Day 2: Tugboat Tuesday

Today our Russian Roulette landed us at the Atlantica. It was a great score because this hotel is a 4 star with free Starbucks & apples. This means we get breakfast tomorrow! We met the meanest taxi driver in the East getting here, though. He greeted the parking guy like an old friend and didn't speak one word to us the entire trip! Ken had slept so poorly - 4 hours - due to the three hour time change and springy mattress. If I lay on my stomach a spring would gouge my ribs! The time change worked in my favour, though, and I slept 11 hours or so, right up until the maid came into our room! Eek! Ken bolted out of bed to slam the door. LOL!!

So, today we got a lay of the land. We travelled with FRED. It's named for FREE RIDES EVERYWHERE DOWNTOWN. However, it only comes every 45 minutes so we mostly walked all day and finally caught up with FRED. We found out why he is so slow. He's actually a tour bus so we got a 45 minute historical tour around town.

We stopped at the YMCA, who no longer has any services to the less fortunate, as of a couple of years ago, and have lost the pulse of this particular segment of society.

I got to witness to a mentally challenged man at the bus stop who was reading a little budhist book on top of his Bible. I asked what he was reading and said the Bible was the much better book. He wasn't so sure, because he had been helped by some people who gave him that book. I told him that he needed to be careful because it could be confusing to him, and that he should stick to the bigger book underneath - the Bible.

We met a homeless man on our way after supper, with Ken navigating "one block to the bus stop" that turned into "7 blocks." This man let us know where to find a soup kitchen we weren't familiar with, and we gave him 50 cents for his time.

Ken signed a petition to save the view of the harbour from Citadel Hill. For this we got to interview this local man, who said, "I don't feel like I'm promoting our city well by telling you where the homeless live, but I guess it's what you're interested in, so it's okay."