Thursday (even though the date of this post looks like Friday) - Busy day today . Headed off to see the Anthropology museum at Univ. of British Columbia. Incredible exhibits of the Coastal Indians. A few pics are shown below (all are clickable and lead you to larger pics).

Stopped at Sophie’s Cosmic Café for breakfast first though – very eclectic sort of hippy type breakfast joint. Here’s a pic of the waitress posting the day’s menu.


About 20 minutes later her fellow waitresses told her she had misspelled half the words (omelette, Italian, etc), so she had to climb back up there and correct them all. Everyone got a big laugh out of that. Good food though – Greek omelets, 8 grain bread,etc.

On to the Anthropology museum – they allowed photography here, so took quite a few pics. Just a couple are here.




Afterwards, headed off to Chinatown for some DimSum (they wheel these carts around and you get to choose what you want off the cart). Then to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Chinese Garden to see a classical Chinese garden.





Beautiful although would have looked better on a rainy day – bright sun was too contrasty for nice pictures.


Afterwards strolled through Chinatown

and then headed back across town to see the Public Library

and the Museum of Art (which is free on Thursday evenings). Suspect my dogs will be woofing later. Stopped at a coffee shop for a latte before tackling the library though. Hooked up wirelessly to Boingo there and got to read some of your comments on the discussion board of my travel blog. Very cool. Glad someone tried that out. Had hoped to head up and cross a suspension ladder over a high gorge today but running out of time – that will have to wait till tomorrow. In the meantime, pounded the ol’ woofers over to the Vancouver Art Gallery for a look at the Emily Carr exhibit. An interesting interpretation of nature and totems – was interesting to see how her work evolved over time. Janet knows all this art stuff – so drags me along, despite my inclination to make a beeline to nearest geek shop. LOL

By now it’s 9 p.m and we’re hungry , so we head up Robson St (like Rodeo Drive) to try to find a place to grab some munchies. Finally end up in a sports bar woofing down huge cheeseburgers – good stuff Microbrew wasn’t bad either

It was nice to fall into bed last nite and finally get some sleep. Woke up, caught up on this journal some and then we took a short walk over to an incredible doll museum (ok, I went along to humor Janet, but it was actually pretty neat). After that took a short drive over to a mexican restaurant for lunch which was overpriced and not all that great - sometimes you find a great place and sometimes .....

Installed the Wayfinder compass I had bought recently at buy.com in the rental car. Hopefully, that will help us from getting lost. ha! Headed north on I-5 out of town with plans to divert just north of Mt.Vernon to take Rt. 11 along Samish Bay. Had done a Google search in the NY Times about Vancouver and had stumbled upon an article that mentioned this short spin off the Interstate to Bellingham,WA. Was well worth it - beautiful scenery along the way. Here's a pic of the bay: (click on it to see original)



Also stopped in a small art/crafts gallery along the way that was one of the finest art/craft/garden galleries I've ever seen. Could have spent a mint there, but resisted. Amazing. Some very nice items that would have looked great in the Fox Hill Inn Garden. Doubt if David would ever spring for that kind of money though.

Had to get my computer fix for the day and have been eager to see if I can get a wireless connection with this new laptop. Discovered that the Horseshoe Cafe in downtown Bellingham had free wireless. Headed there with the help of Streets and Maps software (damn, we're one technological tourbus, ain't we?). Turned out to be one of the seediest places I've ever seen, but good to it's word, within minutes, I was surfing the Net at 11mb/sec - blazing fast compared to a dial-up modem. Cool experience, even if the coffee and fake key lime pie sucked and always the omnipresent fear that one of those slimy loking characters hanging around outside was gonna bonk Mr. Super Tourist over the head and take his laptop.

Back out of Bellingham and heading for Vancouver. Beautiful views of the Cascades as we drive along to our East. You could see Mt. Baker for quite a while. Stopped at the border - the girl there wanted passports and birth certificates, one or the other. Since we had neither, she sent us into some building, where some guy hassled us for about 10 minutes, till they let us cross. Never had to have that before when entering Canada. Suspect they just pick on every 10th person or so. Or it could have been that swatiska carved into my forehead ala Charlie Manson....

Spending the next 2 days here and then catching a ferry to Victoria on Saturday. 2 days won't do this town justice, I can see that right now, but we can come back later and do more. Well, pooped out, so gonna crash.

Left home around 9:00 a.m. Made it to Charlotte airport about 11:15. Took shuttle bus and made it through to Concourse A by 12:00. Got 2 ½ hours before flight. Looks like Priceline didn’t give us seats next to each other, so I suspect plane is crowded. *(now in Seattle) - Long , butt-busting flight to Seattle from Wash,DC. Why we have to fly from Charlotte backwards to DC and then to Seattle is beyond me, but guess that’s life. Had to sit on the tarmac for 45 minutes before we took off – figured maybe some son of Saddams’ we hadn’t heard about was on top of the plane or something. Showed the movie “Chicago” during the flight – would have been nice to watch, except I was jinxed and the control wasn’t working in my seat. Figures – was nice to have my audible book to listen to – tuned out the baby next to me (fortunately, a pretty good kid). Plane was packed – Janet and I had window seats on opposite sides of the plane.

Must have been 11 p.m. by the time we arrived in Seattle (eastern time). I like the economy car we got – supposed to be like a GEO Metro and it turns out to be a 6 cyl Dodge Stratus with a wing on the back to keep better control when I go past 200 mph. Sure that will be an economy car!

Headed off to find the hotel – got lost – had to pull out the laptop and fire up Streets and Maps, then located it, but still couldn’t figure out where the place was – at the address where it was supposed to be, it said “Bellevue Center”. We were looking for a Doubletree Inn – no Doubletree. Turns out (after prowling up and down the street and increased howling and babbling amongst the occupants of the car), that the Bellevue was in reality the Doubletree. Grrrrhhhh…….

So by about 1:30 a.m. eastern time, we have crashed into oblivion.

Picture of the day:

Cascade Mountains shortly before arriving in Seattle. Click to enlarge.

Trying to get ready for our trip now. This is always the crazy part . Once you finally get there, it isn't so bad, but just getting there - well, now that's a trip. :)

I will say that using Priceline.com has been a real money saver. If you ever take a vacation and book plane or hotel or rental cars, then you owe it to your bank account to check out Priceline. Just landed 3 nights in Vancouver at a Hotel for $35/night. Since Priceline is a bidding type system, one way to get an estimate on what you should bid, is by going to Hotwire.com. There you can indicate where you're going or staying and they will actually show you the their cheapest prices. They're about the best I've found on the Internet except for Priceline. In the above Vancouver example, the best Hotwire could do me was $52/night. So I went on Priceline and bid $30. That didn't work, so I upped my bid to $35 and chose a slightly larger area where I would be willing to stay - this time, I got it. This is after Priceline suggesting to me that $106 was the average rate I should expect to pay for the quality level I was selecting. I always ignore what they say - it's just their way of trying to get you to bid higher. This also worked for airline tickets from Charlotte to Seattle ($185 bid RT got that ticket) and for a car rental ($18/day at the airport,where the cheapest Hotwire could offer was in the $35-40 range.). The only thing you don't know with Priceline, as well as Hotwire, are the times you are going to fly - if you're flexible and don't mind taking 6 am. flights sometimes - you can getaway for very cheap.

Now back to packing that suitcase full of electronic gear... - should be guaranteed to set off every metal detector in the airport. LOL

Here's where we're heading: (click on image to get the original size picture). We'll be in Vancouver for 3 days and then head over to Victoria on the Island for a few days and then in the following days will be exploring other parts of the Island.