It is day two in Vancouver, our last day in Canada. We’re all terribly upset that our trip is coming to an end today. We take the long flight home this evening. Being the last person to blog from Canada gives me a unique perspective of the whole trip – all of it has been fantastic! Our group has grown so close and I suspect it will be hard to part ways when we finally reach Edinburgh. That being said, this trip has created close friendships so I’m sure everyone will keep in touch.

Getting to the business at hand, I have to report on the group’s activities for Monday 9^th June 2014. In the morning our group breakfasted in the Ramada Hotel in Vancouver. After checking out and depositing our belongings we then walked to Stanley Park for a group visit to the Vancouver aquarium.  Over the course of the trip our group has come across some great quotations. Vancouver has not let us down on this front. The city has quotations inscribed on some of their paving stones! One such paving stone quotation was, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Rather unnerving for me as a law student.  We have also come up with a few profound quotations of our own. My favourite (you know who you are!) was, “you can’t fit a shark in a small box.” I will leave the interpretation of this philosophical wisdom to you. Upon arriving in Vancouver aquarium it fast became evident that indeed you can’t keep a shark in a small box – in fact a shark needs a very large tank. So, too, do the other amazing species that we saw at the aquarium. We watched a dolphin show and saw beluga whales. Vancouver is host to some pretty amazing creatures! We spent a couple of hours wandering around the aquarium looking at the assorted species before having a limited wander in Stanley Park. It was just the kind of activity we needed to relax and enjoy the sights before we headed for the airport.

And so it came that after the aquarium we got our last BC transit bus to the hotel to collect our bags ready for the off. I’m not sure if you have been reading of our BC transit bus journeys but this one was not as eventful as those previous to it. Travel, in general, didn’t always go terribly well for us! It was a quick turnaround after collecting our bags in the hotel before we said goodbye to the city of Vancouver and got the train to the airport. One last hiccup met us on the train. The doors on the train would not be making any exceptions for anyone and so the majority got on the train before the doors shut on three others. It wasn’t such a big deal – they followed on the next train.

On the theme of travel I now turn to the last transit of the trip – the journey home. We had our flight today and left Vancouver around 20.30 I think. It has been a fantastic trip and I won’t forget our experience.

Let me leave you with one last quotation – “Don’t be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends” (Richard D. Bach). So I say farewell to Canada and farewell to the fantastic people with whom I have shared the trip, safe in the knowledge that I will meet both again!