Another half marathon?!

The morning after the half marathon we managed to get out of bed. Albeit slowly. We’d heard good things about riding a ferry over to a little area called Granville Island. It was a big public market and a lot of little art shops. Call us snobs, but we found it to be a little lame.

Jackson's poultry joint

We were excited to see that Jackson had his own poultry shop. “The Mauck family has pigs, I’ve got poultry!” Ohhh Jackson.

I did have a semi-excellent chicken potpie while we were on the island. It was most certainly not Guy’s famous pie, but it was pretty tasty. Jackson tried a breakfast sandwich called a BELTCH (Bacon, Egg, Lettuce, Tomato, CHeese). They were quite popular around there. He didn’t hate it, but he wasn’t raving like he did about a sandwich he once had at the Philadelphia public market.

Semi good chicken potpie

We meandered around the island a bit before deciding it was too lame to continue to hang out on and got back on the ferry. It is always fun to be out of the water for a couple of minutes. There are houses built on the water just like in Seattle so those were fun to see up so close. We really loved some of the buildings around the city. They were all so modern and fun.

Granville Island

Cool buildings along the water

Our hotel room continued to disappoint with being so hot that we had to sleep with the window open. Noise in the city is no joke. I’m just not used to that. Me not sleeping well is pretty equivalent to Michael Phelps forgetting how to do the backstroke. It just doesn’t happen. I was all out of sorts so the walk around the island and to/from the ferry tuckered me out. Jackson was sweet enough to arrange for a late checkout of the hotel so we headed back for a nap. That did the trick!

We left the hotel again at around 2 and did not return until close to 8. We walked down to the Gas Town district which is just old Vancouver. It was super quaint and lovely. The old steam clock is neat to see, too. The shops were actually worth stopping in and we did just that. We ate lunch at a place that said it had famous BBQ. Clearly famous BBQ isn’t a tough standard in Canada. WOOF! The place was so hipster that I am surprised Jackson didn’t walk out with a curled mustache and full beard wearing plaid and skinny jeans. It was in a cool old building with a statute out front that the masses kept photographing. Since we were in the prime window seat I told Jackson that this was our Kim Kardashian and Kanye West moment. :) Hey, one has to have fun when their expensive meal is garbage.

Steam clock 

We left lunch to a light sprinkle. We kept wandering around the area and the sprinkle turned into a downpour. So much for the whole “we’re like Seattle, it doesn’t rain hard here. Just mists.” I got hit by a few cats and dogs on our dash to cover. We took refuge in the cruise terminal and watched them perform maintenance on a ship headed to Alaska shortly. It is just mind-blowing how large those ships are. I figured that the rain would cut down on people around the Olympic Park area and I was correct. I finally got a cool photo of the caldron. Note: I’m all for taking photos with landmarks, but when there is a queue of people waiting to take a similar photo taking 600 photos isn’t very polite. Our fellow tourists never got that note. Ugh.

Olympic Park

We took shelter from the storm at a Starbucks for a bit and then decided we’d just brave the weather. I am so glad that we did. We continued down the waterfront and saw the most gorgeous, complete rainbow I think I’ve ever seen. The water, the mountains, the city and then a rainbow? LIFE IN A SCREENSAVER!

RAINBOW

For some reason we just kept walking down the waterfront without taking into consideration that we were getting further and further from our luggage at the hotel. We made it to the Totem Pole area of Stanley Park that I’d wanted to see. It was a moderate letdown just because it took so long to walk to, but it was worth seeing. We really enjoyed the waterfront. Stanley Park is truly a treasure. We finally turned around to head back to our hotel once we came to our senses. Our feet and legs ached from the day before and we’d just walked about half of the race course again. We took a little different route back to get our luggage and enjoyed seeing the West End neighborhood. We finally understood why the folks on HGTV want to stay in their neighborhoods. They’re all very diverse and some likely fit certain lifestyles better than others.

City view from Stanley Park

Jackson and the fish Totem Pole

The cross-like totem

A collection of totems

The cityscape never gets old

We made it back to the hotel and grabbed our stowed bags. Here is where things get real friends. We’d walked 14 miles already that afternoon. YEP. 14. AGAIN. Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and we had to get to our airport hotel so we gathered our luggage and walked the mile to the train station. Yes, we were too cheap to call a cab after walking all day for two days.

Don't mind me, just headed to the train...

The plan seemed simple: take the train to the airport and catch the hotel’s shuttle from there to spend a couple of hours sleeping before our 6 a.m. flight. Only we missed our train by 2 minutes and had to wait another 15. Cool. I love sitting underground with my baggage in a strange city. Then the hotel shuttle only ran every 30 minutes and we’d missed it by 8 minutes. Sweet. We were hoping to sit outside in the chilly air waiting for the shuttle. That whole adventure took about 95 minutes, but it saved us about $50. I won’t lie. I did start wishing we’d just gotten a taxi, but it all worked out in the end!

Why does Jackson look like a movie star and I looked tired
and rained on (like we were)?!

I’d love to say we slept like babies until our alarm went off at 3:40 a.m., but I don’t like to outright lie to my blog readers. I slept like junk AGAIN. Perhaps someone should warn Michael Phelps that the universe is out of alignment?! We pulled ourselves out of bed and got to the airport in what we thought was plenty of time.

As it turns out, it was not plenty of time when folks are not communicating. I checked my bag and the attendant tagged it was Jackson’s name. Jackson was then instructed to go through security while I waited to turn over my bag. The only issue was my boarding pass didn’t match the bag tag so I was not allowed to drop my bag. So I’m in a foreign country without a way to reach Jackson to come back. I had to go back and plead my case to the airline attendant to change my tag. She said, “I don’t need to do this. That bag lady is an idiot.” I then get back into line to turn in my bag and tell the bag lady that the miscommunication between the airline attendants and her is really frustrating and unfair. She told me to watch my mouth or she’d deem me an “unruly passenger” and send me to jail. My response? “WHAT?! I WISH I COULD BE BAD AT MY JOB THEN THREATEN PEOPLE WITH JAIL!” She said, “watch it young lady!” and I said “anyone unwilling to take well-meaning feedback is the one causing the problem.” We agreed to part ways at that time. Thank goodness I didn’t get thrown in Canadian jail!

I had asked another passenger to let Jackson know that I was in trouble so he was on his way back through security when I got there. I’ve never been so happy to just see his little face! What a silly ordeal! I’ve not been threatened with jail at a foreign airport before and it ruffled me a bit. We made it through security without further incident and had a nice flight from Vancouver to LAX. Today is the 9th anniversary of our engagement so we sat together reminiscing about our life together which is, generally, pretty awesome. We’re pretty fortunate to have each other.

Best. Coffee. Ever. 

We had a long layover at LAX so we made friends with a cart attendant and went for fun rides through the corridors there. We also got to stop at our favorite coffee place. It is a good thing we love it because it was $13.50 for our two drinks. WHAT?! Oh well. They were delicious.

We’re excited to be back home so that we can close on the townhouse and get to working on making it our own. This trip was a great one, though, and I think we’re both a little bummed to go back to “real life” after living without much of a schedule for a week! We did go to a quick dinner at Chuy's this evening to celebrate 9 years of love and Cinco de Mayo, of course. It was a great way to end our vacation time. Back to reality in the morning...