so we wanted to go to canada this year, and i wanted to have a little bit of alaska included in that trip too, but as it turned out, this is a mission impossible with the requirements we had. renting the car in vancouver, returning the car in anchorage? no way - there's no way you can rent the car in canada and return it in america. renting the car in seattle, crossing the border to canada, crossing the border again and returning the car in anchorage? no way, no car rental allows that. going by car to the canadian border, cross over to america, rent a car there, return it in anchorage? no way - too expensive, too complicated. so i was quite disappointed and agreed to omitting the alaska part. but that still didn't solve all problems. all the fares for renting the car in the south, and returning it in the north meant spending vast sums of money. but finally we found a trip that allowed us to return the car at a different spot than where we rented it and pay no fare at all: a trip from vancouver to calgary - wohooo. after booking two ferries, one from vancouver main land to vancouver islands, and one from vancouver islands back to the mainland, we also booked hotels for our first days in vancouver city and hotels at the both ferry terminals for our second ferry ride, since the trip will take us about 15 hours, starts at 07:30 and ends at 22:30 o'clock. and after all these preparations we finally landed in vancouver after a twelve hour flight (02:25 to london heathrow, 09:25 to the final destination), picked up our car, got some cash from an ATM, and drove to our first hotel, the "english bay hotel" in vancouver downtown, on day 01. as we were pretty tired, and it was already late, we took a short stroll[1-6] around in the area, got some food from the 7-eleven store nearby, and ate it across the street from a jazz-concert[3]. so far vancouver looks nice, let's see what it looks like in daylight tomorrow. track for day 01.