Vancouver, Canada Day 1

 

Yesterday was a very long day! We woke at 3:00 AM and then drove to the airport at about 4:00 AM. After checking in for our flight, we headed to the security line, where instead of going through the usual security measures that require you to go through a metal detector they tapped me to go into the scanner. Inside the scanner I was asked to stand with me feet apart and my hands over my head. Then as I stepped out of there a female security officer proceeded to pat me down. Once it was determined that I was not a threat to national security I was allowed to put my boots and jewelry back on and head to our departure gate. It was now 5:30 AM and our flight was boarding in about 15 minutes.

 Once on our flight we got as comfortable as we could since the airline we choose was Frontier and apparently they do not like to allow for much leg room. We were crammed in like sardines. I guess that is the price you pay for an inexpensive flight. Honestly, once we got settled it was fine. We had a little over two hour flight to Denver where we changed planes for our flight to Seattle. The next leg of our journey was uneventful other then the glaring fact that there was no food and my prepackaged snacks were no longer filling the bill. If we had wanted we could have bought a sandwich from the airline for $6.00, but the cheapskate in me would not allow it.

 Once in Seattle we picked up our luggage, (since at the last minute I decided I did not want the hassle of fussing with the bags) and got our rental car. At this point my protein bar was not enough to sustain me any longer and I asked Mark to locate some food immediately. I was feeling weak and shaky, and did not want to pass out before I even started into the trip. We found a restaurant that we were familiar with from back home. We were just too hungry to look for a fun new place to eat, so we would have to save the adventure of that for later. Once we were filled with food fuel, we were on our way to the next part of our journey, the three hour drive to Vancouver, Canada. The drive was a bit grey and drizzly and but many of the sights were interesting. We arrived in Vancouver at 3:00 PM their time which would be 6:00 PM our time. This meant we had now been up for 14 hours, traveled across America and into Canada. Once we were in Vancouver, I was shocked to see how congested it was. Somehow in my mind I had pictured it differently. Even thinking back to the pictures of Vancouver from the Olympics a couple of years ago, I did not remember the city looking like this. Our hotel is beautiful. We booked on hotels.com and we are delighted. The room is like a small apartment with a living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom and bathroom. We spent a little time last night roaming around the city sights near our hotel and had a nice light snack and headed back to our hotel with the idea that we would head out for dinner but the day caught up with us and we climbed into bed at 7:30 PM Vancouver time, or 10:30 PM our time. We were exhausted!

 Today I am on my own while Mark works. I plan to walk to a Mall that is nearby and poke around and also read and relax. From the looks of things, grey and drizzly is on tap for today too, so I might need to find a nice umbrella to have as a souvenir.