Vancouver

After saying goodbye to Brent, I took a flight to Vancouver, British Columbia where I met up with my mom (she flew in from Detroit).

I connected in Calgary, and breathed a sigh of relief upon boarding my second flight. Normally, I obsess about different ways terrorists could bring my plane down.  But, I was in Canada, and who would ever want to attack Canada? 

We got our luggage with few hassles and made our way to the hostel I had booked for the evening.  When we got there, we were greeted by a very nice front desk attendant (Mike) who made each of our weeks when he knocked off between 5-10 years from our respective ages. We were also greeted by several of the other guests.

When I booked the hostel, I had expected to find several twenty-something backpackers eager to explore Canada.  What we got instead were several drunk, middle-aged men eager to creepily smile at us. 

 

After being warned not to go farther than seven blocks left of our hotel, we set out to find a place for dinner. Again, it being Canada and all, things seemed perfectly fine even eight blocks to the left of our hotel (of course, we had to be rebels and test the limits of Mike's warning).  I was kind of disappointed for not running into post-apocalyptic conditions; instead, all we saw was some extra trash on the street.  Have I mentioned I love Canada? 

We ended up having dinner at the London Pub, where we thoroughly enjoyed veggie burgers, salad, and of course, beer.  The beer made us sleepy, so we headed in early and attempted to avoid eye contact with the fellow guests.  They ended up being harmless, and despite our room looking like it might contain a severe bedbug infestation, we got decent sleep.

In the morning, we quickly set out to explore some sites before boarding our cruise to Alaska.  This is what we saw:

Again, have I mentioned I love Canada?