Vancouver

Dharyll and I went up to Vancouver B.C. on Wednesday, spent the night and came home yesterday. It's about a four hour drive plus another hour (if you're lucky) trying to cross the border. This is us, waiting in line to get into Canada.

Caw Caw! Is he a Canadian or an American crow? I don't think he really cares all that much either way.

This is the bridge we crossed in Canada. It's pretty cool, and if I were an encyclopedia I'd tell you the name and the history of it, but I'm not. Instead I'll just post a pretty picture of it and let you do the grunt work if you feel the need.

We got to the hotel in Vancouver and ditched the car because I'm a nervous driver and we decided it was for the best. We walked to the transit center thing and rode the Canadian equivalent of the Max train thing in Portland into town. We walked and walked and walked and ate a falafel and walked some more.

We found the expo center and got some chai latte's to wash that crazy onion taste from the felafel's out of our mouths. It start to rain while we were order, and by the time we got outside it was pouring and then it started to hail and then it started to REALLY hail and then there where huge organ-shaking thunders and lightnings. We walked around under the overhang watching float planes land in the crazy weather until it cleared up a little.

The storm leaving.

This is a building that's still under construction. It looked neat so I thought I'd take a picture. It's going to have a killer view when it's finished. Right next to it and a little behind it in the picture there's the floating gas station where all the planes were filling up.

Dharyll showed me this crazy graffiti wall somewhere in Vancouver. Don't ask me where it is because I don't think I'll ever be able to find it again.

Van Gogh, graffiti style.

Tiger lady! Huzzah!

And then we went to China town.
The gate.
Big kitties.
A memorial statue for all of the railway workers. From far away it looks like they're flying so I thought it was a superhero statue. I guess it kind of is, if you want to think about it that way. Flying shovel man!

I just really liked these flowers.

Wooden gumby!
The second day we went to Granville Island. I really liked it, even more than Vancouver itself. There's something about a shanty town and a grisly murder in Granville's past, but I didn't want to read Wikipedia's page far enough to find out more. Today, there are cool buildings all over the place (I thought mom and dad might like some of them) and crepe stands. It's just a neat little place, especially when the weather gets a little less nippy than it was.
Cool building.

Cool building #2.
Cool building #3.

We decided to head home once my parking on Granville expired at 1:30. We got lost a little trying to find the highway. There's a crazy mix of stop lights and stop signs at intersections and since I'm notoriously not a good city driver, things were a little stressful. But neither of us died and I didn't hit any pedestrians so I think on the whole the driving part of the trip was a success. We got to the border, waited in line an hour and got to the customs point. The Canadian guard took our passports and asked us some things.

Canadian guard: where do you live?

Me: (I look at Dharyll) I live in Olympia and he lives in Beaverton.

Canadian guard: Why did you have to look at him? That was an easy question!

Me: Well, we live in two different places.

Canadian guard: How do you know each other?

Me: We're dating!?

Canadian guard: But you live in two different places, how do you know each other?

Dharyll: We met during Study abroad.

Canadian guard: I hope she wasn't the broad! (Dharyll and guard: laugh laugh laugh)

Me: Oh... hehe... that's funny (I get pretty red).

Canadian guard: Where did you study?

Me: Italy.

Canadian guard: What do you do for work?

Me: student.

Dharyll: student.

Canadian guard: Are you bringing anything back into the U.S. that you need to declare?

At this point I'm pretty flustered and sweaty. I kept thinking to myself, "No, you have nothing. There's nothing you need to declare." And then I hear myself saying,)

Me: Oh.. umm... I think we have a jar of peanut butter!

Canadian guard and Dharyll: Laugh laugh laugh. (hilarious, I assure you).

Me: Oh... whatever.

We get our passports back, I can stop panicking and I roll out of the Canadian customs booth. I hope that guard was saving up that "broad" joke just for something like this.

Anywho, we drove and drove and drove. We stopped by a cemetery in Seattle on the way down to see Bruce Lee's grave.

Three German guys were taking forever, monkeying around at his grave so I wandered away for a while. I liked this grave.
And here it is.
So that was our trip. Oh yeah, on the way back home we stopped at Trader Joe's just south of Seattle got some things, drove drove drove and then I realized that I forgot my chai tea mix, the one thing I stopped to get. So we stopped at another one right along the highway slightly further south. Well worth it.
Hey, we should go to Vancouver some time!