Tim's Travel Blog

Day 2. (AM) In Vancouver

Day 2.  We woke up early today.  Still on Texas time I guess.  I stopped at the front desk at 6:50 and they said I couldn't get on the shuttle list until the driver arrived at 7:00, so I went back to the room.  When I got to the desk again about 7:10, the driver's list was filling up fast.  He didn't want to take us until the afternoon (about 2:00) but I finally managed to talk him into 11:30.  While you don't want to get to the pier too early, you don't want to miss any onboard time either.
   Next door to the Best Western is a nice little restaurant called "The White Spot."   Good menu and good prices.  While I was there, I asked the waitress if she could give me some change for a twenty (I knew I'd have to have some smaller bills for tips), so I got my first wad of Canadian money and some one and two dollar coins.  The waitress said she'd give me two 2 dollar coins and "a loony."  The one-dollar coin has a loon on the back.  I guess that's where the loony reference comes from.  She also said "eh" at the end of one sentence, so I felt like I was in Canada.
   I still needed to find a power cord for my CPAP still, so I asked the girl at the front desk if there was a Radio Shack near by.  She referred me to a place called "The Future Store."  The way she told me, I thought the place was just a couple of blocks away, but it was a lot further than that.  We passed by quite a few "adult" stores and pawnshops, and got to the Future Store about 9:30.  Of course, it didn't open until 10:00. 
   We went across the street to Sears, but they didn't have the cord but told us to go to another store (just across the street) called London Drugs.  We couldn't find it and stopped to get Malissa some hair gel then went back to The Future Store.  It still wasn't opened, so we waited there for a little while.  When they opened the doors, I immediately asked an employee about the cord I needed.  She said they didn't carry power cords and recommended we go to London Drugs.  She gave us better directions (actually, it was a block away, not across the street.  I'm starting to wonder if the people in Vancouver understand directions at all). 
   I was starting to think the people in the other stores really didn't understand what I wanted, so when we got to London Drugs I started looking in the appliance section for something that had the kind of cord I needed.  I finally found something that had the exact cord and carried it over to an employee to show him.  He managed to find the right power cord and we were finally ready to go on our cruise.  When we told him we were going on an Alaskan cruise, the salesman at the London Drugs said that while we were there we should get some King Salmon from Copper Mountain (an orange color) and Sockeye Salmon (a deep red color).  He said we should also get some smoked salmon to take home as gifts.  He was adamant about these things and wrote them down so I wouldn't forget.  It was probably good stuff, but getting food through customs can be such a pain that we didn't get any.

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