The Trip of Firsts: First-Anniversary Getaway to Canada

For our first anniversary, David and I decided to take a trip up to Canada. 

This was our first time to Vancouver so we weren't quite sure what to expect. We figured our trip would be pretty similar to visiting Portland for a weekend, but were surprised to find our first time driving in Canada was a bit more of an adventure than we anticipated. In Vancouver B.C., the closest to a freeway you'll find is a six-lane road (three lanes each direction). You would think this would be plenty of space, but what you have to remember is that the far right lane is normally used for street parking and the left lane doubles as a turn lane. When you're driving along you might be surprised to see that you're lane just got taken over by parked cars or that the guy in front of you had decided he wants to turn left. You're really only safe if you drive in the middle lane. Thankfully Canadian drivers are used to the chaos and will normally let you back in the center lane when the outer lanes let you down.

Another tricky aspect about driving in Canada worth mentioning is that this was our first time in a long time that we didn't have smartphone service to GPS our way to everything. We would load the maps in our hotel and then adventure out and hope for the best.

Our first stop in Vancouver was to a Chinese place called The Peaceful Restaurant that we found on Yelp. We entered the packed restaurant, ordered Dan-Dan Noodles, and were surprised to happen upon the best noodles in the world! I aways thought David's chow mein was good, but now we are going to have to experiment until we can make something like those noodles.

I was curious to see how Canadian fashion differs to our fashion, so I pointed out a guy with an interesting haircut to David. This was my first sighting of this haircut, so I assumed it must be an odd Canadian hairstyle. Nope! It's a really popular hair cut. Even soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo styles his hair this way.

I love watching Property Brothers, but have already seen all the free, last-season episodes online. A couple weeks ago I found out that the current season of Property Brothers is available online-- but only to Canadians. Being a computer genius, I thought I could find a way to watch it, but failed miserably. (If you know how to spoof my IP to look Canadian, we really should talk!) Anyway, the point of the story is that David and I were in Canada this past weekend so we got to watch our first Canadian Property Brothers episode.

Saturday morning we started the day at Queen Elizabeth Park. While we were there, we saw an old Chinese couple taking pictures of each other and offered to take a photo for them. David counted down for the picture in Mandarin and the couple were impressed to see a white guy who could carry on a conversation in Mandarin.

We went to our first conservatory together at the park and enjoyed seeing exotic birds.

We enjoyed our first time visiting a museum together at the Museum of Anthropology.  We happened to get there right before a guided tour started, which turned out to be pretty interesting. We learned that Totem poles originated in the pacific northwest, and that the Native Americans generally made their homes, totem poles, and canoes out of cedar wood, but got creative and used cedar for clothes as well. My personal favorite Native American name was Kwakwaka'wakw.

Canada is famous for Cadbury chocolate, so we made sure to stop by the drug store and pick up our first Wunderbars. (Yummy peanut butter carmel wafer in every bite!) 

We rented bikes so that we could take our first bike ride around The Seawall at Stanley park.

For our first-anniversary dinner, we went to Bishops. Expensive, but delicious.

To commemorate How I Met Your Mother, we made sure to drop by Tim Horton's and pick up ourselves some Canadian doughnuts before we headed back to home-sweet-home Seattle.

-Mr. D. and Mrs. M.