Friday, July 17, 2009
Months ago, when we were preparing to apply for our passports, I mentioned to Dad that I thought we should get the passport card instead of book. It is used only for driving over the border between the US and Canada. Since our schedule indicated that we'd take the train from Sacramento to Seattle and then a bus to Vancouver, this seemed like a good (and cheaper) option. In the end, we decided to stick with the book since we may need them in the future for traveling someplace else. It's a good thing we did that since you can use the passport card if you are flying into Canada. Which is exactly what we were about to do.
We had a 7:30 AM flight out of San Francisco, which necessitated a very early morning start. We had repacked the night before, trying to spread out the heavy stuff among the various suitcases (read that as David got to carry lots of my books). The hotel shuttle brought us to the airport at about 5 AM. We went to the check-in kiosk at the Air Canada desk, got our boarding passes, scanned our passports and then waited. There were no attendants at that very early hour and our luggage tags printed behind the counter. A few other people near us actually had the nerve to go behind the counter to retrieve their tags - I thought that was a bit presumptuous. Apparently so did the Air Canada people, who didn't seem overly pleased when they finally did show up and discover it. Anyway, we waited for a long time (it doesn't matter how big or busy an airport is - at that hour of the morning it was dead) for our flight. While waiting, I worked on putting captions on the pictures I'd taken thus far. If I waited until after the trip was over for that task, I would have forgotten what half of the pictures were of.
Waiting to board our flight in San FranciscoThe flight was uneventful. We flew right over Mt. Rainier in Washington - that was pretty neat. I actually quite like Air Canada. Each seat had its own television where you could select movies, tv shows, or movies on demand. And if I really wanted, I could watch something in French - go Canada! I settled in to watch The Shawshank Redemption. Why I chose to watch a 2 and a half hour movie on a two hour flight is beyond me, but it passed the time (and I've seen the movie several times already). Dad and David were across the aisle from me. I was sitting next to a young guy who read a booklet of religious sermons the entire trip. He was heading to Regina, Canada for some type of mission/church trip. He also didn't seem overly excited about his 12 hour layover in Vancouver. I got all of this from his phone conversation before take-off. What can I say, I'm a horrible eavesdropper (not that he was at all quiet about his conversation).
It was clear the Vancouver airport is nearly ready for the influx of people for the 2010 Winter Olympics in February - there were people everywhere directing you where to go and the Olympics logo was all over the place. Customs was uneventful, we spoke with a very friendly border agent who told us about her Alaskan cruise and how she regretted not going to the interior of the state. No worries, we didn't try to smuggle in any meat or plants from strange countries! Dad changed some money to Canadian dollars and then we took a cab to the hotel (Marriott Pinnacle Downtown), a nice hotel very close to the cruise terminal. Vancouver looks like a really nice city, it was tourist friendly, clean, and just all around pleasant. We got situated in our rooms (the strangest hotel rooms ever - each room is strangely shaped, with weird angles all over the place), David fell asleep after learning there was a charge to use the internet in this hotel (poor baby), and Dad and I eventually went for a walk to explore.
Hanging out in Dad's hotel roomBefore I go further, I will mention the world's most awful elevators. In order to go to any floor other than the lobby, you need to insert your room card first. This seems easy enough but I was not the only person that had great difficulty going from one floor to the next. Anyway, Dad and I wandered around, heading towards the Convention Center, which is right on the water. We watched the sea planes land and takeoff for a little while (I don't know why I found them so fascinating). We then wandered over towards the cruise terminal before stopping for lunch at some underground food court. We had a thoroughly Canadian lunch at Subway (I was really hoping to order my sandwich in centimeters but they used inches). We then headed back to the hotel, where David was disgruntled to learn we eaten lunch without him. You snooze, you lose. It was then a waiting game for Sarah, Steve, and Sophie to show up (they were driving from Seattle). Sarah called when they hit the road, we were expecting it to take about 3 hours. Five hours later, we all found each other and hung out for a bit before finding dinner.
View of the Vancouver harbor area
Vancouver, from the Convention Center
Sea plane preparing to take offThe hotel had two dinner options: the dining room and the lounge (more of a bar type setting but with a dinner menu). The hostess explained the 2 choices to us and we decided to go for the more casual lounge. The hostess then looks at Sophie and says to us that "the baby isn't allowed in." It wasn't as if Sophie was hiding behind other people when she told us the options in the first place - why would she offer that option when she could clearly see her?? Anyway, we ate in the dining room with the lounge menu - yay for compromise! We had the most awesome waitress. She was mostly awesome because of her accent. We spoke in our fake Canadian/Alaskan accents for the next week and a half. Dad was ready to kill us.
Sophie and I hang out together
No comments:
Post a Comment