2012 Vacation Part III - Vancouver

When I last left off, I was in Seattle. I woke up on Friday morning without the aid of an alarm as I was SO excited to start the next leg of the trip (ok, and I was still on CST).  This post is going to be a tad bit long, but bear with me!

After leaving my hotel, I grabbed some Starbucks and headed over to the train station.  Shortly after arriving, I ran into these two!!!

It was my first time meeting Kelly and Eric, but after reading Kelly's blog for YEARS it didn't feel like we were meeting for the first time; it was like seeing an old friend.  You've got to love their matching sweatshirts, right?  :)

I am so glad we did this leg of the trip together.  Luckily we got seated together on the train ride.  We spent the 4+ hours talking pretty much non-stop.  There were absolutely no awkward moments.  I bet the guy who sat with us never would have guessed that we hadn't met in person before that day.

Before we knew it, we had arrived in Vancouver.  We quickly made it through customs (after getting grilled!), and went to our respective hotels.  Amber wasn't arriving until later in the day, so I dropped my stuff off at the hotel and hit the streets of Vancouver.

I started off in the Canada Place area.  I asked someone to take my picture and totally thought of Kyria when I saw the result as we have talked about how strangers usually take crappy pictures... 

I mean, it's not awful, but, well, it's not great.  But I am sure I've taken crappy pictures of others, too.

On my tourist map, I saw that you could rent bikes nearby - I thought that would be the perfect way to get some exercise and cover a decent amount of ground! 

On my bike, with the Vancouver skyline in the background.  The tourist who took this picture did a great job!

Stanley Park is a huge area with lots of biking and walking paths.  I stumbled upon this pond and if I had more time, I would have stopped and sat on a bench and read.  It was such a beautiful, quiet little spot.

After 2 hours of biking, I made my way back to the Canada Place area and met up with Kelly and Eric for some drinks.  After a couple of cocktails, I headed back to meet Amber, and we grabbed dinner and headed to bed early.

On Saturday morning, Amber and I were up bright and early!  She knew I would be training for a marathon, so we had been planning to do a long run together for months.  Our other friend, Anais, and her boyfriend had arrived the night before so they joined us!  I have also read Anais's blog and exchanged many emails with her so it was awesome meeting her and her boyfriend in person!  She is incredibly sweet and is another person that I clicked with right away - AND she is French Canadian so she has a slight accent!  I am hoping to meet up with these girls to run a race in the future!

Amber planned an awesome run along the seawall.  I think we were on the Burrard Bridge at this point of the run.  I had so much fun running with Amber, Anais, and Anais's boyfriend Olle!

After 11.25 miles of running, we had worked up quite an appetite - so we headed to a group brunch at this cute Greek place.  It was like accent-palooza.  For accents we had: Anais's French Canadian accent, her boyfriend Olle's Swedish accent, Eric's Boston accent, and Amber's mom's Canadian accent (which is different from Amber's accent). And the wait staff had Greek accents.  I just love accents so I was in heaven.

The food was great, but the conversations were even better!

After hours of chatting, we went our separate ways, knowing the next time we'd all be together was at Amber's wedding!!!

I have more Vancouver photos/stories to share, but this post is getting too long so I'll close here for now!

Have you ever explored a city on bike?  I did a bike tour of Paris and it's one of the first things I recommend to others who are visiting Paris.  If you visit Vancouver, I highly recommend renting a bike and biking along the seawall.  There is a great bike path and the views are amazing.