Canada, eh?

 

So I went up to Vancouver this weekend.  First of all, the drive between Seattle and Vancouver is amazing.  It's so freaking gorgeous and it takes no time at all (as long as traffic is ok).  We headed up on Saturday morning and because the weather was awesome we did the drive with the top down on the convertible.

Roadtrip!

Along the way we stopped at an air/car show where one of L's coworkers was showing his mustang.  There were a lot of pretty cool old mustangs there and some really interesting old planes.

Apparently this one flaps its wings to fly...

Pretty cars

Nazi killer

This one looked like a toy

The weather held out for our entire drive so I was able to get a lot of pics on the road.  Mt Baker is amazing and you can see it for a big portion of the drive.

There were snowcapped mountains visible for almost the entire drive up there

Bad shot of Mt Baker

Farm land and mountains

We finally made it to the border and the wait wasn't bad at all...maybe 15 minutes?  Passports scanned (the bastards don't stamp anymore) and we were on our way!

Approaching the border

Peace arch border station

Vancouver has to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  It's so clean and everywhere you look there are mountains and water.  Just amazing.  So we get into the city and decide to do a little shopping before checking into the hotel.  When we walked out of the Zara there was a freaking zombie walk going by.  Seriously, like hundreds of people dressed up as zombies stumbling down the road.  We have no idea why it was happening but it was fun to watch.

Canada, eh?

Heading into downtown.

Mountains, etc...

Run for your lives!!!

The view from our room

Oh, we also discovered that Canadians are really weird about where you can buy your beer.  We wanted some for the room while we were getting ready to go out and found out that you can't buy beer at 7-11s or at grocery stores.  You (at least in this area) have to go to one of the govt liquor stores.  Kind of a pain but whatever.  And Canadians are as friendly as everyone says.  It's kind of crazy.  So we finally got our beer and went to get ready for dinner.  OMG so good.  We went to this place called Vij's that has the best Indian food.  Ever.  http://www.vijs.ca/  Laura's coworker that was showing his car drove up the remaining hour from the show with a friend and met us for dinner.  This place is so great, you sit around for a couple of hours waiting on your table (they don't take reservations) and while you wait you can sip on some drinks and they pass around free Indian snacks.  It's like a wedding but five million times better.  I think I probably ate my weight in naan while we were there.  So, we had for appetizers: pork belly, samosas, and dungeness crab spoons.  For dinner we had (and passed around the table) beef short ribs, lamb pops, curried prawns, and goat.  I think everyone was cross-eyed when we left.  Laura and I had wanted to go dancing after that but we didn't do enough research ahead of time.  And using our cells were out of the question b/c you're charged an obscene amt if you don't have an international plan.  So we asked the waitress where to go and the two of us headed over a place called Diamond http://www.di6mond.com/  It was a really cool bar and my drink was excellent but we were both so tired we just ended up going back to the hotel after that and crashing.  Oh well, next time we'll look things up ahead of time.  

We got up at a decent hour the next morning, grabbed some breakfast at a coffee bar, and hit the road.  Turns out that if there is a hellacious line at the border you can buy some cheap(ish) liquor at Duty Free and skip a lot of the line.  

Back in the US!

At least there's a nice view for when you're stuck in line for an hour

The drive back was pretty uneventful.  We stopped at a couple of outlet malls but they were so freaking crowded I felt like I was in one of the inner circles of hell.  But I did get some Pumas and Joes Jeans out of the deal so that made things a bit better.

All in all a very successful trip.  Will have to go back again soonish.