We slept in Wedesday morning and then walked up and down the street to find some souvenirs for the kids (there were several souvenir shops near our hotel). After we checked out of our hotel we had time to drive around to see some different areas of the city. After having been fortunate to have beautiful sunny skies for most of our time in Vancouver, it rained a little on us that last day.
We thought this was Vancouver's version of "Occupy Wall Street" but they seemed to be protesting high housing costs (and had nothing to do with American OWS'ers).
The city library; awesome building!
Not too far from the nice areas were the not-so-nice areas; this street was full of graffiti and had bars on every single shop window.
Vancouver has a big Chinatown; it went on for quite a while. I neglected to mention before what an international city Vancouver is; walking down the street it's not uncommon to hear several different languages & accents. One day when we were flipping through radio stations we heard a couple of Asian (maybe Cantonese?), French, and Indian stations, and one night flipping through the channels we saw the Cantonese edition of the nightly news on one of the main network stations.
Chinatown "entrance"
Chinatown
Gas is expensive; $1.378/litre = $5.22/gallon
I took a picture of a 100 km/h sign for the kids -- they don't drive nearly as fast as we do in the US; 100 km/h was the fastest posted speed limit on the biggest highways (62 mph).
We'd be flying out of Seattle so we spent the rest of the day making our way south. This "peace arch" is near the US border.
The line at the border crossing wasn't too bad.
The US takes a LOT of pictures of each car that comes across the border -- we were impressed with all the cameras!
This strange sculpture made of wire, an "invisible billboard" is right at the border. I don't know the significance; I think it's just art. Definitely makes you do a double-take.
Home sweet home!
Back in Seattle... here's the Space Needle during the day under typically cloudy skies.
Downtown Seattle. The mid-afternoon traffic was awful, and around this time we started to worry about making it to the airport on time!
Luckily we did make it in plenty of time... and we had a nice view of Mt. Rainier from the plane.
We had an uneventful flight home and were glad to see the kids again that night. Many thanks to my mom and sister for taking care of the kids while we were gone!
It was a fantastic trip!
The city library; awesome building!
Not too far from the nice areas were the not-so-nice areas; this street was full of graffiti and had bars on every single shop window.
Vancouver has a big Chinatown; it went on for quite a while. I neglected to mention before what an international city Vancouver is; walking down the street it's not uncommon to hear several different languages & accents. One day when we were flipping through radio stations we heard a couple of Asian (maybe Cantonese?), French, and Indian stations, and one night flipping through the channels we saw the Cantonese edition of the nightly news on one of the main network stations.
Chinatown "entrance"
Chinatown
Gas is expensive; $1.378/litre = $5.22/gallon
I took a picture of a 100 km/h sign for the kids -- they don't drive nearly as fast as we do in the US; 100 km/h was the fastest posted speed limit on the biggest highways (62 mph).
We'd be flying out of Seattle so we spent the rest of the day making our way south. This "peace arch" is near the US border.
The line at the border crossing wasn't too bad.
The US takes a LOT of pictures of each car that comes across the border -- we were impressed with all the cameras!
This strange sculpture made of wire, an "invisible billboard" is right at the border. I don't know the significance; I think it's just art. Definitely makes you do a double-take.
Home sweet home!
Back in Seattle... here's the Space Needle during the day under typically cloudy skies.
Downtown Seattle. The mid-afternoon traffic was awful, and around this time we started to worry about making it to the airport on time!
Luckily we did make it in plenty of time... and we had a nice view of Mt. Rainier from the plane.
We had an uneventful flight home and were glad to see the kids again that night. Many thanks to my mom and sister for taking care of the kids while we were gone!
It was a fantastic trip!
1 comment:
What a fun trip! I can't wait to go on another trip (without kids) with Jake.
It's so pretty up there in the Northwest. That is definitely a place I need to visit (Canada, since I've been to Northwestern US a couple of times).
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