I heard that Vancouver is a beautiful city long ago. It’s actually not very far away, just 7-8 hours driving. But we need visa to enter Canada as Chinese citizens. The first time I planned a visit was in the summer of 2001. But when I tried to get a traveling signature, I couldn’t find my I-20 and then realized that I mailed it back to China for Yinan’s visa. So I had to cancel that trip. Now four years later, we finally decided to implement the visit, with Tian and Guohua.

After some preparation and research, we took off on August 18th, Thursday in the afternoon for Seattle. The traffic in Portland was quite heavy. It took us over 5 hours to get Seattle. Fortunately no one was starved to death when we arrived at around 8:30. We had a dinner together with the Seattle gang at Old Sechuan in Redmond near Microsoft. I haven’t dined there for a long time and their dishes are still so delicious. I guess I was devouring since I was so hungry.

We got up early the next morning for the visa. The Canadian consulate is very close to where Zhihong works so we had no big problem finding the place with Zhihong on board. Things went quite smoothly. The visa officer just asked several regular questions. I guess I had been sloppy for too long. When she asked me if we have any friends in Canada to visit, I replied “not really”. She seemed a little unhappy and asked “what do you mean not really”. I had to rephrase and said “sorry, I mean, not at all”. She has some French accent but generally I had no problem understanding her. Anyway, we had to wait for a couple of hours before getting the visa. We decided to walk to the Pike Place Market which isn’t too far. Well, Seattle isn’t that big anyway. It was nice to walk in the morning fresh air on the waterfront. Pike Place Market is quite busy even on a weekday. I had been to the market for so many times so I showed the two kids the original Starbucks shop and Athenian Bar where Tom Hanks and the crew resorted when shooting Sleepless in Seattle. I always liked that bar and its unspeakable romantic atmosphere.

We got the visa a little before noon. We had a lunch at Seven Star Pepper near downtown. The lunch wasn’t that good but we were lazy to drive too far. We then hit the road heading Canadian border. The traffic on I-5 between Seattle and Everett was quite heavy. It became a little better after Bellingham which is already very close to the border. There was a hell of traffic at the border too. We waited for about an hour until we finally stepped on Canadian soil. As we nearing Vancouver, we were stuck in the traffic again. Having lived in a small town for a long time, we are not used to heavy traffic. Since we were not moving too fast anyway, we took off Highway 99 and headed for Steveston, a historic fisherman’s wharf just south to Vancouver. When we arrived, there were a bunch of people sitting by the dock fishing. But I didn’t see them catching anything. Well, I guess the spirit of fishing is sitting there having nothing to do instead of catching fish. The scene in the dusk was beautiful and peaceful. Washington State’s Mountain Baker was in sight to the east with the rosy ray casting on it from the setting sun above the Pacific Ocean.

There is a famous historical fish & chip place at the wharf. The chips were terrible although the fish was good. But hey, I got several very good shots for Tian by the wall.

We headed back to Highway 99 and went to Richmond for dinner. Richmond looks like a new and clean city. There are Chinese restaurants everywhere. The restaurant we went was not bad. Better than those in Seattle, in my opinion. Vancouver has the fame of having the best Chinese food in North America, which I would later found true. But it was not cheap at all. And we have to pay 15% tax!

We hit the road for Vancouver after the dinner. The evening breeze blows into the car through the open window, brining salty air into my hair. The smell of the sea intoxicated me. It seems that no one was obeying the speed limit. I was already doing 60 miles per hour where the speed limit was 60 km per hour but I still was having problem catching up everybody. People were probably stuck in the traffic jam for too long :). Richmond is very close to Vancouver. After about 5 minutes, we were on the bridge connecting Richmond and Vancouver. The first half of the bridge was a slight uphill. After climbing all the way up, suddenly the night scene of the whole city is presented in front of us! It was all dark and the lights were up. The scene was just fantastic.