Our second family trip of 2010 took us to the far northwest and host of the Olympic Winter Games.* We started our trip in daddy’s new town, Seattle, where Caleb instantly begins suffering from allergies. Cae always comes back to Colorado doped up on Benadrly (every night baby) with a horrible sounding cough (the snot and phlegm set up camp in his chest and throw a raging party for a week or two), and a bright red Rudolph nose from constantly wiping his snot (he will not be the booger kid). Unfortunately daddy had to work the first couple days of our visit, so Caleb and mommy spent the days eating leisurely breakfasts, strawberry picking, and shopping with our friend Codie.
From there it was off to Vancouver, Canada. We drove
3 hours 6 hours across the US/Canada border to our hotel in the heart of downtown Vancouver.** We spent our time there touring the city on the Big Bus, playing at the Granville Island Kids Water Park, strolling through Stanley Park, and then running around like crazy people in search of the pick-up location for the stupid Big Bus. It was not our fault. Signs were not clearly marked and we realized very early on that although Canadians appear very friendly and helpful, they secretly hate Americans and enjoy seeing us look like idiots. Out of the 20+ people we asked for directions, we were told to go 20+ different ways and 0 ever actually led us to the right location.
This is daddy after our marathon sprint to find the Big Bus...
Um, 'hot mess' is the phrase I believe you're looking for.
From Vancouver we hopped on the ferry to the beautiful Victoria Island. We loved our time there and will definitely make a return trip. We stayed at a nice B&B just a couple blocks from the heart of Victoria and had the best breakfast of cheese soufflé, mushrooms and potatoes, yogurt, fresh fruit, and homemade blueberry scones. While the breakfast was fantastic, it took us all of about 5 seconds to realize we are NOT the B&B type. Even if we could get past the 1770 ship figureheads and vintage movie poster decorations, sharing breakfast with 12 people (75% of them older than age 60) who do nothing but stare at you and your infant child like you are some strange lifeforms they have never seen is not our idea of a good time. Plus, small talk is something neither mommy or daddy is very good at.
After exploring Victoria we took Caleb on his first small boat ride for whale watching and saw about 40 Orcas and 1 gray whale. Caleb wasn’t all that interested in the whales in the water, but he did make friends with an Orca on the boat who he named Matthew.
If you look really, really, (we mean really) close you can see 5 more Orca fins to the left of the big one.
Before catching our ferry back to the states we spent the morning at The Butchart Gardens where Caleb had a great time running around (especially on the grass where they had huge signs that read, “KEEP OFF”).
Thanks for a great time Canada! We can’t wait to see where our next adventure takes us!
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* We never mentioned our first family trip to Santa Barbara on the blog because we never got around to posting the pictures. There just isn't quite enough time in the day, week, month… Don’t be surprised if they pop up later though. It was a great first family trip for mommy’s and daddy’s birthdays.
** Apparently the 3 lane major highway into Vancouver turns into just one lane (yes 1 lane) at 3 pm everyday so we sat in traffic for 3 hours after crossing the border. Fun times folks.
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