to Canada. Well, I take that back. I did make it in to Canada when I visited Niagra Falls, but I don’t think that really counts. I just got far enough in to have to change my American Dollars to Canadian Dollars in order to buy a hamburger. Then when I got back to the US, I just had worthless dollars and coins. Oh well. Niagra Falls was cool.

There were no especially interesting stories to tell of in Vancouver, but I do have a few observations.

-The Metric system was really messing me up. Cities seemed alot farther they I thought when the miles turned into kilometers.
-Gas was 91.9 cents per liter. I didn’t know if I was getting a deal or not. You had to take into account both the dollar to Canadian dollar AND the Litre to Gallon. Who cares, I jsut filled up and forgot about it.
-They don’t have any left turn lanes on the major roads. Nor do they have any suicide lanes. That was hard because when there were people turning left the left lane was really held up. So the fastest lane was the one in the middle.
-Their traffic lights had four stages. Red, yellow, green, and flashing green. I never really figured out what flashing green meant, but I didn’t get in a crash so it’s alright.
-It was ALOT harder for me to get into Canada then out of Canada. The guard to get into Canada asked me like 20 questions and was really rude about it. I guess he’s just trying to protect his border.
-Vancouver is a HUGE city. I hiked out to one of the cliffs on the border where there was a lighthouse and got a beautiful view of the city and the bridge.
-All of the building downtown have ALOT of glass on it. In the States, the high rises have windows but also alot of other building material. the buildings in downtown Vancouver were probably 90% glass.

All in all, Vancouver was very pretty and I liked it.

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Comments

3 Responses to “Observations from Canada”

  1. dan on February 24th, 2005 7:33 am

    -Gas was 91.9 cents per liter. I didn’t know if I was getting a deal or not. You had to take into account both the dollar to Canadian dollar AND the Litre to Gallon. Who cares, I jsut filled up and forgot about it.

    You definitely did not get a deal. Gas is always significantly higher in Canada because of built in taxes we pay on fuel.

    -They don’t have any left turn lanes on the major roads. Nor do they have any suicide lanes. That was hard because when there were people turning left the left lane was really held up. So the fastest lane was the one in the middle.

    This must be unique to Vancouver as lots of other places in Canada have left turn lanes on major roads.

    -Their traffic lights had four stages. Red, yellow, green, and flashing green. I never really figured out what flashing green meant, but I didn’t get in a crash so it’s alright.

    Flashing green means that you can make a left turn because the cars facing you still have a red. Similar to green arrow in some US states.

  2. Siteowner on February 24th, 2005 7:44 am

    Dan, thanks for the clarifications. That green light thing has really been bugging me.

  3. justin on July 16th, 2005 4:08 am

    actually, vancouver’s flashing green means something different, according to this site. while i agree that it’s like a green arrow most places, it is definately not in vancouver because i’ve almost been hit making that very assumption!

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