It was our first trip over that way, it seems to have a bit of a bad reputation nowadays and several people have said it is quite run-down. We didn't see a large part of it but we have to say the areas we seen weren't too impressive either, they weren't terrible but we can see why some people talk about it like this. There are lots of tatty / abandoned buildings around the SkyTrain station, which seems quite common (in older metropolitan parts of Canada at least).  It seems to me that the land doesn't seem so precious over here so when things 'go down the swanny' they often just get left in states of disrepair. The problem is that this obviously makes some places look quite crappy and certainly not good for an outsiders first impressions. I'm sure there are some good parts there too because otherwise so many people wouldn't live there, it's just that we didn't really see them places!

However, we were here for car viewings and when it came to that New Westminster certainly had options. We spent an hour or so looking around and found a couple of places that didn't seem like rip-off merchants. We'll probably take a look at a few more places but maybe we'll head back there when we decide to buy. I think I've mentioned the car prices over here before - second hand cars are really expensive here compared to the UK. An average car looks like it will cost about $5,000 and even then it won't be anything too special, it's a good job we were already aware of this before we moved here! I think we will end up buying from a car dealer, the prices didn't seem any different to ones advertised in private sales and in this case you usually get at least a 3 month warranty whereas privately of course you get none. On our way home we found a 'Cockney Fish & Chip Shop' so we had to try it! There was nothing really cockney about this place though and we didn't notice any English staff at all. It was very different compared to a Chippy in the UK but thankfully it was still tasty. We found the whole gimmick quite funny but the locals seem to love it as the place was packed out! 

On Wednesday we headed to Chinatown which is a 5-10 minute walk from the main downtown area of Vancouver but it's also on the border of 'skid-row'. Chinatown is actually alright (with some very friendly people there) but is still part of the whole Downtown Eastside neighborhood which is an area renowned for high poverty, drug use, prostitution and crime. I'd say on first hand impressions Chinatown's probably the safest part of that whole area though (maybe the Chinese population has earned / demanded respect which keeps most "undesireables" out of their area?). I wasn't too keen on going down there as we'd been there in 2005 and got put off by all the by the beggars, druggies and dodgey looking people hanging around on the adjacent streets. There are many tea places there though and we were on the hunt for 'blooming tea' so Lou eventually persuaded me to go. Not far from the entrance we noticed that the Dr Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden was there so we checked it out and were slightly bemused at how we'd managed to miss the place completely when we visited here last. The classical chinese garden is quite small but it's very nice and apparently it was one of the first of it's kind outside of China. The garden surrounds a pond area which contains terrapins and very large koi carp and definitely would be a nice relaxing place if it wasn't for all the people attracted to it for photos - like us! After checking that place out we then found what Lou was looking for (a very good and friendly tea shop), we then spent a short while window shopping before heading home.