Day One - Vancouver

We got up relatively early, had a tasty breakfast at Noah's Bagels, then started driving north. Border crossing was uncrowded and easy... they asked us if we had mace or pepper spray. Nope. The conditions of the border area were pretty horrible because a lot of construction is going on to prepare for the Olympics, and parts of the road looked more like a bed of rocks than a road.

First stop was obligatory dim sum in Richmond, the "real" Chinatown in the Vancouver area. (The one in downtown is a poor substitute) Alice was surprised by all the Asian people. My strategy for dim sum is to drive around until I see something that says "seafood restaurant." There's one particular place I've ended up at several times, and I was guided back to it again this time. Only one problem... usually when I'm there, it's a weekend, and apparently, they do karaoke on weekdays! We walked in to see a cover charge, the entire place packed, and a guy singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in a heavy Asian accent. We immediately left and went to another seafood restaurant and had nice, quiet dim sum.

Next, we went to Aberdeen Centre, an Asian mall! We were immediately drawn to this tea place, where a rather aggressive saleswoman pressured us into trying and buying green tea. Alice was impressed with the prices at the clothing stores -- one place even had a sale bin with items for $1! The fountains in the center are also cool to watch, but the best part about the mall is definitely, Daiso, the two-story $2 store, full of way too much random crap that you just HAVE to have. Alice was cursing me the whole way for bringing her in there because she couldn't resist buying stuff.

Having spent enough time in Richmond, we drove into the city, following some really horrible directions from Yahoo. I managed to navigate onto Granville Island and find free parking that I could actually maneuver my car into. We walked around the Granville Market for awhile, oohing and ahhing at all the great-looking food, exotic fruits, and craft booths. Outside, there as a nice view, and Alice made friends with a goose.

We walked around and looked at weird statues and cool stores as well. There's an entire mini-mall dedicated to children, which is kind of scary. They even have a short door especially for the kids.

Finally, we made it into downtown Vancouver. Parked randomly near Robson Street, and then we headed to Caffe Artigiano for Alice to get some fancy coffee. She was extremely impressed by the barista's foam design on her cappucino. Then, all wired up, we walked into every single shoe store on Robson because, OMG, they were all having sales! I swear, every store on that street has some sort of huge sign up to advertise sales. We also walked into Guess, where we immediately heard a female voice yell out, "Goddamn!" and we looked around to see who it was. Apparently it was part of some weird DJ mix that consisted of a woman yelling "Goddamn!" and "Get me a drink!" and other things like that, over and over, until finally at the end, there was a gunshot. Lovely.

Eventually, we got hungry and went to to a sushi place on Robson for katsudon for Alice and nice, large chunks of fish for me. I managed to take a picture of my plate after eating half of it. It was getting pretty late after that, so we headed back. Road conditions at customs were once again terrible. It was dark and there were lots of fences, and it looked like the road just ended. The line was short, so we expected lots of questions, but we got through pretty quickly. All they wanted to know was whether or not we were importing drugs. Excellent.