Anniversary in Vancouver

We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary in Vancouver, B.C. We purchased a Groupon for a hotel room downtown. It was only 1 night, but with 2 little kids it was awesome just to get away! And we have always wanted to go to Canada.

Friday morning we dropped the kids off at a friend's house (this family is so awesome and is always willing to watch our kids for us!) and headed up north. It was nice to be in the car with no one saying "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" every 5 seconds. Also to listen to my music and eat snacks without having to share! It's the little things that make me so happy.

The line to cross the border wasn't too bad but we were a little surprised at how seriously the border control guard was taking her job. We were a little nervous to talk to her and we weren't hiding anything! Don't mess around with those people, they mean business.

We made it to our cute hotel and the first thing I noticed when we walked in (besides the purple walls) was that the entire bathroom wall was a window. Interesting. Kind of awkward actually. But the room was nice, fun and modern.

After we checked in we headed back out to do some walking. And we walked. A LOT. Unfortunately our cell phones were roaming so that meant no navigation. You don't realize how much you really depend on a smart phone until you can't use it!! We were too cheap to pay the roaming fees. So we just walked. We found some good restaurants, a mall and some fun little stores. The people there were super friendly! We had to stop and ask people for directions several times and they all really tried to help.
The one thing that I really wanted to do was go see the movie New Year's Eve. I was willing to go to a late show after we were done sight seeing for the day. With many failed attempts at finding a theater near by, we finally headed back to the hotel and used their free shuttle service. We rode to the theater in a new, fancy BMW. Daniel was in love! When we got to the theater we tried to use the self serve machine to buy our tickets. We were having some trouble with our debit cards for some reason so we abandoned the machine and got in the long line to buy the tickets at the counter. It was getting really close to the time the movie was supposed to start and it seemed like everyone was buying tickets to see the same movie. There were still about 20 people in front of us when the 'sold out' sign appeared over the movie I wanted to see. I was a bit disappointed. We ended up paying like $30 for a movie we didn't really know anything about. Oh well. That's the story of our lives. When the movie was over we started walking back to the hotel. It was cold and we had been walking all day. I was tired. My feet were hurting. We decided to get a cab. This was the second time I have ever been in a cab, I was glad Daniel was with me!


The buildings there were fun. Lots of old architecture.

It's hard to see but I liked the gas station in the middle of the water. Maybe the white building behind it is something important?

Huge bridge.

On Saturday we drove around a bit. One of the people we talked to on the Sky Train told us about this park that we should check out. We didn't get out and walk much but we did stop to get some pictures of these totem poles.

This is the only picture we got of the 2 of us from the whole trip. :(

I'm not sure what these are supposed to be but they were interesting!

Crossing the boarder back to the U.S took a little bit longer. But that was OK because I had more snacks to eat and music to listen to.

It was a great rip. Next time I would like to stay a little bit longer and maybe plan out some things to go see/do. And maybe not go in December, it was a little chilly.