Continuing my bulk update of the 'blog with summer happenings, I thought I'd share some photos and recollections of our recent and delightful trip North to Vancouver, BC for Canada Day.We decided to play it loose for this trip and "wing it" as we usually do for complex, foreign travel. That is, no set plans, just see what looks interesting or fun. In fact I wasn't even going to book a hotel for our (optional) overnight stay at first, but wiser heads prevailed, namely my Mom's. So we booked a night at the Pacific Palisades, part of my favorite boutique hotel chain. A bit of a splurge, but hey it's in Canadian dollars, right?
Note: The exchange rate currently offers us Americans a paltry 5-6% discount, dollar-for-dollar. When you tack on the credit card foreign currency fee, it might even cost more to buy most things in Canada these days. Thank you very much, Bush administration monetary, foreign and energy policies.
We set off from Seattle on Sunday morning with empty bladders, large Starbucks coffee drinks (sorry, we had free coupons), and best of all a sleepy, happy little boy.
I printed out the Wikipedia articles for Vancouver and Canada, as it has been a long time since grade school, and the WikiTravel article for Vancouver, and for the first half of the trip Dana read these aloud to us. Did you know that Canada didn't become fully independent until 1982? But in fact, Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day) celebrates not that final, bloodless thrust for independence, but an earlier legislative victory in 1867 when Britain officially organized the territories. The more you know...
By the time we got to the border, I was downright giddy with excitement. The only other border crossing I've made by car is the French-Swiss border, and we just about had to run over the Swiss agents to get their attention long enough to stamp our passports. So this was a treat.The border along I-5/Canadian 99 is marked by the stately Peace Arch that rises high above a large, well maintained grassy median and signifies the border's always-open status. While drivers wait in line to cross the border, families and kids get out of their cars to play and picnic in the grass. Their lawn is superbly maintained. Dana assured me that the counterpart crossing in Tijuana is not quite as picturesque, but I'll wait to see it for myself.
For Canada Day, they were handing out little paper flags and lapel pins, so we got all the necessary paraphernalia to not look like silly Americans for the big day. And we sweet talked the agent into giving us courtesy stamps for our passports. Alex didn't get his passport in time, so we just showed them his birth certificate.
Canada looks remarkably similar to Washington State, except that the road signs are all in kilometers. It took me a few minutes to adjust and remember to look at the small-print numbers on the Hyundai's speedo. We decided that the Mounties have probably already heard the line, "Gee officer, I thought that sign was in MPH." Better not to test our luck just yet.
Vancouver is a huge, huge city. It is actually the same overall population, almost to the thousand, as Seattle, with a slightly smaller overall metro area population. The remarkable thing about Vancouver is how DENSE it is - over twice as dense as Seattle. Apparently the city actually exerted some energy and political will in the 50s and 60s to plan for and head off urban sprawl, and their efforts have paid off in spades. This is a concept totally foreign to anyone from either California or Colorado, so we were in awe of the efficient, vertical architecture.
After checking into our hotel we strolled around downtown a bit, settling on a nice looking upstairs Thai restaurant for lunch. The food was excellent, service not too good, but who can argue with a really tasty green curry?On our way back through downtown, we discovered the True Spirit of Canada Day, so to speak -- which appears to be random free cupcakes and scantily clad Brazilian carnival dancers
I still have no idea what these nice young ladies had to do with Canada Day, but there they were handing out very yummy cupcakes. And friends, I'm not about to say 'no' to a free cupcake.
After that Alex needed a snack, and who could blame him?
After lunch and a break, we set off to ride the SkyTrain and get a birds-eye view of Vancouver and its surroundings.
Before we could ride the train, though, we had to have some of Canada's own Tim Horton's Donuts.
They're not that great, especially by Seattle standards, but they're sure better than Krispy Kreme. While we were sitting down to eat, first one policeman came in, then two, then three. I thought at first it was some kind of bust, but soon realized it was just what policemen do everywhere - sit around and eat donuts. It turns out they were having a staff meeting there, or something. By the time we left there were 5-6 very friendly cops sitting behind us chatting up a storm.
And I'll be darned if they weren't the most stereotypical Canadians we've met, right down to the "Eh, you hoser!"
Cheers, eh Alex?We rode the train and stopped in a wooded suburban park. It looked like the places I used to go camping as a kid in California. As we walked, we would occasionally hear the roar of a distant crowd. Walking farther on, we eventually came to an unimposing stadium, where it turns out Spain and Uruguay were competing in the World Cup (of soccer). We decided to move on. The whole outing was a bit surreal, kind of like finding yourself in the middle of Cupertino or something, and realizing there's a major league baseball game going on at the local park.
That night, before the fireworks at the waterfront, we attempted to go out to a nice Mediterranean restaurant near our hotel. Alex had other ideas, however. He let us get seated and order drinks and entrees, and then proceeded to cry and scream for the next hour. We pulled out all of the tricks in the book to try and console him, and even invented some new ones, but nothing worked. He just had too many new experiences to process, on too little sound sleep. We spent most of the hour standing in the restaurant stairwell and courtyard trying not to offend the other patrons, and eventually Dana walked Alex back to the hotel while Mom and I got the food to go. It took him another 2 hours or so to finally fall asleep back in the room, and we were so exhausted by then that we just watched what we could of the fireworks from our balcony. It was the worst "baby storm" I've ever experienced outside of the house, and I hope not to repeat it again.
A very flustered Dana and a very unhappy Alex at the restaurant. Dana is a real trooper, and a terrific mom.We learned our lesson about baby input/output. A light nap while taking a walk is no substitute for the real thing. And if me and Dana are amazed and awe-struck by the Big City, then Alex is absolutely overwhelmed and probably unsettled by it.
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