Sailing under the Lions Gate Bridge is a sure sign you're entering or leaving beautiful Vancouver Harbour.
Here we were, following at a respectful distance a much larger cruise ship bound for the same destination.
We arrived around 6 AM Friday morning and disembarked the Seabourn Quest, docked at Canada Place, about 9:15 AM.
We followed instructions and lined up obediently to await our Travel With Alan charter bus. Alan Schiller himself was there to greet us and to escort us on two tours during our two-night stay.
Our first tour, as we waited for our rooms at the Sutton Place Hotel to be ready, included Stanley Park, Chinatown, lunch at the Old Spaghetti Factory in Gastown, and a visit to Queen Elizabeth Park. We two had seen it all before, but Vancouver is indisputably one of the most beautiful cities in the world and we never get tired of visiting there.
Our contracted guide also unflinchingly pointed out the grim reality of East Vancouver’s mean streets, where drug and alcohol abuse have been rampant for decades.
We've eaten at the Old Spaghetti Factory many times over the decades, and were only sad that the best item on the menu, Pasta topped with Mizithra Cheese, wasn't one of the options available to our group. We also suffered from terribly crowded seating, but struggled through it.
We'd never stayed at The Sutton Place Hotel on Burrard Street, but had heard of it and were quite impressed with it.
We were on our own for dinner and had made reservations at JOEY Burrard just across the street. That proved to be filled with young Vancouverites boisterously celebrating Friday night. Yes, it was a little noisy for us, what with being 40-50 years older than the average customer, but the food and service were excellent.
Saturday we were on our own for most of the day. The weather was decent, neither too hot nor too cool, and we decided to walk down to the spot at the foot of Hornby Street where we could take a cute little Aquabus ferry across to the Granville Island Public Market. We simply walked out of the hotel, turned left, and walked briskly for 20 minutes or so, before finding ourselves back at Canada Place and the Cruise Ship Port. Yes, we'd walked exactly in the opposite direction to the correct one. We turned around and eventually found ourselves at the Hornby Street Aquabus dock.
The market, once one of our favorite stops in Vancouver, disappointed us. Of course, the Queen Elizabeth Market in Melbourne disappointed us too as we returned there in late May many years after our first visit. Could it be possible that we've visited too many markets in too many places to be impressed? Are we that jaded? Could be.
Prices were high, there were hordes of tourists (how dare they!), and we didn't stay all that long - We walked back to our hotel from the Aquabus (we managed 4 1/2 miles of walking Saturday) and decided to dine at the Italian Kitchen, across the street and next door to JOEY. It proved to be an outstanding lunch that we judged to be the best meal we'd experienced since leaving home 10 days or so earlier.
Saturday night was our final tour group activity, a Vancouver Harbour cruise with a buffet featuring barbecued salmon.
We were last aboard these cruises between two and three decades ago (perhaps on the same boat) while escorting our high school's graduating classes on a couple of these. It was fun this time just to relax and enjoy the view, including two more passes under the Lions Gate, without worrying about what mischief our teenage charges might be up to.
Sunday morning we were on the bus and ready to leave when we had a disagreement with Alan. He doesn't appear to be that much younger than we are and seems easily stressed, perhaps after years of marketing and escorting tours. He had told us the previous day that insurance requirements prevented him from dropping us off at a rest stop on I-5 just south of the exit to Birch Bay, but that he could let us off at the Bellingham McDonald's during a scheduled rest stop.
To save our neighbors a drive into Bellingham, we wanted to see if we could walk across the border when we arrived at the Pacific Highway border crossing that commercial vehicles are required to use. He dismissed us with a flat "No" and at that point we decided to leave the tour and find our own way home (which wouldn't be that big a deal).
Alan relented. We explained to him that all we wanted to do was to ask officials at the border if we could walk across and that we wouldn’t hold the group up at all. When we arrived at the border and lined up again, we were soon in front of a very friendly Immigration officer.
We asked her if it was possible to walk across the border. She replied that nobody had ever asked her that question but we had every right as U.S. citizens to enter the U.S. She checked with her supervisor, and then told us that, once everyone on our bus had been processed, she would personally escort us since other officials might otherwise challenge us as we walked across.
That she did, we said goodbye to Alan, walked across with our friendly uniformed escort to the bus exit, waved at our bus as it drove out, and soon found ourselves on 12th Street in Blaine. Our kind neighbors, Bob and Carmen, set their GPS unit and picked us up about 15 minutes later.
A few minutes later we were safely back home checking our mail and our garden.
Best of all, we proved to our own satisfaction that it's permissible to enter the U.S. on foot at the Pacific Highway (truck) crossing. We'll definitely be ready the next time someone asks that question.
