Hooray!!! We were finally going to Vancouver! I was going to be able to use my freshly bought passport that I bought just for this trip!
Our boss let us leave a little early from work since the drive to Vancouver from the clinic was seven hours! Definitely our longest drive so far. Along the way, we stopped in Cashmere, WA. They are crazy about their apples. But, they also have this amazingly good BBQ place called Country Boy's BBQ. Margaret ordered the pulled pork and I got the brisket. Perfection! They even had these fun curly french fries, but they were more like potato chips. Awesome!
The road we took out there was more of a back road. But man oh man, the view was gorgeous! We saw such diverse landscape. We wished that we had known about that earlier so we could have taken it to Seattle the previous weekend. At one point, there was grafiti all over this one part of the mountain. I'm not sure how people got out there.
Reminds me of the 34th stree wall!
At 10:30pm we eventually made it to the USA/Canada border!
Waiting in line...eeek!!! :)
In English and French! How cute!
Luckily, the lanes weren't that bad and it only took us about 10 minutes to go through border patrol. They ask you some questions. Mostly about your plans in the country, where you are from, how long you will be there, if you are carrying any weapons and if you brought any plants/animals that you intend to leave there. Thankfully they let us into the country! Unfortunately, they didn't stamp our books. I even asked the guy to do it for me, but he rambled on about how they don't stamp books for US people for some reason or another. What a bunch of crap! I bought this passport and I want a freakin' stamp!!!
Driving in Canada was interesting. I forgot that they use the metric system there, so it was odd going 100km/hr. They also have different road signs. It was still easy to get around and find our way to the hotel, but we still can't figure out what one sign meant. It was a square tilted on a point (like a diamond) with a circle and a line going through it. Thoughts on this would be great since we are stumped.
The drive gave us our first sight-seeing adventure. Margaret's exact words, "Hey look, there's a Canadian picking his nose!" Yup, welcome to Canada!
We finally got to our hotel and the warm, cozy beds that awaited us. But first, we had to master the art of using the elevator. Yes, I didn't know how to use it. You needed your room key for access, but there was no slot to insert said key. I was so confused/tired at this point. Thank goodness the guy at the front desk was still there and he told me that I needed to hold the key to the censor, then press the button to get to our floor. So simple, yet so different from what we're used to.
On the 31st floor of the Empire Landmark Hotel in downtown Vancouver, B.C., we snuggled into our beds and had big plans of sleeping in, which is rare these days.
Nope, not sleeping in! What kind of house keeping vacuums the hallways at 9:00am right ourside of your door (that has a huge crack inbetween the door and the wall so you can hear everything)? Oh well, so we got up and started our day!
The view from the hotel was amazing. To the left, you saw the city, straight out, you saw the bay and to your right was Stanley Park! We definitely lucked out!
Our mission for the morning: food. We didn't get any loonies because we were told, by some other people that had recently visited, that you would be fine with your credit card (even though they will rape us in fees because of it). This was a very false statement. We definitely needed those loonies to park anywhere in that country. Thank goodness the place we chose to eat at offered free parking!
While eating, we figured we should ask around to see if you had to pay to park at Stanley Park. Of course we would have to! Fortunately, the girl at the register was super nice and offered to exchange me $5 for 5 loonies, even though the exchange rate isn't quite 1:1.
Loonies!! and another coin I'm not sure the name of. :)
In need of more Canadian coin, we stopped at a bank. Banks have money, we need money, things will work out. NOPE! It is a $3 service fee for exchanging money. We only had $5 total to exchange. We couldn't get money off our debit card to get it exchanged because we didn't have a bank account with them. So what were we to do?
Thank goodness that Canadian people are awesome! A man in the bank whipped out some loonies and traded our $5 for us! Hooray! We could finally park at Stanley Park!
It is so weird to go from a congested city to a tree-filled park. We inserted our loonies into the parking machine and found out the hard way that you could have used your credit card to pay for parking. Oh well, it was cool to see some loonies though!
The park was really peacefull. There are plenty of gorgeous views of the bay, the convention center and the Lions Gate Bridge. It was really nice to be able to get out and stretch our legs. It had been a while since we've gotten a chance to walk around and look at the sights.
I'm going to go ahead and let the pictures tell you about Stanley Park.
Totem Poles.
The five flags, a symbol of Canada. To the right is where the Olympic flame is located. Too we weren't there when it was lit for Vancouver's birthday celebration.
View of the bay. Shortly after taking this photo, a group of Chinese women were blatantly making fun of me and took the same photo. Jerks.
Rugby game that was taking place that Saturday afternoon.
Did you know they lift them up?
We got down on the beach of the bay. This was a huge tree that was just chillin' there.
Margaret showing how huge the tree was.
A sculpture of the woman in the wetsuit. (And a bird on her head)
Cherry Blossoms!
Margaret in the hollow tree, that wasn't so hollow. It had an entire metal structure holding it up. Very disappointing, but it did make for a good picture.
The park was very diverse and it offered us tons of things to see! But, we still had one more place we wanted to go before it got dark, Capillano Park. First, we had to cross the Lions Gate Bridge!
Capillano Park is known for their suspension bridge and the fact that the park is a RAINFOREST! A rainforest in Vancouver!
The suspension bridge at Capillano Park. If you look close enough, you'll see Margaret leaning on the right side of the bridge about 1/3 of the way out.
Margaret and Lauren
Oh no! Too much nature!
Huge trees!
The tiniest pine cone I've ever seen!
Can you find us?
After a much-needed fill of nature, we headed back to the hotel. We were exhausted. Who would have know that so much nature could drain you so much!
In order to avoid another loonie issue, we decided to walk to dinner. We weren't sure where to go, so we stopped at this kiosk that told you of certain places to go in the area. We chose to get Greek food and found a great place. We then got directions from the person at the front desk, but they kept calling the resaraunt by a different name. Confused, we made sure that we had the correct directions to the restaraunt that they mentioned was the BEST Greek food in the area. The walk was really nice, only about 15 minutes from our hotel. Upon arriving to Stepho's, we noticed that a line had formed. This was the line to go into the waiting area of the restaraunt. Wow, this place has to be good.
While waiting, we noticed that they had about 7 different awards, all for Best Restaraunt. Our standards were set high. Thirty minutes and three bird poops later, we made it to our seats! Not a bad wait for a small restaraunt.
Everything sounded amazing. Margaret ordered the Spinakopata and the Lamb and I got the Garlic Sauce and the Lamb. Everything was amazing. Stepho's lived up to their name!
The Lamb! YUMMM!
Even though we were exhausted and ready for bed, we thought that we had to visit the 42nd floor of our hotel. Somehow, we picked the one hotel in Vancouver that had a revolving restaraunt on top of it! TWO revolving restaraunts in ONE week! We sat in the lounge area with our person DJ. Definitely not something that we expected: a DJ in a classy restaraunt. But, we enjoyed the view and a yummy drinks (even though they were $10/drink).
Sunset over the bay.
Lauren and Margaret with the city in the background. The Space Needle rotates every 47 minutes, the one in Vancouver rotates every 190 minutes.
To begin our night, Margaret and I had belini's. Margaret's was peach and mine was raspberry. We only intended to have one drink, but then one turned into two and then two turned into three. By the third drink, which was only 11:00pm, we called it a night.
We checked out of the hotel at 12:00pm and headed for the United States of America!
Waiting in line to get back into our homeland!
Canada/USA border.
We made it!!!
Once we were back in the states, we hit up some food at the Olive Garden where we had the worst service, but at least it was nice not paying an arm and a leg, plus all the fees of converting the currency.
Back to Spokane, WA we drove.
