Oh Canada

I've been to Mexico (well Baja anyway) about half a dozen times, including several trips for work.  It's always an interesting journey crossing the border and realizing the stark contrast to the U.S. right away. However, seeing that we live in Southern, CA, I had never had the opportunity to drive into Canada before.  That is, however, until my husband basically moved to Seattle five days a week.  He has been there every week since Labor Day, this also means however, that Boeing would be willing to pay for me to fly up to Seattle to spend a weekend there, so of course we took advantage of it. .

I flew up to Seattle on Thursday night and on Friday morning met one of favorite people in the world, Julie Allen and her family for breakfast, as the local Denny's.  We shared laughs about the crowd of old folks there on the cold rainy morning, and had Julie's four year old son jumping up and down shouting, "where's our food" since it took over 30 minutes for the crusty old waitress to finally bring us our food.  Gotta love Dennys. Plans changed since it poured rain most of the day on Friday, so instead of the Pumpkin Patch we stayed in doors and just chatted and caught up on life, ate soup and made pumpkin muffins.  Spending time with Julie just fills my soul with joy, she's one of the best people I know, and I am thankful we were able to get that day together.  Julie lives north of Seattle, so instead of driving back down to Seattle, Adam and I headed north for the border, this time to hit up Vancouver, B.C.

Adam has over 300,000 Hyatt Hotel points and therefore we were able to get a great room at the Hyatt right in the heart of downtown Vancouver, with views of the ocean and mountains.  We woke up Saturday morning, and rain was hitting our windows so hard in the morning, but just suited up with my rain coat, boots and umbrella, not going to let a little rain spoil our weekend.  But you know what, by 10am the sun was bursting through the clouds and we actually enjoyed a wonderful morning strolling all through the famous Stanley Park.  Seriously this place was so beautiful and huge.  You could spend all day there and still not see it all.  We walked the entire perimeter and enjoyed views of bridges, light houses, totem poles, open ocean, and the beautiful skyline of Vancouver.  I loved, loved loved it. 

The walk from our hotel and around the park was about 8 miles, but we still had more to see, so we kept on walking.  We walked to Granville Island where they have a public market place and farmers market.  We did some shopping and eating and enjoyed the afternoon there.

It was late afternoon and we were both tired, so we trekked back to the hotel and decided to bundle up and just take a nice afternoon nap.  Oh it was so lovely, especially since we had probably walked about 12 miles at this point.  We needed that nap! That evening  we had a wonderful dinner at Rain City Grill.  I only get to eat fancy food about once a year, and it's typically when I am with Adam when he's on travel and Boeing is paying for it.   All food was fresh local  cuisine.  It was to die for!

Sunday morning we woke up and it was pretty dark and grey, but we decided to hit up another famous park in Vancouver.  Queen Elizabeth Park.  Seriously, another beautiful place with stunning views, and in the fall with vibrant with color.

What a wonderful weekend we had, and I have to admit it was nice to feel the brisk fresh air and enjoy the fall season, since it was 80-90 degrees in Southern, CA for all of October.  It certainly made me want to explore more of Canada too.  While the contrast from crossing into Canada wasn't nearly what it is like when you go to Mexico, there were still differences.  Vancouver must have been one of the cleanest, most well maintained city I've been to in a long time.  Simply beautiful, I hope to be back one day.