Travels with T & J: Oh! Canada

...with glowing hearts, we see thee rise.

We hit the road, leaving fantastic weather at home and had fantastic weather ahead of us. We are headed north of the border to watch the Timbers play the Whitecaps.

No Bob and Doug McKenzie jokes, let's just get through it

Although we were fully prepared to cross the border, we were a little tense doing it. Canada welcomed us in and we made the most of four days and three nights.

Coming soon to Vancouver: left turn lanes

**Dietz Travel Alert** - don’t be like us! Make sure you are set with phone service outside of the US, and get a map of where you’re going. We had to scramble and guess our way to our hotel through Vancouver traffic, and a few wrong turns on our way home.

Once we stopped worrying and learned to love the city again, it was great. We stayed in the middle of downtown and close to B.C. Place Arena, where we enjoyed walking around the neighborhood.

The library was an amazing building with an atrium-like alley way featuring shops and eateries. Really cool.

Vancouver Public Library

VPL atrium

"Yes Morbius, a simple blaster"

We started the next day with breakfast of champions – a maple glazed doughnut at Tim Horton’s. Once again the justification was “hey, we’re on vacation!”

The four basic food groups for breakfast

We spent the morning walking the trails in Stanley Park, close in to the city. The water in the bay was perfectly clear and clean. Our walking tour around Brockton Point included numerous sea plane flights taking off across the bay.

Pristine waters of Vancouver harbor

Canada Place seen from Stanley Park

A serious totem pole exhibit in Stanley Park

Seaplanes took off about every 15 minutes

Lion's Gate Bridge

After crossing the Lion’s Gate Bridge, we went up towards Grouse Mountain. Half way up, we stopped at Capilano River Park and just absorbed as much of the beauty as we could. An amazing scene.

Beautiful view

Our gondola to the top

Grouse Mountain Skyride took us all the way to the top. Wow.

Downtown from the top of Grouse Mountain

Follow the footprints to the Grizzlies

Walking on a sidewalk through the snow, we found the grizzly bears that live there. Ahh, love those 11am naps.

"Please keep the shutter clicks to a minimum. It's nap time."

Today just happened to be our forty-ninth wedding anniversary. We had a great dinner, and the restaurant manager bought us a complementary sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream and bourbon sauce. Let’s do that again sometime…

49th anniversary dinner at Moxie's Restaurant (because we've got a lot of it).

Next morning, it was off to Granville Island – a fun riverside setting for some great shopping.

Granville Island was in bloom

The water taxi dock on Granville Island

A bit of phonics humor at a Granville Island shop

We drove back into downtown, through lunchtime traffic no less, and found ourselves at Canada Place, with two cruise liners parked. Amazing that the dock is directly in the middle of the city. While there we went Flying over Canada. Like Disneyland's Soaring over California only, you know, over Canada.

A Princess cruise ship docked next to 450 parking meters

Later, it was time to meet up with The Timbers Army at Dublin Calling for pre-game functioning. The special "Timbers Army" menu included the Cascadia Burger: Canadian beef, Canadian bacon, Tillamook cheddar cheese, and Washington french fried potatoes. After lunch, we made our march through the streets to the stadium. The boys played their hearts out and we had good seats, in the top row. And that’s all we’ll say about that.