Vancouver - Day One

And the adventure begins! After getting up at 5am to head off to the airport, Kailey & I found and boarded our flight with no troubles. The plane was one of the newer ones, that frequently showed on its tv screens updated maps on the flight's progress across the country, as well as speed/altitude/arrival times, etc. Breakfast was served, which I wasn't expecting (never sure these days if you're going to get fed on flights or not), but it turned out to be very yummy. There was a choice of waffles or omelets, so we got one of each then shared them. Also a fruit cup, juice, and a bread like pastry with chocolate inside. Mmmm. One of our flight attendants bore a striking resemblance to Belinda Stronach. The movie shown was 'Walk the Line', which is pretty cool, seeing as its still out in a lot of theaters! I'd always thought that inflight movies were of the subpar/mediocre variety (which was proved correct on the flight home). So with that, the music of Johnny Cash provided much of the soundtrack for the trip, with 'Folsom Prison Blues' being sung frequently. I'm partial to the song 'Jackson', myself.

Anyways. We arrived, and with little trouble picked up our bags, and asked for guidance to find the shuttle buses, and then were on our way. Everyone we asked for help was so friendly and helpful (not always the case in Toronto). Got our first glimpse of the mountain scenery, first from the plane as we taxied to the terminal, and then on the bus ride into downtown. We didn't get lost at all, and found Phil's house out in Burnaby with no trouble ... enjoying the mountain views from the SkyTrain along the way.

Chris met us and let us into the compound, then Braden came home and decided to join us on our trip to the aquarium, as he had never been there before. After a bit of confusion as to where we would find the bus that we needed to take to get there, we arrived in Stanley Park, where we saw lots of starfish and anemones, a 6 ft octopus named Howie, sharks, sea otters, dolphins, belugas, and sea lions (I think they were sea lions...). Natalie came and picked us up in Stanley Park, and we went off to dinner, exposing Kailey to the joys of Japanese food. We parked by English Bay, with a spectacular view of the sunset across the ocean, with the sun going down behind mountains in the distance, and more city lights twinkling from across the bay. Impossible to properly capture on film, but I etched it into my memory. Phil met up with us at the restaurant, and then everyone but me proceeded to order mass amounts of food (all you can eat deals tend to not be worth the money for me, so I just ordered a few things, then sampled a bit of the others stuff). We were sitting in a large corner booth overlooking the bay, although it was a bit alarming at first, as there was a dangling street sign blowing around and hitting wires only a few feet away ... but that was removed soon after we got there. Natalie professed to be bad at remembering names, and in trying to recall mine she came up with 'Anne Marie' ... which was rather random, but also funny. :)

Got home again, then we wound up sitting and chatting with Phil for awhile ... all in all, we didn't get to bed until 11.30pm local time (2.30 am to our bodies ... and up since 5am! Yikes). Luckily, we were sleeping on the softest, squishiest, most wonderful couches ever, so we had a good place to crash.