Oh Can-a-da!

Three couples flying standby on a Thursday morning. Hopping on the 7AM flight out of Sacramento, arriving in Seattle, renting a mini-van, driving 3+ hours, headed for the Canadian border. The beginning of quite an adventure!

It all started with Eric, Shawn and Dean. They go on an annual guys trip together to various cities such as New Orleans, Boston,Vegas and Reno. They have been friends for many many years. They decided it was time to bring the wives along and it took about a year to pull it all together. Originally we were supposed to go to Boston, celebrate our anniversary, see the fall foliage and visit some mutual friends who live there. Since we were flying standby it proved to be tricky with flights filling up fast. Instead of risking our comings and goings we decided to be spontaneous and switch it up to Canada!

Only Shawn and Heatherlee had been and not to Vancouver or Victoria, which was the plan. With only a few days to plan we started to get excited!

iphone photo of us circling SeaTac due to heavy cloud cover. 

Once we got our rental car we headed for the border! The guys were anxious to find a sports bar since the World Series was on with our home team the SF Giants. Well, mostly Dean. They dropped us off in downtown Vancouver to do a little shopping while they got us a hotel room and found a nearby place to watch the game. We had no reservations anywhere, so each day we were in a different city and flying by the seat of our pants!

The guys were so funny watching the game. They were betting on each pitch! They had Loonies and Toonies mixed in with American money. 

We joined them after shopping for a bit and had some appetizers and drinks. I really wanted to watch the game too actually :)

This is our bartender/friend. I can't remember her name but she was really sweet to tell us all the fun things to do and places to go in Vancouver. She's the one who taught us about Loonies and Toonies :) ($1 and $2 Canadian coins) Notice the game on in the background?

Silly boys!

Our friend at the sports bar recommended a great place for dinner. It's called Global. It was very hip and trendy and a little expensive. Sadly I don't have a picture of us but I did take a picture of the food!
It was so delicious! First they started us off with some yummy bread with brown course salt sprinkled on the butter. OMG...so good!

Eric ordered salmon with lobster stuffed mashed potatoes. They served it on a cutting board. Dean ordered a fancy burger.

Radora ordered lamb shank and I ordered the petite filet with mashed potatoes. My potatoes came in a mini crock pot and stayed hot my whole meal. Love it! I think that might have been the best steak I ever had! So tender and juicy! You can't tell from the picture but there were 3 different salts on the board for me to dip my steak into. Genius! Pure genius!

Hands down that was the best meal of the trip for me! We walked back to our hotel and had the plan of taking the ferry over to Victoria the next day. Car and all!