Step away from the cupcakes and no one gets hurt!

Alternate Post Titles:

• STFU asshole!
• We have an hour to kill, what to do? Let’s hit the bar again!

Sunday morning dawned with the sad realization that we would soon have to return to our day to day lives in Seattle. We were heartened with the thought that we still had one more full day to enjoy in the beautiful city of Vancouver and we intended to make the best of it.

Sunday
We met the girls in the hotel lobby and headed out in search of brunch. We ended up at the nearby restaurant Milestones and enjoyed a delicious brunch. It seemed to be a popular place and soon all the tables inside and out were full. We sat on the outdoor patio and enjoyed the scenery of English Bay, the hotties wandering down Denman St and the gorgeous weather. Surprisingly the only beverages ordered at our table were coffee and juice, but worry not we had not ended our alcoholic binge drinking tour of Vancouver just yet.

After finishing breakfast we went back to the hotel, checked out and stored our bags in the luggage room. We caught a cab and headed down to Gastown to explore that neighborhood. Bryan and I had been to Gastown many times, but it was Trixie & T-bone’s first visit. In fact, the first time I ever ate at an Indian restaurant was in Gastown in 1989, I don’t remember if I liked it or not, but the place is still there so it must be good. We wandered through the Gastown district popping into shops and exploring the neighborhood. We luckily ended up at the steam clock just in time to enjoy it’s top of the hour antics. Steam shoots, whistles blow and a tune is played to let everyone in earshot know that the top of the hour has been reached.

We continued on to the end of the Gastown district and headed back towards where the Big Bus tour begins. Instead of taking a cab back to the hotel we decided to hop on the big bus again since our tickets were still valid and we could catch the one little part of the tour we had missed the day before. When we got to the stop there was a bus just waiting to be loaded and we lucked out to find that it was a double decker, one that we had hoped to get on the day before. We were the first ones on the bus so immediately headed to the top level and got the very first row. If you get motion sick or are scared of running into things this might not be the best place for you to sit. We discovered as we were motoring across town that it looks like you’re going to crash into things, run over bicycilists and mow over pedestrians in the crosswalks. I can’t count the number of times one of the four of us gasped or said “holy shit that was close”. Scraping through the trees that line the streets of Vancouver was also fun, sounded like the top of the bus was going to come off. We finally arrived at our final destination, wait for it, the Sylvia’s bar. You’re shocked I know.

We quickly settled in at the table next to our table. Some bastards had the nerve to sit at our table, can you believe it? With time to kill before heading off to a late lunch we managed to polish off two rounds of drinks with very little effort. Once we had some liquid energy on board we headed off in search of lunch. We ended up at a nearby bistro and Bryan, Trixie and T-bone all had a burger while I was adventerous and ordered the lamb burger. I was glad I did, it was delicious. Beers were tossed back and we once again sat outside to enjoy the eyecandy strolling down Denman street. Honestly the eyecandy was there for Bryan and I, not many hot lesbians wandered by sadly.

With lunch finished we had one stop to make on the way back to the hotel, can any of you guess where it was? If you guessed the Original Cupcake shop you win the big prize. We purchased a snack and also each couple picked up a six pack of treats to take home with us. We still had an hour or so to kill before we needed to leave for the train station so what else was there to do but head back to the Sylvia’s bar and knock back another round. Wishing that we had time for a few more rounds we decided that we actually needed to get a cab and head to the train station.

For the first time the entire weekend we had to wait for more than a few minutes on the cab, in fact we waited almost 20 minutes for a cab to arrive. Fortunately, Bryan had suggested we pad our time table and we had plenty of time for this annoyance. We got to the train station, stood in line to get our seat assignments, breezed through customs and boarded the train. Once underway we were annoyed to find that the lady and grandson behind us decided to watch a movie on their dvd player without the courtesy of headphones. I wanted to reach back and strangle to two of them, but that was a minor thing compared to her son, the kids father, who decided to have an extremely loud cell phone conversation with his attorney about his divorce from the kid’s (one in high school one in grade school) mother. He also chose that venue to discuss his debt and how he had no idea “what that bitch was spending because he had no access to her cards anymore”.  Other than those two things and having to fend off all the Customs agents, train passengers and Amtrak employees who wanted to steal our cupcakes the trip home was uneventful.

We got back to the house around 11pm to find two kitties who were very happy to see us.  All in all it was a great trip and definitely something I’d love to repeat soon. For those with interest you can see all the pictures I took during the trip in my Flickr stream.