moi aussi: Vancouver Journey Part One

The pilgrimage to Vancouver is over, the photos are sorted, and now its time for the story.

I’ve wanted to go to Vancouver since about 2009. That was one year into my love affair with the TV show Supernatural, which is the story of two brothers who travel America and fight evil. Except, Supernatural is filmed in Vancouver and various areas around the city double as the United States.

The Winter Olympics in 2010 sealed it for me. British Columbia was gorgeous and I needed to see it for myself. So finally I got it all together and decided to go. When I mentioned this to my cards women, Barb perked up and said she’d love to join me. And so she did.

We flew into Seattle using Southwest airlines, which is one of the best experiences I’ve had since they have a laid back attitude and a great sense of humor which makes the flying experience enjoyable. Everything was on time and we got our car rental from Enterprise. As always, there was a free upgrade and we got the Toyota Camry. Two & a half hours later we’d had an easy border crossing at the Peace Arch and we were making our way through the very flat and farmed Delta.

Then we met traffic. There is a lot of traffic in the Vancouver Metro area, and we would experience it a few times that week. As I was driving Marine Way we got slowed as the lanes narrowed near the intersection with Byrne. In an act of serendipity I realized where we were stopped…at the corner where the “Watchmen” set is! It was one of the places I had wanted to see. An industrial area that just happens to casually house a movie set. Barbara took some shots, which I currently do not have. But suffice it to say, I was squeeing with delight.

Watchmen set, actually just a frontal facade.

We got to our hotel in Burnaby. It was the Holiday Inn Express and it was great! I highly recommend it. Clean, quiet, convenient. It was on the Skytrain, attached to a mega mall that rivaled the Mall of America (this mall, Metrotown, is the second largest in Canada, the only larger one is in Edmonton, and that’s the largest in the world)!!!! The hotel was convenient to the highways also and the parking was free. There was a heated pool on the roof and free hot breakfast daily. Plus, they gave us mall coupons that included $10 gift cards and a bus/train pass. We got them twice! We used them on caramel apples and wine…important stuff!

Holiday Inn Express had a heated pool!

View from the third floor across the street to the SkyTrain.

We worked hard on this vacation, putting in 8 hours a day. On Tuesday we left the hotel early and took the train to the city. We walked along the Coal Harbour Seawalk. We went on a Harbour Cruise at Burrard Inlet. Then we had lunch at Cardero's. I had sea scallops and Barbara had a salmon burger. I washed mine down with a British Columbia hard cider. The whole trip I tried to find local things to enjoy.

We returned to Burnaby and mailed out our Tim Horton’s coffee. Oops! Postage in Canada is really expensive. After spending $24 to mail a $8 coffee we could only laugh at our innocence. What the heck. After that we drove to Fort Langley, which was #1 on my pilgrimage list of sites to see.

Raindrop Sculpture...how fitting!

Barbara at Canada Place which was cleaned up nicely for the Olympics in 2010.

Everyone in Vancouver wears black and dark colours, I fit in!

Coal Harbour

The boat we took for the inlet tour.

Fort Langley is cute, but pretty much everything closes at 5 PM. We took a bunch of pictures and walked around. One of my goals was to eat gelato and drink Tim Horton’s. In Ft. Langley we got the gelato, a nice pear flavor!!!!!

Our day complete, we returned to the hotel to relax and recharge for the next day. We walked A LOT! Miles!!!!!!

Random pictures with captions below: