Canadians are so damn nice!

I don't think I've ever been anywhere where you encounter such random acts of kindness on such a regular basis. Most of the countries I've travelled to people are mostly pretty friendly, but Canadians, well, they win the nice race. From day 1 things have been happening that make me go, wow, that's really nice! Crazy nice strangers!

When we arrived in Vancouver we were going to stay at B's friends place, she wasn't going to be home till that afternoon so we made our way slowly over to her place, with our mountain of baggage. B had a suitcase on wheels, 1 giant snowboard bag about 2metres long on wheels, and carried a backpack, camera bag and a manbag* on his body. (*man handbag) I had 1 giant suitcase, 1 large suitcase, 1 sml suitcase (attached crazily by B, god knows how, to the lrg suitcase) and a backpack. We really pushed our baggage allowance and so in total we were carrying approx 60kilos each. Yes this is alot of baggage. As we were walking it started raining. Seconds later a guy and his Dad pull over in a big van, "You guys are crazy, those bags look heavy, can we drop you wherever you're going?" I wouldn't normally accept a lift from strangers but they looked completely sincere, and I knew it would be fine. 70 yr old dad even helped lift the bags up! They left us with a little "Welcome to Vancouver!"  So nice!

Money is tight, well tight for us who never really want for anything, so after food shopping one day and B says to me, "wanna spend our last $12 on a bottle of wine?" and I say "hell yeah!"  we go into a bottle shop. This bottle shop was a little bit more posh than we've seen and everything seems way out of our price range. The salesperson asks to help us and we say, we'd like a local bottle of red for $12 or under... and we show her, our last $12. (God we are such deros!) So she proceeds to point out her favourite bottle of local red, which she says is delicious, but as it is out of our budget she will knock the price down to $12 just so we can try it. So nice!

Cars stop for you so you can cross the road. I'm not talking about at lights or crossings, where they have to stop anyway, I'm talking about normal roads, the cars just stop in the middle of the road if they see you want to cross and they let you pass!  Even if there are cars behind them, and the cars behind don't even bip them! It's such a nice feeling to not have the cars rule the roads so much! So nice!

Bus drivers are nice, they say good morning to you. If there is a customer service misunderstanding people say, I'm sorry, it must have been my fault even though the blame may be unclear. People apologise for not knowing if I am from Australia or New Zealand (I say "hey don't worry, you sound American to me!). The Ferry people open the doors for people with bikes. The greyhound bus guy gave us student rates without even asking!

And... the buses also cheer for the Canucks. (Vancouver ice hockey team currently in the playoffs)

Seriously people. This is one nice country! Yay Canada!