The Bernasconi's

From the Mountains – To The City

Back in June, Wife and I headed up to Canada for some much-needed R&R. This is a post we finally decided to finish so it might be a little off seeing as the trip was 6 months ago and don't remember everything exactly as it happened. Enjoy!

Alas, it was our last day in Whistler. We spent the morning cleaning up our little one bedroom apartment before checking out. We cleaned the place so well it looked like we had just checked in (if we did not they would have charged us for dirty dishes).

We had time to spare, so Wife purchased some postcards and postage, wrote some notes to her grandmothers, and put them in the mail in hopes that they would arrive in San Diego before we did. After that, we walked down to the bus station and played cards on the grass while waiting. Once the bus arrived, the bus driver informed us that he would make a few stops and that one would be real close to our hotel in Vancouver. That meant we did not have to get a taxi once we arrived, which was great. The drive down was fairly uneventful but took longer than our drive up.

Once in Vancouver, we walked the few blocks (it seemed like a lot more when you are tired and do not know where you are going) to our hotel eager to check in and lie down for a few minutes. Once we found the Barclay Hotel, we checked in and walked up the stairs to our closet...I mean room.

Our first room was about a square foot or so larger than a typical walk in closet. With our two sets of luggage and the furniture, we could not move around the room without tripping. The bed and the desk sat so close to together that you could not pull the desk chair all the way out. We grabbed our luggage, walked downstairs to the front desk, and asked to see a bigger room. The attendant showed us to two choices of bigger rooms and we decided the medium-sized room would be acceptable (the chair actually came all the way out).

The size of the room and the age of the building (it needs to be updated, but that would cost money) were the only problems we had because its prices and location were ideal. It sat in the center of Vancouver with easy access to the water, parks, transportation, and restaurants. We walked down one of the main streets and dined outside at an Indian restaurant. There we decided we were ready to come home and to move our flight up by a day since we would be headed to the Cayman Islands just a few days after we returned.

After dinner we walked along the water and tried to spot some of the areas Wife had visited when she came with her mother before leaving on Semester at Sea. We found a few of them and then just enjoyed the rest of the scenery (like a dentist chair that faces out to the water). The big thing we noticed was how all the high rises had really large glass windows. The city obviously did not sit on or near a fault line and as Southern California natives, we were both impressed.

Tired from the drive down from Whistler (funny how traveling, even for a few hours can make you tired), we called it an early night and went back to the Barclay to plan our last day in Canada and to sleep.