Our WONDERful first trip "home" to Alaska- A Trip Report -Finished 1/8!!!

[happenin2you]

Originally Posted by Momma2Jax

Joining in! Can't wait to be on the opposite cruise (SEA to Vancouver repo) in Sept!!

Welcome! It's a good cruise to be on since you get to explore two awesome port cities on embarkation and debarkation.

Originally Posted by DisSarahK

People do that more and more with car doors--I've been in my car a couple of times lately and been banged into and the people haven't cared one whit! One lady even got annoyed with *me* because I wasn't pleased that she whacked my car with her door! So frustrating. I'm glad there wasn't damage to your rental.

I couldn't believe it. It wouldn't surprise me so much for someone to hit a car no one was in and not accept responsibility since there wouldn't be anyone there to hold them accountable, but geez! When I'm looking you right in the face? Come on...

Originally Posted by trimix

I will be on the Wonder in two weeks and am really looking forward to the rest of your report!

I wish I had met you before now - I live just about halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, and could have given you some food suggestions!

You're gonna have a blast! I would have appreciated the input. We usually look up Guy Fieri's Diners, DriveIns, and Dives and go from there, but there wasn't anything for Vancouver. I have a cousin who used to live there, though, and she said Vera's Burgers is very popular and good. We tried them out, pictures to come

Originally Posted by lovealldisney

Sounds like this will be a great TR! Joining in.. Thanks for sharing...

Thanks for joining!

Originally Posted by jenf22

Woo hoo! I am so happy there are now TWO of you guys doing trip reports from this cruise! We're doing the reverse (Seattle to Vancouver) in September and I am SO EXCITED I can't wait to read the rest and (hopefully) see Navigators! Thank you for doing this!

Welcome! I had to do a trip report because when I was preparing for my cruise, there were hardly any from last year. It drove me nuts! I was reading mexican riviera reports to get an idea. I do have my navigators, but I don't have a scanner anymore, it broke... so I'm thinking I might photograph them and put them up that way. We'll see how it turns out.

Originally Posted by Mamapapa

Sounds like fun - I'm in!!!!

Welcome!

Originally Posted by Señor DonDuck

You had me at food porn. Joining in!

I know, right? Some of it is less than perfect, sometimes I just got way too excited and dove right in before I got a picture...

Originally Posted by dismommy2two

Can't wait to read more!

Thanks for joining in!

Originally Posted by Linda67

Count me in

Hope you enjoy!

[happenin2you]

After our dramatic car incident and finding Canada Place, we made the short drive over to Stanley Park. This place is huge. Luckily, there are signs everywhere that tell you how to get to all the various attractions within the park. We found the Aquarium and parking, very far away. Everyone in Vancouver must have decided to visit the Aquarium that day since it was raining. If you drive there, you pay to park at these automated stations that spit out a reciept, but it also makes you enter your license plate number, so we weren't sure if we were supposed to put the receipt on the dashboard or not. There's not anything there that says you need to and we thought maybe the parking enforcement just punches in the plate number to check. A local overheard us talking and said definitely put it on the dash. Apparently people get burned on that all the time. Doesn't seem fair if it doesn't state it, but whatever. We were fine. Since I'm a forever student, I got the student rate of $16 instead of $21 for our admission, which was a bonus. Sometimes it pays to take forever to graduate. The beluga whale show was about to start when we walked in so we headed straight over there. Before the show started the whales were just swimming around.



The show is outdoors and it was still raining pretty good at this point so there were a lot of umbrellas around, which made it difficult to see what was going on at times.













At this point the rain really started to come down pretty hard and between trying to balance the umbrella, my purse, and the camera and just being tired of being rained on and not having a very good view of what was going on, we decided to move on. The whales were pretty cool, though. I'm sure the show is much better when it's dry and you can sit on the bleachers and see whats going on. There were three whales, two rescues, and one was the daughter of another, so she had always lived at the aquarium. The mother was named Aurora, which I thought appropriate for a Disney vacation, the other two had local indian tribal names, which I don't remember.

Next we visited the penguins, which were also outside.

They were all just staring off into the distance at one spot. It was almost as if they were posing!




By this time the whale show was over so we tried to get some better pictures, but they weren't super active.



We were able to see them better from inside.







The otter was next. He was the cutest thing, super energetic. He didn't stop the whole time we were watching him, which made it difficult to take a picture, but I tried.

[happenin2you]

After the otter we made our way back indoors and came across the largest frog exhibit I've ever seen.

This guy is stuck to the glass!




Bullfrogs!







Tiny red frogs






More tiny red frogs


Some Mexican lizard. I only remeber this because it was the first non-frog thing there.







After the frogs, we checked out some of the various fish tanks, but it was very busy and most of the tanks had kids there pressed against the glass, so although I could see the fish, I wasn't able to get any good pictures of them. The fish were typical to what I've seen in most aquariums anyway. The things I posted pictures of interested me most. At this point we decided to leave, but not before making my husband pose for a picture telling us where we were at!



Still raining and still packed with people!

Next: More Stanley Park and our first sighting of the Wonder!

[jenf22]

I'm also on the reverse cruise in September and loving your trip report so far! I can't wait for the rest!

[Linda67]

I've just put the Vancouver Aquarium on my 'to do' list when we visit next year, DH would love it (especially the frogs!!)

[DisSarahK]

I keep thinking we need to drive up and visit Vancouver...apparently we need to visit the aquarium when we go. I usually don't like aquariums, but this one looks like it has more than just tanks of fish.

[Leshaface]

I'm here! Great updates!

Omgosh, those donuts look GOOD! I love donuts. Too bad about that woman and the car door. I'm always so worried about other people messing up rentals, which is mainly why I always get insurance.

What a cool aquarium! I would LOVE to go to Canada someday.

[happenin2you]

After the aquarium, I remembered I had seen a sign for the totem poles in the park, so we got back in the car and decided to drive around until we spotted another sign telling us where to go. Like I said earlier, there are signs all over the place so we found the totem poles pretty easily. As we were driving around, I tried to take some pictures of things that we passed but visibility was low and we couldn't see much. I'm pretty sure this was the bridge that we would be sailing under the next day on our way to Alaska. For those of you on the reverse, bummer you'll probably be sleeping when you go under it.

And then.... there she is! The Wonder! Well, kinda. She's hidden behind a Celebrity and Holland America ship.


I was really into seeing the totem poles. When we parked, I got out and went right for them, leaving my husband behind to deal with parking... it just took him a quick second and he caught up to me.

Approaching the poles


Totem gate?














And each of us with our favorite totem poles

It is still raining at this point and I had an umbrella, but my husband didn't and we thought it was more important for the camera to be under the umbrella than me for my quick photo.

This plaque went with the pole I am standing with.


My husband showing us his British Colombia license plate and the Wonder peaking over his left shoulder.



By this time we were getting hungry, so I entered a search for Vera's Burger Shack and we were on our way.

We're here!








Enjoying my vanilla shake. I was gonna order the banana, but the cashier said it's not made with real bananas and she couldn't really say what it was made with. She kinda kept saying "it's kinda..." and then would rub her fingers together. Ok not for me then. Thanks for the heads up!


Our poutine. Apparently a Canadian specialty, specifically from Quebec. It's fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy. I wasn't a fan, but I don't like brown gravy. Chris thought it was ok. When we told my dad, he was raving about it like it's the best thing ever (my family is from Niagara Falls, NY, but I have tons of family in Ontario, too.) He said he gets them all the time in NY, but I don't remember ever seeing one before. I probably didn't remember because of the gravy.


I know this was a burger place, but I'm not a ground beef person either. Actually, the only was I really like beef is in the form of a filet mignon. Just not a burger girl. So I ordered the chicken burger, which was just a chicken breast, grilled with hot sauce (I'm from the Buffalo area, remember?). It was good, but how exciting can a chicken breast be?


I picked this place for my husband, who loves burgers. He was in heaven deciding between all the potential burger deliciousness. I think he went with the regular Vera burger with the works which includes: Ketchup, mustard, Dijon mustard, relish, mayo, Vera's Sauce, lettuce, raw onions, tomato, hot peppers, hot sauce, pickles, BBQ sauce, honey mustard.There was a ton of stuff on there.


After dinner, we decided to look into buying a bottle of liquor to have in our stateroom in case we wanted to make our own cocktails. We went to two liquor stores and quickly abandoned that idea. The first store I went in was a tiny corner liquor store that didn't have very much selection and I just about died when I saw they were selling Crown Royal for over $50 per bottle. I thought it had to be because we were still in downtown Vancouver area and people who live in the high rises on the island probably have higher income and the prices are probably jacked up because of that. So we drove back towards our little hotel in the more suburban area of Richmond and found a liquor store very close to our hotel. And my suspicions about higher liquor prices downtown were disproved. This place had much more selection. They had 750ml bottles of Smirnoff vodka, which sells in a Las Vegas grocery store for between 8.99-11.99 depending on the store, for over $35 per bottle! What! For that price, we decided to skip it. At this point we were really wishing we had bought something at the Duty Free in the airport, but oh well, no big deal. The funny part was when we went back to our hotel, we went to the bar across the street to have a drink and chat for a bit, and drink prices were average to a little bit less than what we pay at a bar here. Weird, right?

After that, we went back to the hotel to go to sleep. It was a little early, but we hadn't got to bed until after 2am the night before and woke up bright and early around 8am, so we were ready to sleep. And the earlier we went to sleep, the earlier we'd wake up to get to the Wonder!

Up next: Finally boarding the Wonder!

[happenin2you]

Originally Posted by jenf22

I'm also on the reverse cruise in September and loving your trip report so far! I can't wait for the rest!

Welcome! You'll have a great time. The scenery is amazing. Bring binoculars!

Originally Posted by Linda67

I've just put the Vancouver Aquarium on my 'to do' list when we visit next year, DH would love it (especially the frogs!!)

It was pretty cool. I'd imagine it would be even better without the rain.

Originally Posted by DisSarahK

I keep thinking we need to drive up and visit Vancouver...apparently we need to visit the aquarium when we go. I usually don't like aquariums, but this one looks like it has more than just tanks of fish.

It's the second one I've been to, the other was the one on the pier in San Francisco, which I wasn't very impressed with. This one was far better, and for the price, it couldn't be beat.

Originally Posted by Leshaface

I'm here! Great updates!

Omgosh, those donuts look GOOD! I love donuts. Too bad about that woman and the car door. I'm always so worried about other people messing up rentals, which is mainly why I always get insurance.

What a cool aquarium! I would LOVE to go to Canada someday.

Thanks for coming over! Tim Horton's has the best donuts and coffee. They also have paninis and lunch things that look great, but I can't ever bring myself to order anything other than a donut.

From my experiences, Canada is just like the US, except where we have signs in English and Spanish, they have them in English and French. It makes it feel so different to see another language, I think.

[Leshaface]

Mmm, his burger looks amazing! Not so sure about the fries though.

Holy moly that's a lot for booze! I'm so glad we brought some alcohol with us on our cruise. I hate paying jacked up prices, when I know I can make it for myself for less than half the price.

[disneydiva16]

Count me in!!! Your trip report sounds awesome so far. Love all the pictures. I cant wait to visit Alaska one day

[Momma2Jax]

Great report about the aquarium and totem poles! We are looking for things to do when we disembark in Sept!

Meanwhile...you have all these pictures of the rain, fog, and humidity, then a picture of your hair all nice looking. Um, what the heckl

Can't wait till the next one!

[trimix]

Originally Posted by happenin2you

You're gonna have a blast! I would have appreciated the input. We usually look up Guy Fieri's Diners, DriveIns, and Dives and go from there, but there wasn't anything for Vancouver. I have a cousin who used to live there, though, and she said Vera's Burgers is very popular and good. We tried them out, pictures to come

Your waist and cholesterol numbers will probably be glad that we didn't meet before your cruise. One place I have to recommend in downtown Vancouver is a dessert restaurant called Death by Chocolate. The last time I was there, I worried that I would be diagnosed with diabetes the next morning!
And on the drive to Seattle, in White Rock which is immediately before the border, there are several fish & chips restaurants overlooking a bay. Moby Dick's is my favorite, and you can easily make yourself sick trying two or three at once to notice the subtle differences in flavor.

[Linda67]

Great update, love the pictures

I hope it stops raining for you soon

[Chilly]

I remember that rain. Glad I didn't go get some alcohol then if it was pricey. It'll be interesting to read about the cruise I was on from someone elses perspective.