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Melbourne to (Vancouver) Canada?
secretexhibition
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been researching this a ton lately, and I felt like maybe this (awesomely helpful) forum could help me out a little in terms of knowing how much i'll need, and how realistic it is to do.
Anyways, I'm sorta vaguely planning on the idea of going to Vancouver for the Winter Olympic games next year for a week, and so i've been looking into it a lot lately in terms of how much i'd need to put aside for it. I was thinking $3000 (AUD) to $3500 AUD might be possible for me to do, and for it to work. $1800-$2000 of that would be taken for the plane ticket there and back, of course.
So, does anybody that live there/have been there/know Canada/Vancouver better than me know if I could live off of around $1000-$1500 (AUD) (that's $900 - $1300 CAD and $800 - $1200 US) for a week (or slightly more) there? I wouldn't care if I lived in a crappy hotel/motel/whatever, it would really be all about the sightseeing, the Olympics and stuff similar to that for me, really. I'm assuming i'd have to put away something like $250-$300 for the Olympics stuff i'd plan to do, too, so that runs it down.
Is this possible/plausible, or am I living in ~fairy dream land~? And, even if this is logically possible money-wise, i'm imagining it would be pretty hard to find one of those cheap hotels with vacancies for that time, right? =/
TL;DR version: Want to go to Canada (Vancouver) for a week or so during the olympics, wondering whether $1000-$1500 AUD would be enough for me to live there for a week (and go to a few olympic events).
Anyways, I'm sorta vaguely planning on the idea of going to Vancouver for the Winter Olympic games next year for a week, and so i've been looking into it a lot lately in terms of how much i'd need to put aside for it. I was thinking $3000 (AUD) to $3500 AUD might be possible for me to do, and for it to work. $1800-$2000 of that would be taken for the plane ticket there and back, of course.
So, does anybody that live there/have been there/know Canada/Vancouver better than me know if I could live off of around $1000-$1500 (AUD) (that's $900 - $1300 CAD and $800 - $1200 US) for a week (or slightly more) there? I wouldn't care if I lived in a crappy hotel/motel/whatever, it would really be all about the sightseeing, the Olympics and stuff similar to that for me, really. I'm assuming i'd have to put away something like $250-$300 for the Olympics stuff i'd plan to do, too, so that runs it down.
Is this possible/plausible, or am I living in ~fairy dream land~? And, even if this is logically possible money-wise, i'm imagining it would be pretty hard to find one of those cheap hotels with vacancies for that time, right? =/
TL;DR version: Want to go to Canada (Vancouver) for a week or so during the olympics, wondering whether $1000-$1500 AUD would be enough for me to live there for a week (and go to a few olympic events).
secretexhibition on
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Since I live here, I have already seen a lot of people trying to rent places for those weeks at ridiculous prices (like 5000+ for the month of February...). I sure hope though that those are only people trying to make a quick buck and not the actual going rate...but I dunno.
I did a quick search and found this link:
http://www.2010destinationplanner.com/en-CA/default.htm
It has links to accommodations and what not. Due note though that I have no idea really the contents of that site, but several sites I looked at quickly to get an idea of places to stay linked that site.
I think with a bit of research, knowing the events you want to see and where they are located, you could probably find a place to stay in Burnaby/Surrey and take the skytrain to those events.
I guess it all depends on what you want to see. Google shows the actual skytrain stops as well as the bus stops, but here is the link of the transit system:
http://www.translink.ca/
This is the entire map, so you can use this to compare places to stay and where you want to visit. This is a pdf file.
Good luck with your planning.
Maybe someone here (not me :P ) will rent you a room? Worth a shot anyways. I suppose theoretically you could live on $1000/week here, but this isn't the cheapest place in the world to live, and I expect prices for everything will be raised during the games. It probably largely depends on how cheaply you plan on eating, and how much you drink.
Also, keep in mind that the games are being held in two different places, Vancouver and Whistler. I'll presume you're familiar with Whistler since half the people working there seem to be Aussies.
anecdotally, i've also heard that the vast majority of tickets to events have been sold. have a peek around on google or ebay, but i've got a sneaking feeling anything you get your hands on would be horribly inflated at this stage
if you have your heart set on vancouver you should go after the olympics, when the city looks around itself and sees the huge infrastructure and development investments... with nobody to use it. it's a wonderful city, and very much worth spending a lot of time in, but you'll get way more for your miserably unpredictable australian dollars when the place isn't at the climax point of its economic lynch-pin
Also, I'm not sure if all the 2010 tickets have been sold yet, they did do some phased releases of tickets, but I think those may have been for Canadians only. I think there may be more ticket releases coming. Just dont expect tickets to popular Canadian sports like hockey, skating (speed or figure), or curling to be easily available.
Okay, good to know, and yeah I'm hoping that options like that wouldn't be my only options.. Was sorta worried about that. =/
I'm imagining accommodation would be a bit easier to find in one of those places, yeah? How long would the skytrain take approximately?
That sounds like an interesting idea, i'm just wondering how I would go about doing such a thing and if it would still be very expensive.
I don't drink that much, and wouldn't even consider going out to a bar every night while i'm there to get smashed or something like that at all. Seems to defeat the purpose for me. Drinking is something I only really like to do after a long week of work on a Friday, and even then I don't do that much -- or drink much -- I maybe have one or two with a meal (rarely) on the weekend, too, so..
And, I would plan on eating pretty (very) cheaply, yeah. Maybe go to a couple cafes while i'm there but other than that mostly cheap eating?
Yeah, I knew that, but no, i'm not that familiar with Whistler. :P
That would interest me a lot, yeah. You mean like finding accommodation together and stuff, yeah? I'd probably want to meet up with you a couple times before just to know you're not some 69 year old pedophile, but y'know.
Yeah, to be honest originally I was expecting the flight(s) to cost from $2500-$3000, but I was looking around and asking around and it looked like I could get an okay flight around then for 1800-2000, assuming I wasn't ridiculously picky. Flights seem to be a lot cheaper these days, IDK.
Oh, yeah, I researched that a little and apparently there's another round of tickets going on sale for Australians in September, so i'd plan to get in on that. I'm wondering though, that if I bought those international tickets there if I could give them to a Canadian friend, hypothetically if I were to meet him/her in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics (so we could be sure to seat near each other or something).
Yeah, this is a definite consideration. If I can't go for the olympics I plan to go in May-June-ish next year to Toronto and maybe Vancouver (Vancouver only wins out over Toronto right now because of the Winter Olympics -- not that it isn't close outside of that and other things :P) aswell as Los Angeles with more money and do that all in one shot.
Um, anyway, so what about if I were able to move things around a little more and save up around $1500-$2500 (AUD) extra for such a Winter Olympics trip (I was sorta going on the low-end of what I could gather before, just to see), would that make it a lot more feasible to the point that it might push it into a ~yes that's possible~ versus a ~no that's most likely not possible~?
For the record, I wouldn't even mind living like a bum for an entire week there. :P
Hostels may still have room. I've personally stayed in both the C&N backpacker locations. They are on Main st. you can imagine that it is going to be a main street, so it gets loud, and one of them has a dive bar underneath it. The prices are good/average at ~$20 a day (non-olympic prices). Service has always been good for me. That's all I can say about the hostel scene there.
Doesn't look like there is anything available hostel wise on the internet, but a call wouldn't hurt.
Most of the people I know in Vancouver live in the Port Coquitlam area, so theres no point asking them if they got an extra bed.