One Short Day...
After pulling off the most magnificent parallel parking job you've ever seen, we made our way into the hotel. The outside is a little sketchy, but the inside is very quaint. We approach the front desk and greet the man standing behind the front desk - his name is Frank. I open with my typical greeting, "Hi, I'm here to check in. Engram with an E." Frank smiles at me, grabs a paper behind him and says, "Jacquilyn with a J?" Right then and there I knew that Canada and I were meant to be. I love these people! I start to fill out the paperwork (the hotel was a little dated as they did not have a computer for check in - just all paperwork) and I realize that I don't know my license plate number off the top of my head. Emily, ever being my savior, ran out to the car to retrieve it for me.
While I was waiting I decided to strike up a conversatoin with Frank. I let him know that it was my first time in Canada and he promptly threw open his arms and said, "Well, welcome to Canada" with great spirit. I was done from that moment on. Frank and I were in love. He proceded to break out this huge colored map of Vancouver and gave me a brief on what I had to see and what he recommended. By then Emily had come back and ruined our beautiful moment joined us. We got the key to our room and headed into the elevator. I pressed the button to go up to the forth floor. Nothing happened. I pressed it again. Nothing except Frank laughing. Way to rub me the wrong way after our glorious five minutes together, guy. Finally we push the button hard enough and the doors close.
Ten minutes later we get off on our floor, walk down the hall and open the door. We step in and have reached the other side of the room. Seriously, it's about the size of a postage stamp. But that makes it perfect. We do a celebratory Canada dance (we will have perfected it by the end of the trip) and make our way downstairs to find sustanence. I blow a kiss at Frank on the way out and head back to my car. We take to the streets! In what can only be described as an omen, we see a rat run out into the street, get run over by a car, and CONTINUE RUNNING DOWN THE STREET! This kind of stuff does NOT happen in the US.
Now at this point Emily is navigating again (I've learned the art of deep breathing and reliquishing control) and she takes us all over downtown. We're driving around, getting deeper and deeper into Canadaland and I'm starting to question my quick forgiveness of Emily's earlier navigational mistake. She takes us over a bridge and onto a new street. She tells me to take a left turn, but, still being freaked out by the flashing street lights, I say I'll take the next one. Its choice is the piviotal moment in the trip. Right as we're about to turn left we see a theater on our left. On the marquee it says "Les Miserables." The world stops spinning for a moment.
After squealing loud enough to wake the dead, we scrambled to find a parking spot and nearly skipped to the box office. Our spirits were only slightly dampened by the fact that it was closed. But, being the resiliant girls we are, we started forming plan B. We plotted and schemed all the way through the drive through. We got back to the hotel and I tried to sweet talk Frank into letting us use his internet. Back in the room we had our dinner and watched some Canadian television. it made my weekend when one of the commercials said "aboot" and Emily asked me a quesiton and ended the sentence with "Eh?" Viva Canada! After eating and the "Les Miz" endorphine high I was exhausted. So I suggested we turn in. I fell asleep but apparently Emily counted states or something weird like that :)
The next day we got up, ready for adventure. We prepared for the day by watching RuPaul's Drag Race - a treasure of a show. We checked out (Frank was gone so there was no tearful goodbye) and headed into the city. After finding a place to park (and an unfortunate incident involving Niles which I'd rather not talk about) we went to find the ticket place (closed - sense a pattern?) and got food. We walked by the water, watched the planes land on the water (tried not to think of poor wounded Niles) and went back to get the tickets.
God smiled upon us because we happened ot get the alst two seats together for the show that afternoon. After doing our Canada dance, we went to go get Niles and head to Stanley Park. We hit a problem when Canada didn't want to give Niles back. Seiroulsy - we parked in an underground garage, but there was no way to get back to it. All the stairways were locked or lead us to another stair way which lead ot another street. It was getting very frustrating so we finally had to penetrate the entrance by storming in and demading my car back!...or we walked around the booth avioding eye contact with the teller...
After our daring escape we headed into Stanley Park. Sigh. Stanley Park. If I could live there I would. Emily navigated us. We stopped at several places and started looking for food. While looking at the menu I saw a carved wooden animal that I wanted to take a picture with. While posing, one of the workers came out, saw us and said, "You know, there are Mounites inside that you can take your picture with." Folks, to say we were excited was an understatement. I believe my exact reaction was this: squealing, jumping up, gabbing Emily's hand, yelling thank you and bolting into the restaurant. You know what we found? Not real Mountines but carved, wooden Mounties. To save face we took a picture with them, but we laughed at our follishness the rest of the trip. We ate after that and we got a seat outside so we could look at the park. It was wonderful. After the food I bought a Canada hoodie (my new favorite).
We drove around some more and found Third Beach (where First and Second were, I can't tell you) and played in the sand. Ok, I played in the sand. It's like my kryptonite. After I finished frolicking, we made our way back into town to go see the musical. And you know what we found when we got to the theater? Cake! And even better: free cake! We watched the show - excellent seats, right up from on the left - and I cried about six times. Once the show was over we decided to head back to the States.
The drive back was a lot smoother - no more U-turns this time, but when we got back to the border, we found out that everyone was leaving Canada too, so we had to wait. So what do two carefree girls do when they've got time to pass? Watch Glee! of course! We finally got the the security station and, after avoiding any awkward questions about Niles' new boo-boo, we head back. We make it home in once piece and fall into bed.
The next day I took Emily to Point Definace to see my beach. Being who we are, we had pie so we stopped by a pretty sort of wilderness and dug in. When we awoke from our sugar coma, we went exploring and I can neither confirm or deny the sighting of sparkly vampires. The day came to an end and I had to drop my love off at the airport. And I was alone until...