Vancouver: Days 1 and 2: Sneaking out in the Middle of the Night

Vancouver: Days 3 and 4: Eating our way through Vancouver

Day 1 of our Cruise: The Zaandam!

Zaandam Continued: Calling on the Ports

Zaandam, Continued: To Glacier Bay National Park!

I haven’t been as good with my blog post name titles but I’m pleased with myself today, you’re welcome.

Day 6: Ketchikan

We didn’t arrive in Ketchikan until 11 am, so we didn’t have to get up too early. We had a nice breakfast and then walked around the promenade and watched the ship come into Ketchikan.

It was a bit of a line getting off the ship–I think everybody was ready to leave all at once, and we were worried we would be late for our excursion, but we made it! We were the last to arrive though, but it was fine.

We signed up for a guided hike in a rainforest with a company called Tongass Teague. Originally we signed up for a longer hike which was more difficulty, but the guide (Tongass Teague himself) had gotten the flu and wasn’t up to guiding it, so he asked if we would be okay switching to a different hike with another guide. It made the hike a larger group than normal though, which at the time I agreed didn’t sound bad, but in practice was a little annoying as some of the people were quite slow. However, the guide was great and the hike was lovely–very easy, but lovely. Not to spoil it.

We drove in two cars to the other side of the island–yes, Ketchikan is on an island, and basically, we took the road to the end, and then parked and got out and walked. It was raining a bit, to be expected, because Ketchikan basically gets more rain than anywhere else in Alaska, with over 140 inches of rain per year. But it wasn’t raining hard. so it was fine with a rain coat and a hat. The hike was gorgeous, lush, all of that which we were growing to expect but also not expect, because, Alaska!

We basically hiked the entire time along this creek which was called Lunch Creek. We only hiked a little over a mile before turning back, and I think Louie and I would have loved to have gone further, but when you are on a cruise and need transportation and are on a tight schedule, you need a guided hike, so you do what you can.

The guide was great–I forget his name now, but he was very knowledgeable about the plants and told us a lot about them as well as the history of the area and many things like that. He said he had originally come to Ketchikan on a cruise and taken a hike with Tongass Teague and then decided to move to Ketchikan and work with him! Teague himself had been an English professor at a local university before working full time at the company. Tourism, as you would expect, is big business in Alaska.

We saw this angry mushroom. Don’t eat him, for sure.

And this weird looking slug or whatever.

At the halfway point, we stopped and enjoyed some hot tea before turning around and heading back. When we got back to practically the starting point, we then headed down to the ocean to see where the creek met the ocean.

Can you see Louie hiding?

Right there, there is where it meets the ocean!

It was a gorgeous scene! There was a campground and picnic area there. It made me want to come back and camp for awhile, though I would also be afraid of bears–when the salmon are running later in the season (not in May but later in the summer) I’m sure the bears are around.

We also saw several seals.

I believe you can see them in this photo. Maybe.

One more before we left.

Then it was back to the vans and back to the town.

After the hike, we were pretty hungry. It was cold and rainy, but I wanted to walk around town a bit. We took advice from the guide and got some food at the Alaska Fish House first. We both got fish and rice bowls with salmon, because it seemed like salmon was the thing to eat there, I think.

And then we walked over to Creek Street, which was a street built on a creek. It was pretty deserted, I guess because it was cold and rainy!

We walked up to see the fish ladder as well.

And then it was easy to find the ship! It was all downhill from there, actually. Literally.

I would say that it is possible that we went in the hot tub after that to warm up, but I don’t actually recall. Let’s put it as a strong maybe, because I was cold and wet, and that would have been very nice! Either way, you can guess what we did before dinner: watched the trio!

Dinner was fun then: it was a special “gala dinner!”

That night the ship started getting very…rocky. We were hitting some rough seas leaving Ketchikan! And it was also the night of the chocolate surprise, I believe. We went to a bar with Ben and Roz after dinner for a drink and at some point, a bunch of the staff starting walking through with trays of various chocolate goodies calling out “chocolate surprise” and giving out various chocolate goodies and making us take them! We were stuffed but tried a few things anyway: most were various cereals or nuts dipped in chocolate and were of course tasty.

Above: the room where the classical trio played.

We stayed up later than normal, but I was exhausted, and by the time I went to bed, the ship was visibly rocking and I had to hold on to the sink to brush my teeth! I suppose it helped us sleep well haha!

Elephant towel animal.

Picture outside the elevators on our floor.

Day 7: Day at Sea

We actually did sleep in a little bit, because breakfast wasn’t served until later: it was a special Alaskan brunch. I think we just got coffee at the coffee shop instead for a fee. We wanted to go walk around the promenade and look for wildlife but…it was closed due to the waves and high winds!

So we just chilled out for a bit, until we went to a program in the theater about how the ship works, something about a city within the ship, and how they feed everybody, how the water systems and electricity works, how they deal with the waste, and it was really quite interesting.

And then we went and got brunch. There were some good things and some other things we didn’t love as much, but overall it was nice. We chatted with some nice people as usual: we always met interesting people when we sat with them, though usually everybody was older and usually they had been on something like a dozen to 4 dozen cruises, haha!

After brunch, since we couldn’t walk on the promenade, we thought, well, maybe we can go in the hot tub. We weren’t sure, but we thought we would check it out. We got to the top and indeed, it seemed open. The pool deck was a bit crazy though: the pool was definitely dangerous: the waves in the pool were intense–it was unclear if it was officially closed, but nobody was in it, and that was a good idea, but the hot tub seemed perfectly safe unless you were particularly afraid of falling–the ship was still rocking but we weren’t terribly afraid of falling, and once you were seated in the tub, the waves in it were just an inch or two.

We ended up staying in the hot tub for over two hours. You might think, that sounds dangerous, but it wasn’t that hot. We were about to get out at one point but then somebody new got in and we started chatting with them and it was very interesting. It was a fun and relaxing afternoon!

After that, the waves finally settled down and the promenade deck was opened up again, so we were able to venture out.

We spent the afternoon just chilling out and of course, having to do a bit of packing. And then of course, one last evening with the trio, and we asked the cellist to join us for a drink after dinner, which she agreed.

The ship had a lot of interesting artwork.

We enjoyed our last dinner aboard the ship, and the servers sang a goodbye song as well. Then we met Annie for a drink and chatted with her about her life and life aboard the ship, and then we went to sleep.

Day 8: Headed home

We got up and had one last breakfast aboard. We did meet Ben and Roz for this as well. It was a more limited menu but still very nice. Unlike previous cruises we didn’t feel as rushed to leave and everybody was still very polite–in the past I had felt that as soon as you woke up on the last day people suddenly stopped being so kind and polite and just sort of pushed you off the ship, and this one they continued being nice until the very end. So that was great. We then disembarked and said goodbye the Zaandam and Holland America.

We found the SkyTrain and took it the Airport. We made our flight with PLENTY of time: we had a flight at noon and we had plenty of time to waste. Too much, probably, it was a boring day. But we made it home safely. And we would recommend Holland again.

Let me leave you with this moment of Zen, me eating soup on the Zaandam.

Thanks for reading!

After I had gotten the bug in my head about going to Alaska, one thing I kept seeing was “get a route that goes to Glacier Bay National Park”. And I was like, how does a ship go to a National Park. Well, today we would find out.

Previous posts:

Vancouver: Days 1 and 2: Sneaking out in the Middle of the Night

Vancouver: Days 3 and 4: Eating our way through Vancouver

Day 1 of our Cruise: The Zaandam!

Zaandam Continued: Calling on the Ports

Day 5: Glacier Bay National Park. Not to be confused with Glacier Bay toilets, sold at Home Depot.

We had attended a talk the previous day I guess about what to expect at Glacier Bay, but it was still sort of confusing, but we figured we would figure it out as we went along. Early in the morning some park rangers were going to board the ship AS WE WERE MOVING and then we would be going up into the Park, and then at some point stopping, turning around, and then headed back. Very exciting. Lots to see. This was the day that people said you would really want your balcony but Louie and I figured we would just have to be out on the decks with the other commoners.

We had thought we might wake up to see the rangers board at 6 am but we did not. Oh, and that is a picture of the daily newspaper we got every night for the next day. There was also an app with all the information–even without buying wifi you could use the app and you could also use the app to message other guests on the ship.

It was a foggy morning. Louie and I started the morning walking around the promenade deck outside–it was cold and brisk, the coldest day yet.

A good view of the promenade deck.

There was a real buzz in the air, as we were in the National Park and it was to be an exciting day!

At some point, they started making announcements and talking over the speakers, pointing out interesting features and animals and telling us what we were seeing. Everything was so large and some things were very far away, it was nearly impossible to understand the scale of things. A mountain might seem small and right near you and then you would realize that was actually over a mile away, or more. We would look with binoculars and realized we were looking at tiny specks that were Dall sheep.

It’s kind of hard to tell, but this was the first glacier we saw.

As we got further into the park, we slowed down and the water definitely changed quality: it looked much more icy. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t that clear, it was cloudy and a bit rainy.

Look, a glacier! And look at the color of the water at this point. It was surreal. This was Margerie Glacier, I believe.

We ran into Ben and Roz on the bow. It was crowded out there, and that’s where they started serving pea soup, which was a highlight of the day. Then it started raining, cold rain, and people started scattering until Louie and I were practically the only ones left.

It looked like you could reach out and touch it, but it was still over a mile away. The captain opened up the bow of the ship so we could go out and see from the front. He stopped the ship and we slowly turned around 180 degrees.

If you squint, you can see there is a seal on the ice floe in the middle of that photo above.

This looks different, so it must have been the Johns Hopkins Glacier.

Anyway, we started heading back south again after all of that, and eventually we went in to eat lunch, which I sort of regret in a way, because the water was looking so amazing and then by after lunch it was looking normal again, but oh well, it was also late in the day and either way we were heading south, lunch or no lunch!

Somebody was out in a sailboat!

And then we watched the park rangers leave the ship. They got onto a smaller boat, while the ships were moving. It was fairly exciting.

After that we decided we needed to warm up a bit so we hit the hot tub for a bit before our classical trio concert and dinner. Tonight’s dinner would be a bit different: we were going to the specialty restaurant called Morimoto by the Sea.

Louie ate an entire fish! The meal was nice, but we ended up feeling like it was overrated. We definitely overordered, and some things were very good and others not as much. In retrospect we would have been happy just to go to the regular dining room and saved the upcharge, and there weren’t any windows in the restaurant, which we also missed. It was dark by the time we got out of dinner!

And thus ended Day 5, Glacier Bay Day.

One more Blog Post to go. I’ll finish up my next post with Days 6 and 7 and then disembarkment. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them in the next post as well!

Day 3: I left off with our lunch, and then it was time to get off the ship in the capital of Alaska, Juneau.

As a kid, one of the ways we entertained ourselves on long car rides was by my brother Jesse quizzing us on random trivia from the almanac. No, I’m not making this up. This was before things like “screen time” and we took some LONG road trips, so he would quiz us on largest cities and state and world capitals, so rest assured I knew my state capitals very well, at least at the time. So I knew that Juneau was the capital of Alaska, but what the almanac didn’t tell us was that you couldn’t drive there! You could only get there by plane or by ship, isn’t that crazy?

Louie and I disembarked, which was a very smooth and easy process, and we got our first look at the Zaandam from the outside–we never got a look at it in Vancouver, so this was fun for me.

We had a very short amount of time to wander before we needed to meet our van for the whale watching tour–we had booked one with Ben and Roz and we were very excited. I had not seen whales before though Louie had.

We saw a few other ships docked, including a giant one from Royal Caribbean, the Quantum of the Seas, which held over 4000 passengers and made the Zaandam look tiny. And a couple that were even smaller than ours and I assume more luxurious. (“Far more luxurious”).

Then we met our van and drove about 20-30 minutes to the dock to get our boat for whale watching. We went with Jayleen’s Whale Watching to see whales. It was a bit of a splurge, but whale watching seemed fairly expensive to begin with so I thought a small boat seemed pretty cool and we would have a better chance of seeing whales that way, and we got more time in the water with a smaller boat. I also liked that it was a woman owned company, though our guide was a man…he had a woman boss 🙂

Louie had a long lens for wildlife photos and hasn’t shared any of them with for this blog post yet, but he got a bunch of bald eagle pictures. Juneau was littered with bald eagles, we saw dozens on our drive and there was one just hanging out on top of a post at the pier.

As you can see, the scenery was just awful.

But the weather wasn’t actually great, it was a bit rainy and foggy, which did plague us all week. We managed though. As they say in Norway, det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær! (there’s never bad weather, only bad clothing). Anyway that picture is the Mendenhall Glacier from a distance.

The sea lions liked to hang out on the buoys, apparently.

We spend the afternoon watching whales and it was quite amazing. It was five of us on the boat with the guide/driver/captain (just one person).

Anyway, iphone pictures aren’t the best, but you get the idea. Whales!

On the drive back, we saw a bear on the side of the road and watched for a bit.

We could have spent a little more time in Juneau after the tour but we were all cold and wet and decided to go back to the ship and get warmed up instead, and met up for dinner afterwards.

This picture was from inside one of the ladies’ rooms right near the dining room to show the men how fancy it was. Nice views as well!

We didn’t take off until after dinner–we could have had dinner in Juneau, but we decided to save the money and eat on the ship which was perfectly fine. I know people said the crab in Juneau was really good though, but I think we felt a bit overwhelmed by the rain and the intense tourism right by the ship, haha. We probably should have gone further in, but nonetheless we loved our whale watching tour!

And we had a great night of desserts!

Day 4: Skagway

The next day was an early start for a full day in Skagway. Louie and I were signed up for a ship’s excursion. We started with room service breakfast to get an early start.

I wanted to take it privately but the company only offered it through the ship on Saturdays for some reason, so that’s what we did. The excursion was called Chilkoot Trail Hike and Float. We met them quite early in the morning, around 8:15 am, and we weren’t sure what sort of group to expect, but it ended up just being around 6 people plus the guide, named Kat, so that was great.

We started out driving a bit, away from the town and towards the old town of Dyea and the Chilkoot Trail, which used to be a very popular route to Canada (back in the gold rush days.) This is part of why I chose this excursion, I liked the historical aspect of it as well as the opportunity to hike as well as spend some time on a raft.

Similar to Vancouver, everything was very lush, but the mountains were much bigger! Though if the skies were clearer, the snow capped mountains would likely be more pronounced. Everywhere we looked the scenery was amazing though, and you should know that my pictures don’t do this justice by any means.

Kat was a great guide, and she taught us about various plants as we went as well as making sure we were all keeping up and helping us over various obstacles. She was well trained and energetic and loved the outdoors and Alaska.

The hike was a lot of fun, and then we got to board a raft and Kat guided us down the river.

We all had to put on tall rubber boots and lift vests. Kat told us if you got water over the top of your boots it was called a “bootie” and her colleagues teased her the first few days of river raft school when this would happen to her. She was very tough: she was short and petite, but took of all us down the river in a raft all by herself. She said the rafts can hold up to 10. The group was very nice and enjoyed listening and also just observing the surroundings.

Somebody was camping in a van down by the river.

The orange is where we hiked and then the blue is the river we floated back down to, basically. When we got back some of Kat’s colleagues were there to help haul the raft out and pull it up over a bank, and they were all equally strong women and I loved it, though I also felt like a weak and pathetic women in comparison. Oh well, I have my skills, plus I am like, totally older and am somewhat strong. Definitely argumentative. They work for a woman owned company as well. We were offered hot cocoa but just as soon as Louie and I made our cocoa we were hustled onto the van so we spent the first part of the bumpy ride trying not to spill hot cocoa all over ourselves, so we would recommend against the hot cocoa, or would have asked for like, three minutes to drink it. Our only complaint about what was otherwise an amazing excursion.

We made it back to Skagway around 12:30 and we were hungry, so we went to the Skagway Brewery Company for lunch. It was crowded and super expensive–over $20 for a fish sandwich! But we enjoyed our meal, and Louie had a spruce tip ale, which is a special kind of beer they make in Skagway from the spruce tips, which can fend off scurvy.

A house of negotiable affection: there were historically many of these in Alaska.

After lunch, we went on a short hike just out of town. Yakutania Point and Smugglers Cove, which was just about 1 to 1.5 miles in length.

I think we had some of the best scenery on this short hike. It kept going further but we really didn’t have time to explore, and didn’t really know where it went either. We headed back to the town after the hike and split a pretzel and Louie tried another spruce tip beer at the Klondike Brewing Company before we meandered back to the ship to get there in time for the all-aboard. Oh, and we had a wonderful time watching a bald eagle fly around for awhile too.

In addition to the National Historical Trail there is a National Historical Park in Skagway. The Visitor’s Center was closed but we saw some of the exhibits. They mostly seemed to be centered around the prostitution at the time. I’m not certain that shows the US in a good light, should I report it to someone at the state department, does anyone still work there?

By Day 4 you start to have a great affinity for your home, the Zaandam and work hard to get a great picture with it and the mountains in the background.

And then, Louie and got showered and hurried to watch the classical trio perform. By now we also wanted to chat with the cellist to say hello as I realized both of my sisters knew her, so we had a connection (seriously, the classical music world is SO SMALL.). Which made it even more fun to watch!

Skagway was our farthest point north on this trip and as such, it was still light as we sailed away, and late into the evening.

Tomorrow would be a big day: Glacier Bay National Park!

After I started dating Louie, I worried I would never cruise again, because I learned he was vehemently against it. He hated the idea of “sitting around on a boat.” Never mind that that’s not what cruising has to be about, but you know, people have all these ideas about what a cruise is and it’s very en vogue to hate on cruising.

Somehow though, I ended up convincing him to go on an Alaskan cruise, and here we were in Vancouver, the morning of the cruise. I think he was pretty nervous, having no idea what to expect, and I was very excited, having quite a lot of ideas on what to expect, but unsure how the Holland America Line would compare.

So, though it was Day 5 of our trip, the best way to count things from here on is to say Day 1, because the cruise started everything over again.

Day 1: Right around noon we took an Uber from the Hotel Sylvia to the Port. Since we left on a Wednesday the Port wasn’t very busy. We did carry-on only and it was very easy to board the ship. Right away everybody working for Holland was very friendly and helped point us in the right direction. It probably took about 15 minutes from getting dropped off from when we boarded the ship, though I wasn’t timing it–the lines were short and all we really had to wait in was for the metal detector line or the x ray or whatever it was, and that wasn’t too long either. It was a pleasant hum of excitement around us as everyone seemed excited to start the trip.

We had heard that Holland America skewed very old (no offense to older folks, as we love them!), so we were looking around and yes, we were probably among the younger folks, but there were others our age and younger there, along with older people. But it was also mid-May, before most schools were out, so a lot of school age families would be in school.

Anyway, soon we boarded, and we were able to immediately go to our cabin! In previous cruises this hadn’t always been the case. We also got our room keys then, they were in the door.

The room! Trick to make a ship cabin feel large: stay in a tiny Vancouver hotel for a few nights before it.

We opted not to shell out for a balcony room. The Zaandam was an older ship with less balcony rooms and they were a lot more expensive, so we went with the ocean view. We didn’t regret it: we weren’t far from the promenade deck on deck 3 where you could walk all the way around, and the only time we wished we had a balcony was (spoiler alert) Glacier Bay day when it was pouring rain and it would have been nice to pop out and see it on our on balcony for a bit, but probably not $1500-2000 nice.

Anyway, we headed up to the buffet for lunch then. It was the only place open for food and we hadn’t had lunch yet so we had to brave the buffet.

Louie was probably a bit shell-shocked at this point. It was a lot of people, and the buffet was even more. He was a little confused too, and took a bit of time to realize that yeah, you could just grab the food you saw and eat it, and just go where you wanted, and this was all fine. It was a vacation and you could do what you wanted. No rules, just right. Wait, that’s something else.

The outdoor pool. We did not spend much time here.

2654 was our room. This was a great location and I would recommend it.

After braving the buffet (Louie had a little PTSD afterwards and we didn’t go to the buffet again, but I didn’t mind as I am also not a fan of free for all or lines) we went to unpack and get settled in the room, and then we had to get our cards scanned as proof that we found our muster drill locations. It was fairly painless. And then we met up with Ben and Roz for sailaway!

Honestly, the views of Vancouver from the ship made it practically worth the cost of the cruise!

Seriously, that’s just an amazing view, isn’t it?

The cost of the champagne was possibly not quite worth it, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. And what a gorgeous day!

The ship went right under the Lionsgate Bridge! We barely had to duck at all!

And we got farther and farther away from Vancouver.

After awhile, we decided it was time to move onto other things such as continuing to explore the ship, rather than just standing on the very windy bow. Plus there was a chamber music trio to watch!

They were lovely, and the cellist mentioned she was from NYC. Again, spoiler alert, when we got back into cell service a few days later (we went dark on the ship–you can pay for wifi but Louie and I opted not to, rather we just waited for ports to use our phones, which was a nice break) we discovered indeed she knew both of my sisters. It turned out that we enjoyed watching the trio perform for a cocktail hour before dinner each evening!

Then we met up with Ben and Roz for dinner in the Dining Room, for our first night, and as we did for every night, which was one of our favorite parts of the cruise. We had a lovely table overlooking the stern or back of the ship, just one table away from the windows, so a lovely view, and our table was set up in a way that we could all see well enough but also chat with each other. We had the same server every night as well, which was really nice.

My first meal: I enjoyed everything except wished the lemon dessert was more lemony. We got to order from a menu each night: you could order anything you wanted, with most things included and some items would be extra prices. You could order salad, appetizer, main dish, dessert, or double of anything, whatever you liked. I usually ordered four courses for fun, and then we did a lot of walking, haha! but the courses weren’t huge as you can see above–the main dish wasn’t giant.

So, even without service you can see where the ship was. We were headed up the “inside passage” to the east of Vancouver Island.

I wanted to show another view of the room. I think Louie was sort of dancing to classical music here (hence the violin on the TV). We had a little couch in the room there, and then closets on the right hand side for clothes and bathroom beyond on the left. I’m taking the photo from the bed. On the tv you could also set it to watch a camera from the bow to see where the ship is headed or the stern to see where it has been, which was a fun thing to do from the room, as well as listen to a variety of music or watch movies, which we never ended up doing.

Day 2: Day at Sea: I thought we would sleep in, but Louie was too excited and woke up early. I suppose I could have continued sleeping, but he wanted to go to the dining room for breakfast, so I joined him. When you get there, they ask if you want to be seated at a shared table by the window or a table alone, so we chose shared table by the window. We were seated with some other people, and had to order quickly. After a few days we learned the breakfast menu better, but the first day it was bit confusing: you kind of know how big things are by the prices, so when there aren’t any prices, you don’t know how big things are! So I may have ordered too little, but the server suggested I add something on, and of course, nobody goes hungry on a cruise.

After ordering we chatted with the other people, and this began the day of learning that everybody else on the ship had been on at least 50 other cruises. Or so it seemed. They would say oh yes, this is my 17th time on this ship. Or, oh, no, I’ve never been on an Alaskan cruise before either! But I have been on 43 other cruises. Everybody was shocked that Louie was on his first cruise! I think maybe we met one other person who was on their first cruise. But they were all very friendly. After breakfast we wandered a bit and then hit the hot tub and relaxed there for a bit. It wasn’t super hot, but it was very nice.

We also managed to make it to lunch in the Dining Room, which I think we ate alone, and I think maybe a show on whales, then later in the afternoon we went to the Royal Dutch Tea, which was a blast. Louie also popped in to see the Polar Bear Plunge.

And then of course the Chamber Trio, and then dinner. And some walking around the Promenade, which went all the way around the deck on Deck 3 and was very lovely. Cruising with Louie meant a lot of activity, though it also meant a lot of hot tub time, and I definitely did some reading in the room as well, don’t worry! After dinner the four of us went to the show, which was “the Alans” who were a couple who did sort of mind/magic tricks and was a lot of fun.

And our room steward left us a towel animal!

Day 3: Juneau

We were getting further north and the landscape was changing. And the air was colder. We weren’t getting to Juneau until after lunch, so we had the morning free to sleep in. Just kidding, we were up early to go to the dining room for breakfast.

After breakfast, Louie went to the hot tub, but I met Roz for an origami class to fold hopping frogs.

The four of us went for lunch before disembarking at Juneau.

So, I’ll leave you there, I know, it’s a cliff-hanger, what’s next after the chowder????

Watch this space, I will try to be quicker!!

Day 1, May 17: The day after the tornado, we were leaving for a trip to Vancouver and then a cruise to Alaska. And by the day after the tornado, I mean, our flight was at 6 am, and it was an international flight, so they always say, oh get there 3 hours ahead of time. Of course, then everybody says, oh, you don’t need to do that, and “it’s just Canada” and “that’s really early” so we really had no idea what to do. We decided to compromise and plan to arrive at the airport two hours ahead of time, which was likely entirely too early, but Louie and I are THOSE people who would rather be early to the airport than late. Also we would be able to get coffee and charge our phones there anyway, because we had no power.

So let me set the scene. No power. Thankfully we had water. Oh, and the main access to our street was blocked by a tree, so how would we get picked up by a Lyft/Uber? Which we needed to be picked up around 3:45 am? I decided our best bet would be to meet them at the end of the block by a main street instead, and go from there. Frankly, on the best of days some drivers can’t even find the house, so I didn’t want to tell them how to find it by using an alley and dodging trees! But the driver called and he insisted he would come and get us, and he did find the house. It was surreal leaving. It was pitch black and we were indeed dodging trees and wreckage, and then…it was absolutely normal within a few blocks, nothing had happened at all.

Anyway, we got to the airport, drank our coffee, and flew to Vancouver via Minneapolis. We took the Sky Train from the airport to Downtown and were planning to walk from the stop to our hotel, but first we were starving and realized a restaurant I had noted on the map as a good option was right there, so we ate first. It was a terrific vegan restaurant called Meet in Yaletown and I think everybody would like it, but those that eat plant based would especially love it.

I forget exactly what this was called, but it was potato patties with vegan caviar on top, and we split it for an appetizer.

It was lightly raining as we walked to the hotel. It was a fairly long walk, but we thought it was nice to walk anyway, and enjoyed looking around. Finally we made it to our destination and home for the next four nights, the Sylvia Hotel.

It is a historic hotel with ivy growing up the walls. It was one of the best deals I could find and still be in the downtown area. We were right by English Bay Beach.

We cleaned up and relaxed a bit, and then went out to explore.

It was important for Louie and I to get accustomed to our usual vacation selfie pose–we had walked up Denman Street from English Bay and I think this is overlooking Vancouver Harbour.

And we changed direction so you can see the buildings now.

The Olympic torch from the Vancouver Olympics in 2010! There was a seagull on top so I guess it is a nice place to have a nest now.

We had a reservation for a sushi dinner at 6 pm so we were just wandering around getting the sense of the city and working up an appetite. It kept raining off and on, but never too much. Some of the streets were just full of restaurants, we were blown away by how many and how many nationalities were represented. I think you could eat at a different restaurant every day for years!

This building was bigger on top!

We had dinner at Sushi Bar Maumi, which was a great experience. The reservation was for 6 pm and they said they would unlock the doors at 5:45 and we should arrive 10 minutes early. We ended up being there a little early, so we waited outside, and at 5:45 on the dot we heard the doors unlock! We went in and got seated at the bar: everybody was seated around the bar, and we all ate the same thing, all in turn. The man you see above made all the dishes in front and his wife helped out with everything else, and it is just the two of them that run the place, one seating a night. We had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves.

After dinner, I was completely exhausted, between the time change and the early flight, so we walked home and I fell asleep pretty much right away.

Day 2, May 18: I thought it would be fun to do a bike tour to get a good overview of the city, so I booked a tour with a guide through Airbnb. His name was Ian and he came highly recommended. We took an uber to the meeting spot, which was near a bakery called Terra Breads, so we ate breakfast there first.

The rain had stopped, so this is another view of the hotel, while we were waiting for the Lyft/Uber.

We met the guide near this giant bird statue. It may be hard to know how large it is, but trust me. Large.

It was a small group of us on the tour, just 5 and the guide, which was a good number: small enough to easily stay together, but large enough not to feel awkward. And the weather was gorgeous, not rainy at all like the day before! Off we went.

Ian immediately showed himself to be a great guide and good with bikes as well. He got us set up well, and did a great job helping us feel comfortable, giving us great information about Vancouver, and having a nice mix of riding and stopping. I was able to take plenty of pictures along the way but still we felt like we did plenty of riding. It also helps that Vancouver is a terrific biking city with dedicated bike lanes!

We saw the skinniest building in the world? Or at least one of, and certainly very skinny. It’s just that black part, and is an insurance company. The insurance company has another building nearby where they do more of their business.

The famous Gastown clock. We didn’t see it go off on the hour, but we did catch it on the 45 minutes. It was very exciting. Very.

And then we headed into Stanley Park, which Ian said was bigger than Central Park! It seemed to not be bigger than Forest Park, though I believe it is a bit wilder and I hate to say it, prettier and certainly has more bodies of water around it.

Gotta have our biking pictures! I wore that black zip up hoodie practically everyday of the trip–it was super versatile and I loved it. It was black, wool, had zip up pockets AND thumb holes.

The camera keeps getting further away!

You can see the Lions Gate Bridge. Spoiler alert: later in the trip we will go under this bridge on our cruise ship.

This was some of the “wild” part. If you don’t know, Vancouver is in a temperate rain forest climate, which basically means it is super green with lots of plants and ferns and mosses. I was blown away by how lush and well, green, everything was. We had to walk our bikes on this path a little ways.

We got to this beautiful lagoon with some dams built by beavers. At one point we started biking again and I ALMOST crashed into Louie but I did not. But I almost did.

This is a stump from when they did logging back in the day. You can’t really tell from the picture but it was gigantic. When you hear about “old growth” wood, it’s really something to see what they mean by that. And to imagine how people would cut these trees down using hand saws, and then roll them out without using machinery.

We continued on our bike tour around Stanley Park, past English Bay Beach and the Stanley Hotel (hi hotel!) and then we got onto a ferry over to Granville Island.

Technically it was an aquabus.

It was a quick trip across the water and then we had probably our most dangerous bit of biking because it was Sunday afternoon on Granville Island and it was wall to wall people and cars. It was a bit much for me! Too many people and cars. We lived, and we made it to a lovely bike path and then back around to Terra Breads to finish our tour. Overall we loved the tour and we would definitely recommend it to anyway who wanted to learn more about Vancouver and do some biking while they were at it.

After the tour, we got some sustenance at Terra Bakery again (ha!) and then ended up deciding to go back to Meet at Yaletown for lunch again. I was feeling hot and thirsty and we had seen quite a few things on the menu the day before that we wanted to try, so another visit seemed like a good idea. After lunch, we walked back to the hotel to relax.

Our friends Ben and Roz got into Vancouver and were meeting us for dinner this night. We had been texting, but it seemed to make sense just to meet for dinner. They were going on the cruise with us, but they were staying at a different hotel which wasn’t really near ours.

Louie and I walked around the water a bit before dinner, just enjoying the air. We thought it would be easy to get an uber, but it ended up being kind of annoying, but we managed finally. We were going to Kissa Tanto for dinner, which is a restaurant with a Michelin Star, the only one I have ever been to. We had a great time, enjoyed some lovely food, especially this pasta, which I didn’t photograph well, but I did propose marriage to.

It was also great fun to catch up with Ben and Roz: we actually hadn’t seen them in St Louis for awhile due to our busy schedules (the end of the year was insane, as you may know) so we were excited to spend more time together.

Kissa Tanto was right across the street from the Dollar Meat Store, which made me a little nervous with the title. Should meat cost a dollar? What is the quality of that meat?

That’s where I will leave off today. Next: more Vancouver!