Welcome to the world

One last breakfast buffet by the pool before we had to say goodbye to the MS Zuiderdam.  It was a great week on the ship and I think that Nana and Papa really enjoy cruising.  You don’t have to do anything for yourself, and the meals are like eating in a 5 star restaurant every day.  But now it was back to reality.

I decided to leave the ship earlier so that I could go and get the car.  From the time I left the stateroom to the time I had cleared customs with my luggage was approximately one hour.  I didn’t think that was too bad.  It then took me another 1/2 hour to go to the Vancouver Airport using the SkyTrain.  The station was only about 1 block from Canada Place where the cruise ships leave from.  The SkyTrain worked out really well and it was very inexpensive ($2.50 for the ride) as opposed to a $14 cab ride.

I headed over to Hertz to pick up our car.  I was kind of worried since we had some problems with the type of vehicle we could get Papa and all of our luggage into.  This time they gave us a sweet ride … 2012 Ford Explorer ($64.68 CAD).  This car was roomy and fully loaded.  We were the first customers renting the car.  It took me about 1/2 hour from the airport back to Canada Place.  We got everybody loaded in along with our bags, and stopped by our hotel, the Holiday Inn & Suites North Vancouver ($134 CAD) to drop off our bags before heading north to Whistler for the day. 

The drive takes about two hours and all around you is beautiful scenery on both sides of a very windy road.  We saw a bunch of cars pulled over on the opposite side of the highway.  As we drove by, Karen turned around to see that they were pulled over because of a very large black bear in an open field.  We wanted to get photos of the the bear too so I turned the car around and headed back.  Once we got there, I noticed that a police cruiser pulled in behind me.  He came over to tell us that basically it’s not safe to pull over at that spot.  We turned the car around and continued our trip to Whistler. 

We got out of the car and the first thing I noticed was how fresh the air was there.  Whistler Village is basically made up of hotels, restaurants and shops on a pedestrain walk way with Blackcomb and Whistler Moutains surrounding it.  We were able to get Papa all around the village.  We stopped for lunch and lucky for us there was an Old Spaghetti Factory.  We were even luckier that we found some Beavertails for dessert.  After lunch, we stopped by one of the mountains and watched the motocross bicycle riders come barrelling down the hill.  we spent a couple of hours there wandering through the shops and just taking it all in.  The ride back into North Vancouver was uneventful except for the one black bear that I spotted.  We saw the MS Zuiderdam departing Vancouver with a ship full of lucky passengers heading north again to Alaska.

We dropped Nana and Papa at the hotel while Karen and I went to Langley.  While I was picking up the car in the morning, I got a phone call from my friend Darren.  He used to live in Las Vegas with his wife Allison but back in April, they moved back to Vancouver.  You see Allison was pregant with twins and they decided that they wanted to have the babies back home in Canada.  Anyways, Darren calls me to tell me that Allison’s water broke and that they were at the hospital.  How exciting … she was going to have the babies while we were in town.

Shayla Lynn was born at 1:08pm weighing 3lbs 6oz and her sister Sienna Marie was born at 1:09pm weighing 3lbs 8oz.  The babies are so cute.  Mom and Dad are very proud and happy.

We spent the entire evening/early morning at the hospital with Darren and Allison.  We picked up some Boston Pizza and they even had a birthday cake for me.  It was getting late so we said our goodbyes and made our way back to our hotel.  We need as much sleep as we can since it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.