A day in Vancouver

A day in Vancouver.

It's been 6 years since I last saw my cousin TJ. The last time was at a mall back in Manila when he accompanied me to pick up my plane ticket on a trip that will eventually change my life. Six years later, and after countless emails, phonecalls and text messages, we finally set up a time and date to meet. Not in the Philippines nor in the states, but in Vancouver Canada.

It's mothers day weekend, and while I wished that my mom could have joined us in the trip, I was not able to get her a visa for that one day trip. So, me and AJ took that one hour drive from Bellingham Washington to Vancouver Canada. I almost had a problem with immigration when the officer asked for the letter of permission from my husband, which I forgot to bring. {note for future travels: always have a letter of permission from your husband if you're planning to bring your kid outside the border}. But luckily, a nice smile, a little charm & a promise not to forget it next time around, finally did the trick. :)

After a couple of wrong turns.. wrong exits, we finally made it to downtown Vancouver. Thank God for GPS..[or to the person who invented GPS]...and thanks to Matt of Enterprise rent-a-car for suggesting the GPS, I don't know where we could have ended up without it.

TJ picked us up at the Pan Pacific hotel, and managed to get us visitors passes so we can actually enter the ship. That was a good private tour!!! Zaandam is a very nice ship, pretty big and pretty expensive. They were in Canada for a day to pick up passengers for a 7-day Alaskan cruise. How I wish we could have joined the cruise.... but hopefully next year. TJ will be joining another Holland America ship by June, the newly built Eurodam... so that's something to look forward to.

After the tour, we headed back to downtown Vancouver for lunch, see the sights and catch up. How time flies when you're having a lot of fun. Next thing I know, TJ has to go back to the ship as they were sailing off at 5pm, and me & AJ has to drive back to the states.

Oh well, until we meet again cuz'.... and thanks for the dam ship sweater.