heylo!

okay, sorry it's been a couple of days since i last posted - things have been pretty hectic! we've travelled to soooo many places - and i've totally gone camera happy. i have a feeling that the phase will pass soon though =p. i think that 1057 photos in 4 days is a tad bit much! don't you??? lol..! but okay, here's a breakdown of what what i've seen and where i've been in the past couple of days. =)

thursday
thursday was time for our road-trip to seattle! we were meant to get an early early start, but somehow, we ended up leaving at around 9am. i had absolutely no idea that the traffic at the us/canada border would be so bad!! check this out:


it's insannee right?? although it looks really bad - thank God for the nexus lane (a short-cut lane for those frequent travellers... heaps of ppl had nexus cards so the traffic ended up moving FAIRLY quickly. lol. but it still took us abt an hour to pass through. stupid thing was though, that since my aunt and uncle still travel on their singapore passports, and my mum on her aussie one - they didn't have visas, so we actually had to get down out of the car and go into the office to apply for a temporary visa. the queue for this was insanely long as well, so we spent about half an hour just waiting. and even more stupid was the fact that even though i ALREADY have a us visitors visa - they still made me pay the visa feee!!! grr. it was kinda stupid hey - but i wasn't about to make any noise to the homeland security guy... kinda scary. lol! but eventually... we did make it through and it was:



so after we passed the border, we were well on our way to hitting seattle. after about an hour and a half later it was time for lunch - so we stopped in a small town called bellingham for a leg stretch and lunch. =) there were quite a few funny sites around town - some of which i did take pictures of, but over all the people were friendly and warm and the food was pretty okay too i guess. =p ooh! and since i hit a few bookstores around town, i did find some pretty good buys, one hilarious book called "signspotting". wahahaha. i laughed for hours. haha. and yes, i did get a chance to us my us mulah. =))



okayy! so after our 2 hour stop-through in bellingham, we were on our way to seattle. the first thing on our agenda was to find a place to stay - after stopping at a couple of best westerns, we finally decided on an inn just on the outskirts of downtown - 7 blocks from all the action. we reached seattle in the peak of the afternoon - abt 1 or 2 pm i think (it's all a lil bit blurry now), so we did quite a bit of walking arnd downtown. i FINALLY went to my first nordstroms! and macy's. hahah. and yes, i bought something just to get the bags. hahahaha. such a me thing to do right??? lol =p but the long chain that i got is soooo nice! hahah - kinda bling though. annywayyyy. after walking arnd downtown for a couple of hours, i was determined to do two things. first, to find a souvenior shop (i've been collecting keychains from every place i visit), and then take a cruise around pugent sound. so yes, luckily we found a really good map which pointed out all the key tourist attractions - so our adventure was made a lot easier.

on our way to the harbour we just happened to pass a massive souvenior store, so i stopped to buy my keychain - and in doing so, look what i came across!



there was a whole corner just dedicated to grey's! mugs, cups, hats, magnets, key chains, posters, medical jerseys, t-shirts, jumpers, the list goes on and on and on and on! and dammit, i didn't have enough time to go look for seattle grace!! that was like - number one on my list of things to see in seattle. hahahah. =p but oh well..!

anyway, we found where the harbour was, and set out to walk there to check out if there were any cruises. once we reached there, we were so lucky! the argosy cruise company were having a promotion - and were offering a 1-hour cruise for only 10 bucks! sweeeet. hahah. normally each cruise is about 30 bucks for an adult, so we hell scored. =) so here's a bad pic of me with the seattle skyline in the background - look to the left, it's the space needle! (which is pretty ugly in real life if you ask me..) lol.



the chick who was doing the commentary was really good hey - i learnt a lot about seattle. i.e. did you know that their stadium for the seattle mariners (which is ONLY for the seattle mariners) has a fully retractable roof which cost 67 million alone? JUST for the roof!! sickkk hey. lol. she also did point out the starbucks headquarters and amazon's main warehouse base. lol. overall, it was well worth it - the skyline was beautiful!

so after the cruise, we were all getting pretty hungry, so we went in search of a restaurant. you know it's so weird, when you're NOT looking for a restaurant, there's always an overwhelming abundance of them! but when you ARE looking for one - there's none in sight! or at least, none that look the least bit apetizing. lol. so yes, it took us about an hour of walking around to find something that satisfied all of us - finally, it happened to be my pick (coz i wanted to eat steak and chips - NOT asain food. lol)... we stumbled upon this great find : the frontier room. i'm tellin ya, this is the best burger that i've had in years!! a smoked beef patty sandwiched with a white bread bun, smoked bacon, cheese, lettuce, pickles and onions (i asked them to drop the tomatoes) - served alongside chips. it was aweessommeee. hahah. it really did taste better than it looks okiee? and the size was gynormous! okay so here's a commemorative pic:



so after filling up at frontier, we went back to the inn to crash... =)) the room whilst a little dodgy, was still okieee and i slept really really well.

friday
friday was a pretty short day all in all - it just happened to be the celebration day of the 100th birthday of the ever famous seattle pike place public markets - so there were heaps of festivities and what not going on - it was just soooo packed with people!!



the whole thing was kinda cool though, because i did get a chance to go to the first starbucks store ever. for a lil bit of history: the was the first in the world and opened in 1971. the interiors have been kept the same and it's decorated with pictures of the olden day starbucks. they even still have buskers who stand outside and do their "thing" - just to make the whole experience authentic. there was a country town "band" that called themselves the "dog mafia". hahaha. they were pretty good hey! lol. however, apparently the coffee there really isn't anything special... lol. but that's okay since i'm not a very good coffee drinker. haha. just outside that starbucks though, there was a young magician guy - brian something or rather... he was really really good! lol so good that i got jipped into buying his dvd. lol. i haven't watched it yet though =p so we'll have to see if i really did get jipped jipped. lol.



okay, so after the markets, we decided to start our way back to vancouver. easier said than done though! we stumbled across another town on the way back though - called "burlington". they had these discount outlets of a whole range of brands! and get this! they even had a christian outlet! i'm so jealous - they had such a range of music books - i ended up buying 4 books.. hahah. i just couldn't resist!! i just can't get over how cheap and how many books that the stores here have... i wish that we had the same thing back home in perth. =( but oh well, at least i did find what i was after! =)) oooh, they also had a shoe discount store - and we all know how dangerous it is to put me in a shoe store.. lol. did i mention that i bought a pair of flip flops when we were in transit at changi airport? go charles and keith!! i just couldn't resist that either. hahah. but at this outlet store, i did find a pair of sneakers - so i bought my adidas shoes. hahah. i've actually had my eye on them for quite a few months, but they were selling for abt 110 in perth... and since my wallet really wasn't reaching that deep, i passed. lol. but yeah they were on sale - and the were the all white colour i wanted - so i bought them! hahah. =)) annywayy, after hitting burlington, we headed north again, and got ourselves safely back to vancouver. =)

saturday
so even though thursday and friday were jammed pack with travelling, my aunty still booked us a trip to vancouver island to visit the capital of BC - victoria. this was the most funniest/worst/nightmarish experience that i have ever had - EVER. lol. okay so imagine this. we had to wake up at 5am in order to get to our pickup point at 6:30am. so it was already a bad start to the day. thennnn, once we got there, there were about 4 or 5 different buses, so we had to find which one was ours - eventually we did. once we got on the bus and were ready to begin our tour - the tour guide lady (whose name was lillian) welcomed us by saying "ni men hao". as soon as those three dreadful words came out of her mouth - i knew things were about to get a whole lot worse. yup you guessed it - this was a tour for chinese people. okay, so i might LOOK chinese? but i sure don't speak it!! it was soooooo GAY! and get this, 15 minutes after she had launched into her explanation of stuff - she then asked IN MANDARIN, "is there anyone who doesn't understand mandarin?" so my mum quickly told me to put my hand up.. then! again IN MANDARIN she asked "what language do you speak?" my mum said english... so then she was like "oh okay, i try to speak engrish for you ah. i not veli good, sorry ah". *cringe*. so you can just imagine what the rest of my 14 hours were like. anyway, apart from the actual tour led stuff, victoria was really beautiful - we went to the butchart gardens too - sooooooooooo beautiful! i've never seen flowers like that b4 (although i must admit it's not really my kind of thing). but yeah, exteremly gorgeous. =)) we were stopped in "downtown" victoria (it's not really much of a downtown area), for about an hour or so - mum and i went camera crazy! hahaha. the scenery was just so pictureseque that we couldn't resist! hahaa. so here's one of me at the victorian legislative building!



well, the tour finished at 8pm - and my uncle picked us up, brought us home and we crashed. lol. so that's why today - we just had a really relaxed day. i didn't go to church though, but i slept in till about 1pm... after lunch we went to metropolis/metrotown - the biggest shopping center in BC and did a bit of walking around. oh i found a hair straightener/hair curler! hahaha. it might've been a waste of money coz i do already have one back home - but this one is awesome. lol. and i think i'll ebay it/sell it after i'm done here... but either way, it'll still work back in australia. hahahah.

if you've gotten til the end of this - congrats!! i think this is my longest post ever ever ever. mind you it's taken me about 3 hours to put it all together! hahaha. so okay, that's an update on what i've been up to! we're actually leaving for the rockies tm - we're going to jasper, banff, kamloops, kelowna, lake louise, icefields parkway and calgary. we're gonna try to do the trip in 5 nights and 6 days... hahah. i hope we get to do it all! i really really REALLY wanted to go all the way up to edmonton - but i don't think we'll have time... just so you know, there's a mall called "west edmonton mall" and it has over 800 shops!!! and an indoor swimming pool right in the middle of it all. hahahaha. it'd totally be my paradise hey!! but too bad since we can't go all the way up there. we fly off for toronto this time next week - so things are getting a little bit more rushed!

anyway, wish me luck for my roadtrip! i'll try and post some stuff along the way! i'm missing you all terribly back home - i'm getting kinda homesick coz things are so different over here. just for the record, i could never ever live here. australia is still better!! lol =p but this is good for the experience anyway. ;) hahah.

okieeee. i've gtg - packing time!

luv ya all lots & will post soon!

jaa.

- pheebs.