My parents and I decided to go to Canada today. It wasn’t too much of a stretch because we have been staying at a resort about five miles south of the US-Canadian border. When we were leaving at about noon, my mom said, “Ok, Shell,” to my sister. “We’ll be home in about two hours or so.” I knew this was a lie and told her she should just let things work the way they would. My dad and I had the same thought in mind. We were going to Surrey. I decided this was the place to go because I knew that there was a grocery store there and imagined it would be a quaint little town like The Cotswolds in England or something. My mom hoped to go to a beach town. We didn’t’ do any research before we left and this is why we had no clue where we were going and what it looked like. If I hadn’t read the facebook message from my friend Vitaliy about going to White Rock, I really have no clue how today would have turned out.
Crossing the border wasn’t so bad. We stopped to ask our first gentleman for directions. “How do we cross the border?” we asked. He was helpful but I’m sure in the back of his head he was saying what Pa Bunn was thinking: Amateurs! And that’s how our trip to Canada began.
The map on my Smartphone worked for a while. Then it stopped. We were almost to Surrey so we decided to wing it. My mom was driving on King George’s Highway. There was a sign that said the center of Surrey was coming up.
I was stoked. I wanted to grab coffee in a cute downtown coffee shop and perhaps an ice cream cone as well. That didn’t happen at all. We were driving around, looking for signs about where we were going when my mom said, “Uh, I think we’re almost to Vancouver.” We weren’t to Vancouver, but we were in other city, New Westminster. Huh. How did that happen? We girls in the front seat decided that we wanted to go to a gas station to find a map and use the bathroom. We pulled into a Chevron and then noticed a Safeway across the street. “Wait! Let’s go to Safeway instead,” we said so we drove to the other side of the road and went to Safeway. Did I mention that Surrey is not the small English sort of town I was imagining? It’s not small at all. In fact, it’s quite large and the parts of it we drove through, reminded me of a certain area of San Diego, California.
Our move to Safeway was what started my dad’s silence and general displeasure with our trip. We used the bathroom, looked at a map, and bought sodas to take with us. It was great.
The ladies had basically directed us to go back the way we came and go to White Rock, the place Ma Bunn had envisioned in the first place. When we arrived in White Rock, we parked uphill and started to walk downhill. We weren’t in the right area of town. My dad realized this because the signs had sort of said this, but he didn’t say anything and just walked ahead of us in a huff. He admitted later that he had been, “a bit grumpy earlier.” I would put it differently. He was being a bit of a brat for a bit of it. That’s ok though, because we love him. I knew that beer was the only fix when I offered to give him a hug and he said, “NO!”
When we finally made it to the boardwalk/beachy area, we decided to eat. The Boathouse was not a nice restaurant. In fact, it was pretty much the worst place I’ve ever eaten. At first, I thought that perhaps the girl that was our server was a bit flustered or new to the restaurant or something. But she was so incredibly horrible that I can honestly say, there is no way in hell I’m ever going to eat there again. She was so bad, in fact, that because of her terrible serving skills I would never choose to eat at any of the Boathouse locations in other parts of Canada. I’m not even kidding. I told my dad while we were eating, “There are some places where you put up with bad service because the food is good, but this food isn’t good enough to do that.” His response was, “It’s bad food!”
Things improved on the pier.
Pops wanted me to take pix with my camera but then he insulted the lens and the lenses on my sunglasses, etc. for not being the right kind I need. Fun. Then we got ice cream and coffee. All that was good and all, but my favorite part was seeing the cute border control officer on our way back to the US. Ah…
So Surrey rocks… I think. I’m not really sure. I think the adventure rocked, but I’m not so sure I could tell someone much about the places we went that would make them want to travel with us. Ah – it was good anyway!
Tata for now.
Rece
Peanut Butter Girl 