Canada, eh?

I've been all over Europe. All over the Caribbean. I've even been to Africa once. But I've never been to our lovely neighbor to the north. That is, I had never been... until yesterday! My friend Greg picked me up at 7:30 AM and we headed north to Vancouver. We got there two and half hours later and stayed until around 8:30 PM. We did a lot of walking around and a lot of just looking at the city. We went to lunch at the Granville Island Market- like the Pike Place Market here in Seattle, but not nearly as big. Then we took a tour of Canada's first mircobrewery- and we got free samples afterwards... I downed 7 of the free samples... yeah, it was good :) We did the Lonely Planet walking tour of Chinatown & Gastown then ate at one of their recommended restaurants, which was delicious! After a little tacky souvenir shopping downtown, we headed back to the states.

I really like Vancouver- it's very similar to Seattle in a lot of respects. I definitely want to go back again and do a lot of the other things that I couldn't do in just one day. My next big excursion out of the US, though, will be taking the ferry over to Victoria for a weekend. I have no clue when that will happen, but it will. Someday. Once I get better settled in here and Greg saves up some money (and I start making some money...) Here's some pics!

-Phill

p.s. The border patrol people are cold and barren. I think they need to hire some jolly older ladies to make our country seem more welcoming.