Pacific Northwest Adventure: The Final Day

It was difficult to say goodbye to our beloved 5-star hotel, but we managed to check out, grab some tea and breakfast, and hit the road, bound for Seattle. The drive was easy enough. I can’t tell you the gratification of coming across the border and being able to get non-roaming 3g service. What a relief. We got to Seattle and stopped at the Columbia Tower/Bank of America building. We took three separate elevators to climb 73 stories to the observation floor to get a breathtaking view of the whole Seattle/Puget sound area. For only 5 bucks, it was quite a deal and considerably higher than the space needle.

After that we dropped off the car and I managed to get a hotel concierge to hold our bags for us. We went back to Pike Market. Strange that it now seemed familiar. We took in the sights and smells one last time. We grabbed lunch at the Pike Brewery (Great Double Ale, BTW) and then picked up some Seattle Coffee (which I am currently smelling in the plane from my carry-on bag! Yum!). To treat ourselves, we indulged in a candy-apple with chocolate and toffee on it. Finally, it was time to go. We got to the link rail and headed to the airport, made our flight, and just watched Mt. Rainier pass below us. The Pacific Northwest adventure is now coming to a close.

The beauty of the places we have been is hard to beat. The majesty of the forests and the intrigue of the sea delighted our fascination for nature. The cities which hosted us where world class. We got to experience the flavor of these metropolitan areas, not only in the amazing dining but in their parks, art, streets and people. This alone made our trip unforgettable, but it will be the milestone we reached that will always stick out. Through all of our trips and through all of our adventures, there could be no greater of a travel companion than Emily. We share many things including our love for travel and nature. This, with an infinite number of other reasons, was why I knew that Emily was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I know that this trip was just the beginning of many more journeys we will share together in our lives.

For both of us, this will be a trip that we will remember forever.

Day...Before the last day

We woke luxuriously in our 5-star hotel king size bed, contemplating whether to order caviar or boiled goose from room service. Well, the first part is true. Unfortunately our luxurious, all accommodating hotel felt it unnecessary to provide free internet to its guests. I think our 2.5 star hotel in El Paso had free wifi. WTF. We had breakfast at a coffee house across the street that did have the precious internet. After, we headed out to the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. This place was amazing. If you ever get to Vancouver, check this place out. It is acre after acre of beautiful ponds, lawns and gardens. They even had a really cool hedge maze. We were really blown away by this place. We spent two hours walking around looking at all the neat plants, trees, ferns... I can only imagine what someone who knew something about plants would say. I got to get my mom up here. Highly Recommended.

After the gardens we went out to a place called Granville Island. Not really an island, but a sort of dock area under a bridge which has a bunch of neat shops/artists/restaurants. It is kind of like Seaport Village, back in San Diego. Lots of neat artists and things to see. We took in the sights, grabbed some lunch and then headed back to our hotel room. For a nap. Lots of walking.

When we woke up, we headed down towards Gastown, a neat historical kind of area, not unlike the Gaslamp in S.D. We took a picture in front of the steam powered clock, Gassy Jack (The Founder of Gastown) and then found a nice restaurant for pizza and beer. After we decided to hop into a local brew pub for some more beer. We sampled their collection merrily. On our way home we passed Canada Place, a sort of central Hub for the Olympics, you saw it, it had all those big white sails on it.

Vancouver really is a world-class city. It has amazing sights, great vibe and is pretty darned cool. Despite having to pay for that world-class-ness, we really enjoyed Vancouver.

days 7-??

well, it's been a little while since we've posted. this is partly due to the phenomena of both of our vancouver hotels charging a fee for wifi (LAME), and partly because we've been busy with lots of fun things as well as distracted by the idea of being engaged. awesome.

so here is my attempt at a condensed version of the past few days:

we had a lovely celebratory dinner at il terrazo in victoria. what a magical day.

we left victoria the following morning (thursday?) and headed out for the ferry to vancouver, stopping along the way at a very nice park called Goldstream provincial park, took a little hike to a beautiful waterfall, it was fantastic. the ferry ride was fine, we read some more harry potter to pass the time. upon arriving in vancouver we were immediately met with a traffic jam, but after getting through that we got to our first vancouver hotel which was very nice, and then had dinner at Bistro 101, which is connected to the culinary school here, the food was very good, complete with nervous student waiters, etc.

the following day we went to lynn canyon park, which has a very cool suspension bridge and amazing canyons and waterfalls and pools, all free. it's just a city park. unbelievable. then we took the gondola up grouse mountain, which is extremely beautiful even though as we were going up it was starting to rain. the rain delayed us a bit, but cleared up in time for us to catch a bird show, a logging show, and ride a chair lift up to the very tip-top of the mountain, which was just breathtaking and a little bit frightening.

this morning we checked out of our first hotel, and rented bikes to ride around stanley park. it was really neat. the park is huge, and there is a bike path that goes all the way around the perimeter of it, along the sea wall. so cool. by noonish we were pretty exhausted, having ridden bikes for 3 hours or so. so we stopped and had fish and chips at a restaurant in the park.

(side note: i feel like we've gotten amazing food up here in canada, they really know how to do it right. but somehow service is...lacking. maybe it's the slower pace? maybe the culture just doesn't value prompt service at restaurants? either way, it's an odd trend)

then we checked into our SUPER-SWANKY final hotel, the Sutton Place. i got this crazy deal on hotwire and booked it for cheap. awesome. so far, they've brought us a fancy dessert to celebrate our "anniversary" because i had told them we were celebrating a special occasion in order to get a king bed in the room. also i'm pretty sure i saw wil wheaton in the lobby. very cool.

only one more full day, and then we'll be heading home. it's been so incredible. obviously for certain reasons, but really for so many others as well. good times.

p.s. i've been mostly successful at not delving into wedding-planning thoughts, though i did watch a few episodes of 'say yes to the dress' after jeff went to bed last night. also my ring freaking rocks.

A very big day

Preface:

After a short stint at the hotel to recharge, blog etc. we headed out to dinner. we were hoping to get some fish and chips at this little stand on the wharf. As soon as we headed to stand in line, we were told they were closing for the night. Bummer. We went across the street to a nice restaurant that also served fish and chips. We ate them with delight and then quickly got to the meeting spot for our ghost tour! Our tour guide gave us the phantasmal history of downtown victoria and walked us about the streets telling ghost stories and pointing out buildings of note. We didn't take it all too seriously, but some kids in our group thought it was just about the coolest thing, so it made it fun to play along. It was a nice brief history of victoria with a little bit of ghost story mixed in. Had it not been for the cheesy light up wal-mart skulls in the last room, it might have been a bit scary. We headed back and called it a night.

Chapter one: Emily's Point of view.

We got up this morning and headed out to breakfast at Mo:le which Jeff claimed was the best breakfast he ever had. Mine was good too. Then we drove west on a small highway toward point renfrew, which is one of the furthest points on the island and we heard had beautiful views. We got most of the way there and then saw another hiking spot and decided to stop for a small hike. which turned into a long hike. It was beautiful forest and a lovely trail out to a rocky beach. It was beautiful the whole way there, but as we turned to head back, we realized it was past lunchtime, we were pretty hungry, had no water, poor shoes and a pretty long hike back. The return hike actually went pretty fast but by the time we got back to the car we were starving and there were no lunch places nearby. Jeff suggested that we go on to point renfrew but we went back the way we came. Thankfully we found a tiny little inn/restaurant after a few minutes and stopped for lunch. Lunch was good. On the way out Jeff asked the receptionist if we could access their private beach and he gave us the code. We walked the hill down a little way, even though my feet were kind of tired- i figured we'd only be there for a little bit. The beach was totally empty except for us, the fog had rolled in. it was beautiful. Jeff got out his camera and took some pictures and then pulled out something else. a ring. He got down on one knee and proposed. and I said yes.

Chapter two: Jeff's Point of view

Well it was the day I had been planning and scheming for a long time. No pressure right?Breakfast really was the best. If you ever get to Victoria, eat at Mo:le. Period. My plan was too get out as far away from everything as we could, and point renfrew was the place. As we drove out we found the trailhead for a short hike. I figured we'd do this, drive a ways and then get to point renfrew. Well, the hike turned out to be a pretty big endeavor. I knew we weren't going to be heading on. The beach was beautiful, the hike was good. I didn't have the ring. I had left it, thinking we would be going on. The entire hike back i was running through contingency plans, places, things to do etc. I had nothing. When we found the restaurant, things looked up. We casually leafed through their pamphlet, which said they had a private beach. Bingo. I rallied emily to come down to another beach, another little hike. We got to the beach and I moved the ring from my camera case to pocket. We were alone on a beach as far from home and other people as we could get. I told her how much i loved her, then said some things that probably sounded like gibberish, then got to my knee and pulled out the ring. Then she said the one thing I had been hoping for months: Yes.

THANKS EVERYONE FOR YOUR CONGRATS AND WELL-WISHES! we're off to our celebratory dinner, love you all.

day 5-6

so we woke up on monday and left our somewhat shoddy hotel. we headed for seattle, where we would pick up our rental car. while waiting to pick it up, we circled back by the pike market again and had massive crepes for breakfast. so delicious.

the rental process was simple enough, we're now driving a ford focus. it's no civic hybrid, but what is.

we drove an hour or two to the ferry port, and got on the ferry to Vancouver Island. it was a nice ride, weaving through beautiful forested mini-islands. when we got to the island we had to go through customs, which would have been a snap if we hadn't chosen lane 3. apparently lanes 1, 2, and 4 contained all the non-terrorists, and ours had all the crazy gun-toting weirdos that canada needed to chat with extensively. but we got through it, and got to our hotel.

This morning we got up and headed out to breakfast at John's Place, a breakfast spot jeff had read about. my belgian waffle was probably the best i've ever had. and then, it was on to whale watching.

they suited us up in these super-thick flotation suits, which were burning hot until we got going on our zodiac boats. the boats are open-air and the wind whips by pretty fast. our guide took us first to see a pair of bald eagles, which were amazing. then we started seeing orcas. first they were pretty far off, but still exciting. we started moving towards the pod, and our guide knew how to get kind of in front of them and predict where they would be moving to next. each sighting seemed more and more up-close, they kept surfacing and swimming slowly, it was beautiful. finally, we went around for one more pass, and thank goodness we did because the orcas ended up basically swimming right towards our boat, basically under us, and continuing on. they were so close that we could see their white patches while they were underwater. the guide had a cool water-microphone and we could hear them calling to each other as they went by. it was amazing.

we got back to shore and then had afternoon tea at the Bleathering Place. cool british tea and little snacks, and lots of cute old ladies. now we're chilling doing some laundry, planning for some fish and chips for dinner.

Day 4

The train from Portland was short in comparison to our previous train trip. We had plenty of good views of the Puget Sound. Before long, we were pulling into the downtown train station. Our luck granted us arrival coinciding with the near start of a Seahawks game. We worked the opposite direction of all the Seattle/Green Bay fans and lugged our bags across the street to their light rail station. A few flights of stairs down into the earth, we loaded onto the train and headed back down towards SeaTac. The light rail was similar to our trolley, so it was no big for us. We wrangled our bags to the SeaTac Inn. Ideally, you wouldn't want to go from a presidential quality hotel like the Benson to the SeaTac Inn. When you go for the cheapest hotel closet to the train stop: Yeah, its not going to be the best. Really though, its just a place to rest our head.

We started the next day right away and headed back to the rail and headed to downtown. Despite having more Starbucks per square mile than anywhere else, there were none that were open when we came in. Our food tour met up in the lobby of the Seattle Art Museum, which was a beautiful facility. We met our group and headed out to our first "bite" which was a small restaurant in the art museum. We got to meet the restaurant manager and he told us all about his restaurant and some funny stories. Finally he let us sample a flat bread with salmon and creme freche(sp?). Super good.

Our quirky tour guide then led us down to the Pike Market, a hustling and bustling market full of fresh smells and busy crowds. We tried all sorts of delicious local foods: Crepes, Sausages, Chowder, Salmon, Fruit, Pastrami on Rye, Indian food, coffee and soda. They were all so delicious and fresh. I was so proud of Emily for trying everything. Thats right she tried it all. The pastrami on rye sandwich, the crepes with banana and nutella and even the indian food. She never fails to surprise me. After our tour we headed out on our own. We looked at all the stalls of flowers and fruit. We ran into a cool a capella group, playing for coins. We eventually doubled back for some chowder in a bread bowl and grabbed a fresh peach. So good. We started wandering about and went down an alley and found a little wine tasting bar featuring all Washington state wines. we took a small flight and headed back out. We attempted to go up this tall building for a view, but it was closed on Sundays.

We headed back down to the Pike Brewing Company, an old brewery turned awesome pub/restaurant. It is a gravity powered brewery, for all those beer geeks. So cool. We shared steamed mussels and mushroom/artichoke/crab pizza. So good. Plus fresh craft beer. So so good. Our taste buds have been spoiled this day.

Day 2-3

So day 2 of the train trip went quite well. Sleeping in our little sleeper car was...not exactly the most comfortable thing on earth, but it was decent enough. And once we were awake and the room was converted back to the daytime setting, we were once again very comfortable and had a lovely morning playing cards, reading harry potter, and drinking more boxed margarita.

A little after lunch we arrived in portland and said goodbye to the coast starlight train. What a cool way to travel.

Portland is pretty hip. Most of the many homeless people we saw were dressed better than me. We got to our hotel, the Benson, which has housed every president since Taft. The lobby is super swanky and our room was GIGANTIC. From the hotel we walked to Powell’s Books, this giant bookstore, and looked around a bit, then had dinner at Deschutes Brewery. Very good beer, and my first of probably several Fish-n-Chips of the trip. They were delicious.

We had big plans for the evening but were a little tuckered out and ended up crashing early in our huge hotel room.

Waking this morning, we headed out early to get breakfast at Everett St Bistro, where i had Gran Marnier french toast (amazing) and jeff got some crazy waffles with bacon and walnuts. Pretty sure we’re going on massive diets when we get home.

Leaving breakfast we ran into the Portland Corgy convention. No, i’m not joking. There were like a hundred corgies running around. Hilarious and ridiculous and adorable.

We walked down to the waterfront, this really cool park that runs a few miles along the Willamette river. Lots of cool bridges to look at, lots of kids and dogs, and maybe we worked off a tiny fraction of our breakfast calories by walking for a couple hours. The weather was perfect too, a little overcast but not cold.

We had lunch at the Portland Saturday Market, i can’t believe they pull this thing off every week, it takes up several city blocks, and there’s a ton of crafts and cool things as well as cool food. It feels like the people of Portland are pretty darn relaxed. A very cool town.

And just like that, our 23 hours in Portland were up, and we’re now on the train on our way to Seattle. Good times.

Pacific Northwest Adventure: Day 1

Em and I eagerly rose this morning to start our vacation. Alex and Kathy were at our place by 5. We were on the train by 6. Just like that at 6:10 the train started rolling. We toured scenic early morning San Diego, winding through canyons and getting a slightly different view of the drive north. Note to self: Leave the ticket thing at your seat and then go get breakfast.

Soon we were at the famous Union Station in LA. We headed to the main lobby and were welcomed to the Amtrak lounge/bar area. Still a bit too early to drink, but it was a nice place to hang out. Soon it was time to board our sleeping car. We were surprised with its comfort, and while not the size of a hotel room, it was considerably more comfortable than the seats on the first train. After we started rolling, our concierge attendant, Andre, gave us two complimentary bottles of champagne. It was promptly consumed.

How can you describe our train trip? It is kind of like a mix between an intercontinental flight and a cruise. The areas are small, its a bit bumpy, kinda noisy but has great views, free food and entertainment, and you can walk about. We grabbed lunch, played games, read some of the Last Harry Potter book (Thanks Casey), and drank some of our smuggled box margarita. Overall we have been very impressed with the train.

We have seen some amazing beaches/mountains/plains... pretty much all the great parts of California , from our window. We had a good dinner of Lamb and Duck. And now we are rolling along until we get tired enough to turn our two big seats into two small beds. Tomorrow we will awaken still on the road headed toward Portland. The trip is off to a good start.

Time for our next big adventure

Hello again everyone.

August is fast approaching and that means it is time for us to look forward to our big summer trip. Before the big reveal though, A quick rundown of everything we have been doing since our last post.

New Year's Eve Show, Lost Premiere Party, Babysit Julieanne, Superbowl, Disneyland, Gert's 100th Birthday, Oscars Party, Bad Religion @ HOB, Visit NCT Phoenix and Dorian and Krissy and Zoe with Greg and Casey, Cinco De Grego, Ben Folds @ HOB, Lost Finale, Hike Cowles Mtn., Go to the Zoo with Julieanne, Padres Game, Brew Hop, Shakespeare Abridged, Trapeze Lessons, SeaWorld with Casey, Taming of the Shrew...

When you put it all back to back, we have done a lot of stuff. But we are always looking forward to the big events, the big long vacations, the next big thing. And it is with great excitement we introduce:

Pacific Northwest Adventure 2010!

Featuring a Coastal Train ride up the coast. A Night in Portland, Oregon. Two nights in Seattle, Washington. Three nights in Victoria, British Columbia and finally Four nights in Vancouver, British Columbia. With such scheduled adventures as: Car Rentalship, Ferry Boat Travel, Cable Car up the side of a mountain, exploring forest beaches, ziplining, tasting all manner of food and beer and a brief stay in a five star hotel. And much much more.

Needless to say, our planning and research in the area has been extensive. We have scoured as many online travel sites as possible for tips, tricks and local secrets. So far this adventure is looking like a mix between The Amazing Race and Travel with Rick Steves. Both relaxing and scenic as well as exciting and adventurous.

Hopefully there will be even more updates as we go along preparing and planning for what will no doubt be a fun and memorable trip up North.

PS: Catch up on our pictures from fun stuff
http://picasaweb.google.com/frank.jeff