The Time Traveling Duo - To Canada and Back- Part 2 - Canada

We arrived in Vancouver just a few hours before my family and were really excited to finally get to see them. After a quick meal we headed straight up to Whistler. The scenery was stunning and I was a bit bummed that it was dark for the second half of the drive. My cousin, Brenna and her husband came up to spend the night with us since it was her birthday!

We woke up to see that there was pretty much no snow on the mountain. Regardless, we got our skis and headed out on the mountain. The entire bottom half of the mountain was machine made and the top was pretty much ice. They were quite frustrating conditions to ski in, but nonetheless it was exciting to finally be back on the slopes after a near 10 year absence. That was my only day of skiing, but everyone else skied a combination of the next few days. We all took the third day off for a day of relaxation, Risk (the game), and snow tubing. We had a blast tubing, and as I lost Risk quite early on in the game, I did more relaxation than Risk playing. We couldn't go down the lanes together, but we did some racing, and experimented with spinning as we went down. As usual our nights were filled with game playing. It was great seeing my family and it went by too quickly.

This was the bunny slope to get to the base.

We headed back to Vancouver where they caught their flight home, Sean caught a flight to Calgary to see some friends and I stayed in Vancouver with Brenna.

The first day I walked to Granville Island and back while Brenna was at work. It was a cool area and I had a nosy in all the shops, though I managed to walk out without buying anything.

The second day I walked in the opposite direction along the coast around the end of the peninsula where she lives. The map was deceiving and I ended up walking a bit further than I anticipated. In total I walked for 4.5 hours, which was just over 11 miles. I came home utterly exhausted, feet blistered, and my achillies tendon aching from my shoes, just in time for everyone to get home from work. Brenna took me out as my belated Christmas present and I got to see the downtown area. We went up to the revolving restaurant (apparently every city has one of these now?) and had a drink while we got a great view of the city.

An artist had made cool benches out of driftwood.

The remnants of something military that had been graffitied

Sooo many logs washed up on shore everywhere. A lot of beaches had arranged them in rows as seats. P.S. this was a clothing optional beach and despite it being winter, A surprising number were not discouraged from participating

The next day the weather continued to be beautiful and apparently everyone in Vancouver got the same idea to do the hike we were planning. After would couldn't find parking, we abandoned that plan and went to a different hike. We took what Brenna's friend said was an overgrown alternative path, only too find too late that it was not at all a path. We had a bit of excitement trying to maneuver through all the plants and fallen trees, but it made for an adventure. At the end we came to the water's edge with a bunch of giant boulders. There was then an underwhelming lighthouse (remotely operated electric lighthouses have really made things boring) and we headed home to an amazing tex-mex lunch/dinner. mmmm tex mex.

Sunday we headed to the area where Brenna works and she showed me her office. We did a bit of shopping, ate more Tex Mex... mmmmm, and then came home. I loved Vancouver right away and could definitely see myself living there. I didn't expect it, but it reminded me a lot of Auckland. We picked Sean up from the airport in the evening.

While everyone was at work Sean and I went back to the beach I went to on my long walk, but I was smart this time and took the bus. My achillies tendon started to really act up that time and I am still having issues with it now. We went to a bookstore and Sean went a little crazy with the excitement of how cheap books are compared to NZ. We then caught the train back to Seattle.

Morning Fog

Crossing the US/Canada Border on the train.

The Time Traveling Duo - To Canada and Back- Part 3 - The End

We arrived back in Seattle in time for bed, and woke up early and got our rental car. They gave us a free upgrade, but I was more excited about the fact that the car we got had Texas plates on it. We drove an hour and a half north to Anacortes, where we caught the car ferry over to the San Juan Islands. In the summer I am sure it is a beautiful ferry ride, but it was really foggy so we couldn't see too much around. We got to the hotel (where we got our room upgraded as well) and then did a drive around the island which took up most of the day. The island has a ton of huge houses on it that we found out most people that own them are only there a few weeks out of the year. The coastal area was beautiful and I could see why you would want a vacation home there.

cool tree

My foot was still quite angry so I was hesitant to do too much walking, but we did do a short hike up to the tallest hill, which had a bit of a lookout.

The next morning we found out that most of the town is closed on tuesdays and then took a scenic plane ride around the chain of islands. It was really cool to see the islands from above and it was amazing how many lakes were on the islands. One was way up in the hills and you can't really see it unless its in the air. The pilot was really cool and we had a great time. He even let me fly the plane for a bit, but didn't think I was quite ready to try the landing. It was a bit of a windy day and even though we were fine in the plane, once we landed our stomachs both needed a few minutes to settle. We got back on the ferry and drove back to Seattle, where we flew out the next morning.

you can tell i'm actually flying the plane, because the pilot is the one taking the picture

Friday Harbour as we waited for the ferry.

We had a 24 hour layover in Hawaii, so we hiked up Diamond Head and had dinner looking over the beach. Our hotel room got upgraded again (we must be special) and we had a nice relaxing morning reading on the beach before we caught our plane home. We were greeted by a nice gust of hot and humid air and an impending cyclone, but so far we have managed to survive unscathed.

View of Honolulu from Diamond Head

 

Now its back to work and sports. I've taken the week off soccer to let my foot heal and we have a preseason game coming up this Sunday. I went to a practice this week just to watch and it was fun to see all the girls again. I'm really excited about our team this year. The cats have been super cuddly and affectionate since we have been back so they must have really missed us.

Thanks for all of the well travel wishes. We had an amazing time and it flew by too quick.

The Time Traveling Duo - To Canada and Back- Part 1- Seattle

After being extremely nervous about the amount of empty space in our bags (though we managed not to forget anything), we started our exciting trip with a bit of time travel. We departed just after midnight on Wednesday, which meant we landed in Seattle on Tuesday again. We flew Hawaiian airlines and were really impressed with the airline. I would recommend them to anyone in the future, but be prepared to hear Mahalo (thank you) about a million times. Sean was also really excited about how much easier Customs was this time around.

We landed just in time for bed and found out that February was Museum Month in Seattle. If you were staying at a hotel in the Seattle area, you got half off all museums. We woke up and went to the grocery store to buy cereal. We got back to our room to find that the plastic silverware provided did not include a spoon and got to eat our cereal with a fork. It was entertaining. Then we headed to the Chihuly Glass Gardens. This was what I was most excited about in Seattle and it did not dissapoint. The MASSIVE glass installations were spectacular and the pictures don't do it justice. There was an outdoor garden as well, but unfortunately it didn't shine as much with overcast skies. We got lucky in that we never saw the sun in Seattle, but it never rained on us either.

 

We followed that up with a trip to the EMP museum. We had no idea what it really was, but the second we saw the building we knew we made the right decision. It was by far the coolest museum I have ever been in and I could have easily spent the whole day inside. A real effort was made to make everything inside unique. The museum was a music/pop culture collection. You walk into a 3 story screen and sound system playing music videos. There was a whole room dedicated to indie video games with a bunch of consoles to sit and play all the games. There was a massive area of music videos that showed all kinds of milestones in music video history in all sorts of genres. It was an extremely interactive museum, and you could even learn to play instruments or go in the recording studios and record your own music. There was a massive tornado of instruments that had a few instruments in it actually playing.

The tornado of instruments

The back side of the EMP Museum

One of the sides of the Museum. The purple/pink bit is all the massive screen I mentioned

The museum from above. Note the monorail goes through the middle of it.

After a short tour to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation we went home exhausted.

The next day we walked to the markets and did an underground tour. Seattle has a fascinating history which includes a massive underground sidewalk nextwork, and we really enjoyed the tour. I could talk about it for ages, but I highly suggest reading into it yourself or going on the tour when if you go there. We then did the obligatory trip up the Space Needle, but because it was still overcast, it wasn't at its peak beauty.

Thats probably the most blue sky we saw the whole time

I didn't plan much for Seattle and it ended up being the biggest surprise of the trip. We both really enjoyed our time there. That being said, I think two days was enough, and we were excited to get on the train to head up to Vancouver to meet up with my family. We took a scenic train, and saw a number of bald eagles on the way.

The view from the roof of our hotel