The trip took enormous planning which was very well managed by Ramya. First step was getting the Canadian visitor visa. This took about a week and was mostly straightforward. Next, we got the appointment for the US consulate. Once the appointment date was fixed, we could go ahead with the trip reservations.
We planned to fly into Seattle on April 27th. Spend most of April 28th, a Saturday with friends and family, I have couple of cousins who live there. Then on April 28th night, we planned to arrive at Vancouver by road. On 29th, we planned to spend the day in Victoria. On 30th, I had my appointment and we planned to spend the rest of the day around Vancouver. On May 1st, we would spend some more time in Vancouver, before driving back to Seattle for our evening flight. My sister and brother-in-law had already visited the area and hence provided some very useful tips for our trip.
Ramya spent a lot of time planning the trip intricately well. This went a long way in making the trip an effective one. She visited multiple websites for activity guides. Then prepared a detailed plan of what needs to be done on each day, including directions and estimated costs. Pretty cool, huh?!
Day 0: Flight to Seattle
On Friday night, April 27th we left from San Francisco airport by the 9.30 pm flight. We reached Seattle by 11 PM. We picked up our rental car, a brand new Toyota Camry and drove to my friend KB's house. We got there by midnight. At that time, he was very much excited to see us and we spent a good hour talking. After a quick call home, we called it a day around 1.30 am.
Day 1: A Seattle Day
We were up by around 9.30 am after a lazy resistance to waking up ;-) KB woke up soon. Ramya and I took the time to get ready and spent sometime watching the recent Telugu hit "Bommarillu". It was a very nice watch with good laughs and a nice family plot. Siddharth and Genelia are adorable in the movie. I've been a fan of the soundtrack for a while now. At around 12 pm we headed off to meet my cousin Ravi who works in the Belmont area as well. We had planned to meet my other cousins Jayant and Praveen too. But they were busy that day.
Ravi and his wife Nirmala live close to KB's house. We drove over there and soon headed off to lunch at a nice Indo-Chinese restaurant called InChin. The food was very tasty with a generous helping of spicyness and tangy twists. After lunch, we went to a nearby lake called Lake Samamish which is very beautiful and peaceful.
After spending a few minutes there, chatting away, we drove to the Microsoft campus and looked around Ravi's office. We soon bade goodbye to Ravi and Nirmala, at around 3.30 pm and drove back to KB's house.
KB was eagerly waiting for us. The 3 of us headed off to the elegant downtown area. We had a nice time chatting away along the drive about all sundry items. We parked near the Seattle space needle tower.
We took a elevator to get to the top. It was not a very cold day, though the wind was blowing strong. We took a lot of pictures from the vista points. Inside the view point visitor area we got some coffee and some very tasty pastry which KB politely refused, lest it have an impact on his waistline ;-) We shopped a bit in the visitor center and then drove off towards KB's home.
Once we got to KB's home, KB busied himself in the kitchen!! Wah ... that's something amazing for an Indian man :-) He made Chapathis from scratch and had also prepared some very delicious palak paneer to go with it. Also, to top off the celebratory feeling, there was some delicious Shavige Payasa. He's one terrific host, I should say. Ramya was quite happy about it and gave me suggestive glances about how I should also improve my cooking skills ;-) I convinced her that us climbing Mount Everest and sleeping next to lions in Serengeti national park is a lot safer than me trying cooking!
We started off after dinner, at around 9.30 pm, to Vancouver. We were going to be driving on I-5 which, after the US-Canada border, would become CA-99. The drive was a good one, with a conference call with Vinay (driving from Delaware to Cali), Vibes and Nagi in SJ. After that, we called Ramya's home and spoke to them for a while. The Canadian immigration was a breeze and we reached our hotel in Downtown Vancouver by midnight. When we got there, the place was one festive area with 100's of people dancing and howling with pitchers of beer in hand. It was a saturday night, the most active night. Our hotel was in the Granville area, which is right in the heart of downtown and one of the most happening areas of town. We soon called it a day since we were far too tired and we had an early day the following morning.
Day 2: Following the elegant trail of Victoria
We woke up at 7 am, since we had to be at the ferry terminal soon, to catch the 9 am ferry to Victoria. The ferry terminal was a good 45 minute drive way. We reached the ferry terminal by 8.20 am and had sufficient time to catch breakfast. There was, not surprisingly, a very good food court. We had delicious crepes for breakfast and eagerly awaited the departure of ferry. The ferry departed promptly at 9 am. It was a great day and we spent a significant part of the journey hanging out at the deck, taking pictures and enjoying the nice view.
The ferry docked at Victoria by 10.45 am. Our car, which was on the ship, got off soon and we drove off to Butchart Gardens which was a 30 minute drive. The drive was good, along lush green meadows. Butchart gardens itself turned out to be a treat from the word go. It was not too busy. The parking lot is decorated with flags of countries around the world, including India :)
The garden has a suggested sequence of visiting the smaller sub sections. We decided to do something smart. We decided to go in the direction opposite to the one suggested, because the entrance was crowded. It helped us because, we could get through the garden faster than the other way. We entered on the Italian garden which was full of flowers around ponds and fountains. The colors were various shades of blue, red, purple, yellow and what not. Just too cool. A gentleman was very happy to take our pictures against different backgrounds, which he suggested!
From the Italian garden, we went to the Japanese garden which was developed in Japanese style by Mrs. Butchart with the help of gardeners brought from Japan! The Japanese garden style with the wooden pipes, seen in the climax of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and small waterfalls and ponds was very beautiful to look at. The peony and white cherry blossom like flowers were good to see. Even the entrance to the Japanese garden was the traditional Torii.
From the Japanese garden we stopped at the Sturgeon fountain which is in the shape of 3 fish jumping and a fountain bursting out. A few tourists were happy to take our pictures. Here, in the absence of a tripod, I managed to balance my camera on a thin looking pole and took a timed shot of both of us. The camera was placed very precariously and could have easily fallen off!
Our next stop was the rose garden which, unfortunately, was totally empty because it was not rose season at that time of the year. However, the view of the entire garden was spectacular, including the residence of the Butcharts. From there, we walked to the totem pole area and took a few pics. From the totem pole area, we walked to view a beautiful synchronized fountain which looked beautiful with flowers in the foreground.
We then walked through the main garden area. It was already nearing 1 pm and I was getting tired. How much flowers can one see? ;-) But this didn't have an impact on Ramya who was happily clicking away. The main area was just beautiful with lot more different types of flowers all placed delicately well in areas such as ponds, small hillocks et.al.
We were out of the garden at around 1 pm. We stopped by the cafe to get an ice cream and a cool soda. We shopped a bit at the gift store and then drove off for dinner in the Victoria downtown. The Victoria downtown is very beautiful with old buildings and a marina. There is the natural history musuem, the parliament building and the empress hotel.
We had a sumptuous meal at the Grand Pacific hotel. After lunch, we strolled around the marina and the nearby totem pole garden. The totems were very cool and we had a lot of fun making faces to match the faces of the totems ;-)
Then we shopped a bit in the Natural history museum, after looking around some more totems which had rich stories to tell about the history of the Indian tradition. We wanted to take a quick look around the musuem but it was far too expensive to get in and we didn't have enough time to justify the cost of the entrance tickets.
We decided to do some more shopping in the area and on our way to the shopping area, we stumbled upon the Miniature World musuem which we had planned to see later. But it turned out that it was going to close at 5 pm and it was already 4.45 pm! We thought it would be open till 8 pm (which was going to be the timings from the following week). We were disappointed at not being able to see the musuem. We shopped around a bit and then decided to head to the empress hotel for some high tea, which was also on our plan. On the way to the empress hotel, we sat in front of the hotel and enjoyed the nice view of the marina and chatted up for a while. We went to the empress hotel by 5.30 pm, only to discover that high tea service had stopped at 5 pm!! *aargh* That was two disappointments in one evening.
We spent the rest of the time looking around the area and stopped by a Tibetan-Nepali restaurant called the mint where we got some delicious food to go. The momos were mouth watering and got emptied in seconds, while we were waiting for our ferry! Our ferry departed from Victoria at 8 pm and we reached Vancouver by 9.30 pm. We ate the delicious mix of Tibetan, Nepali and Thai food and called it a night after calling home to update everyone. I had a super early start the following morning.
Day 3: Exploring the beautiful Vancouver
On this morning, I had my consulate appointment at 8 am. In trembling anticipation of the moment, I had set 10 alarms from 4 am to 5.45 am, lest I shouldn't wake up!! I was up and ready by 6.30 am. Ramya drove me to the consulate by 7 am. We had a cup of coffee at the Starbucks and then she left. I had a reasonably simple Visa appointment and was out by 9.30 am. Since Ramya had told me that she'll come only at 10 am, I had to find a phone booth to ask her to come sooner. This gave me the perfect opportunity to walk around the beautiful downtown area.
Ramya soon joined me for breakfast at a nice restaurant where he had the standard egg and bread breakfast. After breakfast, we returned to our room, where I changed and left all my documents. We had a long fun day ahead. Our first stop was going to be the beautiful Stanley park area. We got there by 11 am. Stanley park is a huge park next to water/marina area.
The area can be either driven around or walked around or one can cycle around the park. We got a park map and started driving around the park. One interesting stop was at a Totem pole park where we spent quite a bit of time learning about totempoles. The natives worshipped nature and all her forms via Totem poles. Aquatic creatures, reptiles, wild animals et.al. were represented in these statues and worshipped for their power.
From Stanley park, we drove to Capillano suspension bridge at around 12.30pm. There is a nice park in the area and we spent time exploring the park and took pictures. Then we walked on the bridge itself. It was wobbling a lot. Ramya had a hard time walking and not feeling dizzy.
She was quite concerned about the stability of the bridge. We soon got over our jitters when halfway through somebody requested us to take their pictures. By the time they took our pictures and we took their pictures, we had gotten used to the wobbly nature of the bridge. The other side of the bridge was a thick patch of green trees. We spent time walking around and taking pictures, including some funny ones ;-)Our next stop was Grouse mountain. We drove there by 2.30 pm, only to be disappointed by the very expensive tram ride. We did not take the tram ride, instead took a couple of pictures in the area and left after having coffee. We headed back to our hotel room to rest for some time. We slept from 4 pm till about 6 pm. On our return to the room, Ramya spent some time researching about local hotels offering high tea. To our delight, we found that there were a couple of places locally!
At 6 pm, we decided to explore the "historic" Gaslight area. The area gets its name because of an old steam operated clock which was quite interesting to see.
Unfortunately, that was about the only interesting thing we saw in the area. We walked around the deserted downtown area, which was deserted because it was a Monday! We took some pictures along the historic buildings of the area. We made a right turn in our walk, which unwittingly put us into a very shady street of the area which was full of homeless people. Though everyone was keeping to themselves, it was still quite a scary walk for us and we wanted to get our of there ASAP. We then ended up a riverside restaurant and had a quick snack. Some of the guests at the restaurant, suggested livelier places to checkout.We headed then in the direction of the consulate and it was more alive with lots of people and major nightlife. But, I guess the day had been long and tiring so we got pizza next door to our hotel and called it a night. We settled in our hotel room watching a rehashed version of all the classic fairy tales called "Happily never after" which was decent fun. Watching the movie made us hungry again. So, we headed to the downstairs bar called "Wings" to get some Thai food. After dinner, we completed the movie and slept off.
Day 4: Wandering the last few alleys of Vancouver
We woke up at around 8.30 am and checked out of our room. We planned to pick up our visa by 3.30 pm and drive to Seattle, to catch the 7 pm flight to San Jose. From our hotel, we drove to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Classical Chinese garden. The place was a real treat for its elegant design following ancient chinese architeture, that inspires one to get involved in spirituality, philosophy and other such intellectual perspectives. We stayed there till about 12 pm and shopped at the visitor center where Ramya bought some gifts for my sister and her cousin.
We then headed to a new age Chinese restaurant called the "Wild Rice" where the decor and the presentation of food was very elegant and distinct from what we usually have. The food was very tasty and spicy. A sumptuous meal, i may say. It was almost 2 pm when we left the place.
We then wanted to go the high tea place but parking was turning to be a problem with street closures, one way streets and all the busy traffic. It turned out that we were likely to get delayed by High Tea. Ramya let go of this dream of hers ... I have an open promise to take her to the best High Tea place there is :-)
We picked up our visa by 3.30 pm. We also realized then that we'll likely miss our flight. So, Ramya printed the boarding passes at a nearby computer center, so that we get a seat on the next flight. We started the drive back at around 3.45 pm. By 4.30 pm, we were at the border, where I had to stop because I had a new stamp. It took a good 45 minutes for the whole port of entry procedure. But the officer at the post did a thorough job of the entry including giving me a printed I-94 card for a princely sum of $6!!
We continued our drive on and reached Seattle only by 7 pm, by when our flight had left!! We nevertheless, got a seat on the next flight to San Jose which was scheduled to leave at 8.45 pm. This worked out better because our other flight was scheduled to arrive at SFO. We had to check in all our bags, including our carry on bag because it had some items left in it, which were not allowable under travel restrictions. So, Ramya and I had the opportunity of living a fulfilled dream of travelling with no bags to carry around ;-)
We spent time till 8.45 pm chatting up and grabbing something to eat. We arrived at 10 pm in San Jose to be picked up by my BIL. We headed straight to their place for dinner and then called it a night.
Thank you for reading this report :-) I hope you enjoyed it.
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