Vacation Post-Mortem
For the first time since - I think - my wedding in September 2022, I took a week off work for a vacation. My wife was going to be in Vancouver and Langley, BC for work, and wanted me to tag along; I was hesitant because of the cost, but we managed to figure out using points to get a cheap ticket price so I joined. And I'm glad I did.
I had a lot of enjoyable experiences so I thought I would share some bullet point highlights, then write about a few things in a bit longer length. It turns out I wrote a bit about it in my most recent post so I may repeat myself a bit...
Highlights of the trip
- Mountains. Lots of Mountains.
- I turned 40! Link
- Visited a really cool toy store (more on that in a bit)
- Finished reading Outsider - outstanding non-fiction book, highly recommend it.
- Got to take my wife on some sight-seeing adventures in Vancouver this time
- Made a seagull friend in Vancouver (more on that in a bit)
- Visited some used book stores, bought a few books
Langley, BC
After touching down at YVR, we took a trip over to Langley, BC; it was described to me as a sleepy suburb by a co-worker who lives there, but I had a different impression. I suppose that this is the case for most places where one lives - to a resident, it's plain, but to a visitor, it's something new and exciting.
Granted, there's nothing inherently special about the city; it really is your standard suburb: there are several residential areas, the main shopping area is dominated by box stores, and there are a lot of chain restaurants. The main road (200 Street, if you're interested) is very long and it takes about 15 minutes to get anywhere in the city. But there are other things unique to the city.
Like mountains. Our hotel was just off the main highway, and we had to travel south to get to an shopping areas. Whenever we travelled north back to the hotel, we could see beautiful mountain ranges. One of these ranges was apparently Golden Ears. I find it so amazing to see these huge peaks dominating the skyline (instead of skyscrapers).
I walked along a short trail (about half an hour each way) and found a stunning mountain view along the shores of the Fraser River. There's a picture on my previous vacation post.
The toy store. This was a cool place. It's called Toy Traders; from what I can tell (I did zero research) it's a place where you can buy & sell toys. There's just about everything there, featuring many toys I remember from the 80s and 90s. Many of them I still own! So it was cool to get an idea of the value of some of the toys in my basement and in my parents' basement.
I was going to share a picture of some of the displays, but honestly their website does it better:
https://toytraders.ca/displays/
My favourites were the two Star Wars displays: one depicting the Battle of Hoth from Empire Strikes Back, and then a slightly smaller one depicting Endor from Return of the Jedi. I didn't buy any toys (this was on our last day in Langley, and we wouldn't have had any space to bring any toys back on the plane) but I had a fun time walking around memory lane.
Vancouver
This was my third trip to Vancouver, and the second in just under two years. My last trip was December 2022, and was just as short as this one. That trip was the first time I rode the Seabus to North Vancouver, and when I discovered the amazing book store, MacLeod's Books.
We visited the store again, this time my wife's first time. We found a couple of books there; we also checked out North Vancouver, albeit briefly (we were pressed for time at the last minute, so we took an $8 ride for some Starbucks at the Lonsdale Quay).
An outside view of the Vancouver Public Library
One of the more fun aspects of the trip was the unexpected: we made a seagull friend in our hotel room. He (or she) visited the first morning and stood on the ledge for a little while. I was captivated by it, mostly because he left after we didn't leave any food for him, and then returned a while later - we could confirm it was the same bird because there was a slight orange colouration on his beak and plumage looked similar.
He came back the next morning, and pretty much stayed on our window ledge the entire morning while we were there, packing up. At one point we took a nap, and we were awoken when the seagull suddenly squawked through the open window. He had not done this the entire time he blessed our window ledge, so it was a surprise - one that woke us up pretty quickly. He'd squawk a couple more times but we were already awake.
Our seagull friend standing on the window ledge
The flight home
This was the worst part. Our flight wasn't until 10:30 at night - Pacific time. This was unavoidable because of our attempts to secure a low flight cost. And, unfortunately, this flight would take us to a connecting airport (Pearson, in Toronto) before our final flight home. This plane was uncomfortable. I can't remember which type of plane it was, other than knowing it had three seats across in each row.
Our flight to Vancouver was the same, but the seats were at least more comfortable. This plane was unbearably hot the entire time and I didn't get much sleep. At least we made our connection without problem - we didn't wait very long at Pearson and our flight wasn't delayed in the slightest. Another bright side: I slept the entire flight on that second leg.
Overall it was a great trip. I might have been disillusioned by air travel on the way home, but I had a good time which outweighed any bad things. We had to rent a car in Langley, which was a bit disappointing, but there's no way I could have walked everywhere like I normally do on our downtown stays (we didn't rent a car in Vancouver, for instance).
I hope to be able to take at least another week-long vacation, though the destination is still up in the air (it's not likely to involve air travel, though). We'll see what the rest of my 40th year has in store!
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