Arriving in Vancouver

The last time I was here in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, was about exactly one year ago. Reason: Web Directions North 2007, which was great. So back this year. Why? Web Directions North 2008, which will be even better.

Update (January 28th, 2008): Just by pure concidence, I just found an article on the BBC website that quotes a survey where Vancouver is voted as “the best place to live” out of 127 cities. I can totally see why.

The flight

I had chosen a direct flight with Air Canada from London Heathrow to Vancouver International Airport on Saturday. And it turned out, it was a good choice. The aircraft which was used was - I would say - a more or less brand new Boeing 767, with awesome luxury seats in first class, but also decent seating in economy class. Lots of legroom and even power plugs. So I managed to work on some stuff for this blog, talking to my neighbor and the 10 hours flight time went by pretty quickly.

Back in nice Vancouer

I took a cab to the Hyatt Regency, where the conference will be held as well. After finding out that, although the view from the room on the 24th floor is amazing, having a connecting door to the room next door is not so much. Especially when you can hear the neighbor watching TV. So I switched to a different room on the 7th floor. The view is less good, but it is much more quiet. I like it. The price for one day of Internet connection (wireless) is $ 14.95 (plus VAT), which is, again, a rip-off, but I hope the guys from WDN can get the WiFi right this time :-).

Meeting a friend

After unpacking, I met a friend of mine from my time back at uni. It was really nice catching up with her, haven’t seen her for about a year. We went to Steamworks for a beer and then to some other bar. At ten, the jet lag started to kick in and I made my way back to the hotel.

Sunday

Considering the time difference of 8 hours, I did not sleep that bad. I got up around 7am, got some breakfast and wanted to pay a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery. Unfortunately, 3 of the 4 exhibitions are not open until Saturday. So I cancelled that, or rather moved that to Sunday. Instead, considering the sky turned blue and the sun was up, I decided to go for my run around Stanley Park.

I think I can

Although it was sunny, it only had about +3° Celsius and it was a bit windy. But it was beautiful to go running, especially in such a nice environment. After about a third of the way, and due to the fact that my right knee sometimes starts to hurt a bit while running, I said to myself: “Do you really want to do this?” Cause normally I only run for about 40 minutes, when I go running around Regents Park in London.

But I did it, felt pretty exhausted afterwards, but very “refreshed” in a way. And this is the raw data that my Polar Heart Rate monitor recorded for me during my run:

I am quite happy with the result and feeling pretty good that I did what I planned to do. My muscles are a bit sore, but that’s part of the deal.

So tomorrow the conference is staring off for me with Andy Clarke’s workshop, Transcending CSS. Really looking forward to it. If you want to get a visual impression of what is going on here, check my photostream from my stay in Vancouver.