Saturday, November 25 2006We had a hard time deciding whether to go ski Whistler again the next day, but considering that it was not cheap and we should tour vancouver since we are here.. we decided to well, tour vancouver instead.
Despite being found out that we were crashing lots of pple into a room, we heck cared and went down for breakfast. haha. The ski/snowboard-siow pple had gone to whistler already, leaving the few of us lazy bums. As we walked by the receptionist guy, he went 'one, two, three, four, five, six.. and more to come i believe'. He is such an asshole. So bitchy right?
Later on when we checked out, we were charged 120 instead of 80+ for each room. We have no idea why and the worst part is that we couldn't ask, cos we were in the wrong. And we refused to see that irritating face again. So we just swallowed our pride and drove off. GRR!
Let me try putting my captions above the photos from now on.. something tells me that it's more readable that way. So, as we were driving off from the hotel towards Stanley Park, we saw an amusement park with roller coasters. Ok, not bad we thought. Suddenly someone shouted, 'LOOK AT THAT!' And guess what we saw...
MADNESS! How can such pretty mountains exist so near the city? We're still driving in the city, and all we have to do is to turn our head right and we see such a magnificent sight. Snow capped mountains leh, the only one i know of is Mount Fuji and here are some right before our eyes.
Why is vancouver so chio????
I noticed a couple of shops selling specialty items along the way.. I've never seen anything like this before!! My. 'Medication Marijuana'. Don't you find it fascinating that they outrightly sell such Medication on the streets in a place where you can't buy BEER from 7-11??!
We drove nearer to the mountains..
That was really amazing wasn't it? Haha.. to think that it wasn't even in our itinerary, can see such prettiness in the middle of no where. After that we popped by a visitor's centre, to pick up some info, and bought our Capilano Suspension Bridge tickets at student rate thanks to erm, us being students of UPenn! Is great being a student, man.
We intended to do stanleypark, capilano suspension bridge and Grousemountain in a day, so i was pretty edgy and hoping we could siam soon, tho the nice lady at the counter kept going on about all the things to see and do.. haha.
Stanley Park
So, we finally went down to Stanley Park. The Totem Poles are the most visited part of Stanley Park and as we circled the island anti clockwise, this was the area we reached first. Parking was at $1 per place or $3 for the whole day, and us being cheapos we just ignored it happily, hoping nothing would happen.
Well, that was that. Pretty much the same as what you see in photos. I'd expected it to be larger, with more totem poles. I mean that's pretty much like sentosa isn't it? Just that sentosa one is probably not the traditional type. Haha. In fact, the whole of Stanley park was much smaller than I had imagined, and we finished up faster than I thought we would. It helped that we could drive around, heh heh.
Next we went to the Hollow Tree. It's well, a dead tree which could fit all of us inside. I'm still awaiting photos from Mark which I suspect will never appear since the UPenn pple can probably share them easily.. sob.
After taking a couple of photos at the Tree.. We drove down to Prospect Point. We spent quite some time here, the scenery was cool, it's pretty much an all-in-one kinda place cos there was a Lions' Gate Bridge + Body of Water + Mountains + city skyline. So very wuhua!
Next we went down to Lost Lagoon, which was our last stop in Stanley Park. The visitor's centre lady had said that we could see beavers, racoons, swans that aren't afraid of u and come right up to you..
What we saw:
Well, at least there were swans, but they were far away being fed by other people. Well, glad to finish up Stanley Park so fast, cos it meant it was time for LUNCH at CHINATOWN!! We'd already sourced out a dimsum-wontonmee place which had rating $-$$ which means $10-20. Really nice of the guide book to show you the price range. I'm really wary of guidebooks cos they usually only show those pricey restaurants who pay a lot to advertise in them.
Off we went to Hon's Lunch! [and we later found out that HON stands for House Of Noodle.. and also the founder's name lah.. 'Han4'.] I ordered 'BBQ pork noodle', stupidly thinking that BBq pork was Roast pork. haiya it's easier with chinese names! Being greedy i also added wan tan. Heehee. I was pretty disappointed that it turned out to be char siew.. haha.. but the servings were crazily large.
We also had guo tie [pot stickers, heehee] and siew mai [which i din eat cos only got 4]. It was a pretty fantastic meal, really enjoyed it.
After stuffing ourselves, we went back to our quite illegally parked car and found that we'd landed ourselves a ticket. 26 bucks. Boo!! That meant our lunch became more expensive! And the stupidest thing was, we only realised some time after, that the ticket was from Prospect POint, Stanley Park and not from the hOn's lunch place! Haha! So in order to save $3 of parking we ended up paying 26. haha.. Mark was pretty annoyed about it.
I love this cute little shop which says 'Open Sundaes'. NO idea what it sells, but it totally reminded me of bubbles.
Capilano Suspension Bridge
Upon entering the premises, we were given a map in which we could collect stamps at different areas in there. We were promised some certificate of some sort if we could collect all the stamps.. haha. cheap thrill. In the end we only managed to collect 3 even though we visited all the attractions.. I think they probably removed the stamps.. Ah, cheat our feelings.
Anyway, i'm kinda pissed off that i look like im wearing the same clothes all the time, in every vacation i go to. haha.. same jacket, scarf, beanie, gloves. I do change my clothes!! Bleah.
Quite beautiful, but it was as usual, smaller than expected. Next we went for the tree top adventure walk.. i dunno wat wj is trying to do..
It is freaking difficult to take photos of the bridge, esp at night cos it is shaking shaking shaking all the time!! ARgh! Notice the pretty snow flakes dropping down.. =)
Pretty lights around made the dark place a lot more interesting. Check out the cute lil beaver i bought. Ha!
Grouse Mountain
Our next stop was Grouse Mountain. It's interesting cos there's night skiing there, and supposedly you can admire the city lights as you ski down [if your face isn't in the snow all the time]. We went to the bottom and saw evryone in snowboards and skis, all excited about going up. I think weijie was pretty interested in going up, and though I think it's a great chance.. I wasn't exactly looking forward to tumbling down the snow at night when it was freezing. And paying much money for it. So we decided to just take photos with the signs.. haha. It's really convenient cos behind this sign, it says 'Welcome to Grouse Mountain'. We didn't even have to move much to take the 2 photos to prove that we've been here.. haha.
We kinda harboured plans of going to the factory outlets [btn vancouver and seattle, and liling still really needs to get that coachbag] but we cldn't cos we had to wait for philip to join us.. so We drove down to Robson Street next to walk around instead. It was rainingly snowing the whole time.. I guess snow really is better than rain. You know, before coming over i had such a vague idea of snow. I thought it was like in a totally different category as rain..
And we were talking about how it's gonna rain a lot in vancouver/seattle, i was talking to liling and commenting, 'what if it rains on the mountains? how to ski?'
and liling said, 'if it's snowing it shouldn't be raining'.
Haha i know that's totally common sense but it took a while for me to realise that snow is just frozen rain, and that's why if it snows, it shouldn't rain. argh.. my science/common sense is really bad. haha.
Robson Street
So we went into this shop called 'Salmon Village' where the guy was really friendly and I don't know why i ended up buying $20+ worth of chocolates that i'm too shy to give my mentor now. Anyway the guy recommended us dinner at White Spot, where the burgers are, i quote, 'Fucking Awesome'.
er.. no, they were no where near 'Awesome'. I only ate half of it.
We waited around for Philip, and popped into Starbucks for a while for some warmth, pretending to look at the mugs. Luckily he came before we were chased out. That's me, pretending not to be miserable in some snow/sleet/rain thing.
That started our drive back down to Seattle, where we stayed at Days Inn Seattle Aurora with no trouble at all, since the carpark led straight to the 2nd level where our rooms were. Haha next time book hotel room need to see floor plan first!!
