{summer vacation, part II}

These pictures were taken on day one as well. This first one shows part of Kamloops, British Columbia. Hot, dried up kind of place. Still nice though.
All the brown trees have been destroyed by pine beetle bugs. There's been a real epidemic of it in British Columbia. Hectars and hectars of forest have been destroyed.
Day two started not that great in Langley, BC. We were having breakfast at our hotel when Sienna spilled ton of juice on herself and Jay. They had to change clothes and we blow dryed Jay's shoes to get them dry.
I was also still sick and Sienna was coughing a bit. We decided to go see a doctor before crossing the border. The doctor was great. Sienna didn't need any medication but he gave me four different kinds of asthma medications. He said no wonder I kept getting sick as my asthma/allergies were yucky. Once I started taking the asthma medications, my cold got better. I was fine the rest of the trip.
The border guards were great as usual when we had to go inside and get our "permission to enter USA" cards (us not Canadians that is).
The drive to Seattle, Washington went well and there's a part of the drive that is so lush and green. Hard to explain and we didn't stop to take pictures. Just so you know the scenary was great. I snapped this one picture atleast while driving. I love how the mist/fog just hangs on the hills.
Another thing I ABSOLUTELY LOVE about being at the coast is the nice, soft water. As soon as I showered in Langley, my skin and hair sighed from relief. No more harsh Alberta water that sucks any oil or moisture from skin/hair. My hair was silky soft and I didn't even have to lotion up as usual. Ahh! Me lovey. If I'm forced :) to live in Alberta, I have to buy a water softner. Have to! Poor Jay doesn't hear the end of it. :)
Then we got to Seattle, Washington.
I don't know what it is about trees on buildings but every time I see them (like in Milano, Italy), I just have to snap a picture. Even if I happen to be just driving through downtown Seattle. Seattle is a nice city as it's surrounded by water. I could live there.
Ajattelin muuten sua Stina jos satut tata lukemaan. Jos meilla olisi ollut aikaa, olisi ollut kiva tavata.
First we did some shopping before heading to our hotel. I think we would have skipped the shopping if we had known what was waiting for us. The hotel we had booked was gross. The non-smoking rooms stunk so bad and there was no pool as was promised (under repairs). There had been good reviews on the internet so there goes the idea that you can trust reviews on the net. The big problem turned out to be that Jay had booked that hotel through one of our credit cards as he used travel points. Turns out the hotel couldn't just cancel our stay and give us a refund. Long story short - we ended up having to talk to some idiot (sorry) in Manila, Phillippines for THREE HOURS (!!!!!) to try to get a refund. It was terrible to say the least. What a waste of time. Our credit card company had used hotels.com to book the rooms for us. Please learn from us and never, ever in a million years book anything through a third party. Always talk directly to the hotel. What a nightmare it was. Afterwards we did laugh about it but it sure wasn't fun when it was happening. All that time we could have been enjoying Seattle. We had planned to go to Tillicum Indian Village (you take a cruise to an island, there's smoked salmon and Indian dancing etc) but decided to just enjoy Seattle instead because of the shortened time there. Next time I guess.
It took us a long time to find a hotel. We saw a partly burned down one and laughed that we should stay there. :) We ended up going to an expensive hotel just to get the nightmare experience out of our mind. We ended the day going to Outback Steakhouse for supper (at 9.45pm! due to our mishap). I'm still craving for the pasta and chicken I had there. It was a nice ending to an yucky evening. People were so nice at that restaurant. We just wanted to hug and kiss them for treating us so good after the Manila dude experience. :)