Day 1 & 2: Not Even Alaska

from the airCan anyone identify this mountain? Mt. Hood? Mt. St. Helens? It's right before we descended into Vancouver. Feel free to look up flight patterns and get back to me. Alex, this sounds like a job for you.

Vancouver
Vancouver seemed to be a kind of odd city, aesthetically speaking. Every building was all glass (but not in a pretty way) and I couldn't stop thinking about earthquakes. The drive through town from the airport to the pier was cool. We got to see Chinatown and the new train system they're building. It just intensified my desire for a tour of the Pacific Northwest (although Luke pointed out that Vancouver is technically in the Pacific Southwest)

We passed under this bridge.
It was pretty.We were going really fast because we only had a short amount of time to get out of the Strait (of Georgia?) before the tide went down. It was kind of exciting.


The second day was just at sea. It was good to have a day to get used to being on a boat (get my sea legs if you will) and explore all of the cool places onboard. Our rooms were surprisingly large and we had a balcony which was really great. There was a big theater and restaurants and bars and stores and all kinds of stuff. Whenever I started getting nauseous from thinking about the wasted food and the amount of money being spent, I just made myself think of the ship as a big city and dealing with it the way I would deal with a foreign city (probably Dubai). When it became a cultural experience it was a lot more fun. It was a pretty good strategy.

Oh and we saw TONS of dolphins from our balcony. They were really far away at first and it looked like big jumping fish and then they were coming closer to play with the wake we were making and then all of a sudden there were dozens and dozens of them. It was soooo cool! None of my pictures turned out very well because I was too busy freaking out. I didn't think we'd see dolphins (they were actually porpoises), especially not so soon. I kept running back into the room to update Luke, who was just getting out of the shower. "Luke, come look, something is jumping out there!"..."LUKE! I think it's big huge fish jumping, hurry up!"..."OH MY GOSH LUKE IT'S DOLPHINS WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR SHIRT HURRY UP GET YOUR CAMERA THERE ARE SO MANY WHERE IS MOM CALL THEIR ROOM GET OUT HERE WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"