Monday, January 25, 2010 10:26 AM PT – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This is easily the most gorgeous place I’ve ever seen in my life. Nothing can beat it.

The Sea To Sky highway contains the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever experienced. It makes you appreciate things in an entirely different way. I cannot believe what I am seeing.  The mountains are impossibly huge – it looks like some serious “Avatar” CG, but then you’re snapped back to reality and that this is all actually REAL. The pine trees roll forever, the water is impossibly so crisp and blue. Nestled at the end of this majesty is downtown Vancouver. I can’t figure out how to capture this in words, but it’s so unbelievably huge and majestic, I just want everyone I’ve ever cared about to magically be transported there, right by the point where we stopped the car and got out in the rain.

Whistler is a ski town with an incredible amount of snow, considering it’s relatively temperate in Vancouver. It took us two hours to get there, ten minutes to walk around (we weren’t skiing) and then went down the mountains and stopped at Tim Horton’s (the Dunkin’ Donuts of Canada) and McDonalds. McDonalds BBQ sauce in Canada is VERY different and still delicious. Also, I somehow got charged $119 for gas in Canada despite spending $31.02 Canadian ($29.11 USD). Called the bank, we’ll see how that pans out in a few days.

We attempted to go Granville Island (a market similar to Pike Place) but it was closed, went back to the sushi place, got my roll, then we went and got cupcakes and headed home. Pretty action packed day.

Friday, January 29, 2010 12:09 AM PT – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

The last two days in Vancouver were relatively low key – the first I spent the morning and Lonsdale Quay, a marketplace about three blocks from Kelly’s. Aside from the standard tourist fare of t-shirts and other assorted trinkets for two floors, the bottom floor is your full-fledged market with just about anything you could ever want. For me, this meant sushi. I tried a BC Roll (BBQ Smoked Salmon) and then just kind of piddled around the market. Also, I tried an overly icy green apple smoothie from another stand in the market and it was ok at best. Then, I found ANOTHER sushi place called “Little Toyko” and found another Negitoro roll. Probably my favorite sushi roll of the moment. I spent the rest of the afternoon home on the internet, and staring out the window.

Seabus

After that, Kelly came home, and I took my first ever Seabus ride. The Seabus is pretty cool. It’s like a high speed….water bus. It’s a ten minute ride on Burrard Inlet where you can see a variety of ships on the shore. Really pleasant ride and makes for nice pictures. Anyways, we headed downtown to go to Earl’s for dinner. It ended up being ho-hum. In the meantime, we did some shopping at the Hudson Bay Company and I picked up my official Team Canada shirt. It’s pretty rad.

Olympic Countdown clock

The next day, I woke up an headed down to Little Tokyo for my last few sushi rolls (or so I thought at the moment). Then I took the Seabus by myself downtown. I spent a good part of my day locating “Sharks and Hammers,” a store which had a really great t-shirt that one of the dudes from Japandroids was wearing on Fallon. Ultimately, I decided I could not spend 35 bucks on a shirt, with my trip funds already dwindling.

Either way, I found my way around with a map and was proud of the fact that I’d successfully navigated a city, considering I’m terrible with maps. I darted back in forth between sushi places and Waves coffee, each of us getting nanaimo bars and a London Fog. Kelly and I ran some errands and ordered a really bad pizza, then got some snack food at the local grocery store for tomorrow as we’re off to Portland.

Saturday, January 30, 2010 6:36 PM PST – Seattle, Washington (Concerning Portland, Oregon)

Portland seems like a cool place to hang out, but no one really seems to live there. It’s got an incredibly small-town feel for being a major city. Kelly and I got up at 3 in the morning to depart for Portland from Vancouver – it’s approximately a five hour drive. We made crossed the border at about five, (relatively hassle free by our border guard who only asked a few questions). The drive felt really long, based on the fact that I only slept about two hours previous to it.

The city is remarkably quiet. We stayed at Hotel de Luxe, a renovated old place converted in to a golden age of Hollywood Boutique hotel. It’s unique in the fact that it’s one of four Provenance hotels – Boutique places with a major focus on customer service. The bed was great, super comfortable – and probably the only reason I’ve slept decently on this trip.

After checking in, we went to Powell’s Bookstore, a massive store that takes up an entire city block. Rooms are color coded by genre of book, and since I had a particular title in mind, I beelined it upstairs to find John Sellars “Perfect From Now On,” which to my understanding is an indie rock memoir. Kelly and I were pretty hungry, so we tracked down Portland’s premier (at least to us) Jewish Deli, Kenny and Zuke’s. The Pastrami was pretty great (albeit a bit dry), and the “South West Hominy” soup was pretty decent as well. A nice meal.

The crowning moment of our day in portland came with Living Room Theaters, a movie theater that specializes in smaller independent movies as well as older classic films. Kelly has been imploring me to watch Hitchcock’s “North By Northwest” for some time now. As it so was, the theater was actually showing an HD projection of it! The theater itself had nice, large reclining chairs, and gourmet food that you could eat in the theater. We settle for some chicken skewers, pita and hummus, and Kelly got a cheese plate. Well worth it.

The ODB and I.

Of course, Portland would have not been anything unless I talked about our trip to Voodoo Doughnut. Voodoo Doughnut is a sort of hole-in-the-wall punk rock donut place. They make more traditional fair like “The Marshall Mathers” (Cake donut with mini m&m’s and white frosting) to the ODB (Oreo cookie crumbles, frosting, drizzled with peanut butter.) Some of the best donuts I’ve tasted. So, so good.

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View over 200 photos of the entire trip here, and check back for more entries from the trip!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the first time ever. Before, I’ve described my fascinations of border crossings and Canada as a country.

So, standard operating procedure dictates that these minor trip details must be documented for public consumption.

Thank you for that. Really.

My first adventure going into Canada was pretty low key. Granted, we were up in a pretty remote part of upstate New York, trying to enter Quebec. There were two customs booths – one for each country – and a border that really consisted of crossing a wooden gate. That’s about it.

The toll booth of dreams.

Clearly, I didn’t expect the type of traffic you’d see on I-90. These, as you can see,were like a series of really big toll booths. Really, the only thing missing was the ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, GOVERNOR signs I was accustomed to seeing entering Chicago for many years.

The border crossing was a lot less dramatic than I imagined, too. In fact, the Canadian patrol guard didn’t really ask to see our passports. Instead, he asked us a few questions about why were were going, then said “Okay, see you later.” We were a bit taken aback by the casualness, and then spent the next couple of hours in our descent to Toronto admiring the signs in kilometers, stopping at a Petro-Canada gas station and noticing a “Wal-Mart Supercentre”. Not used to the way people spell up in Canada, I suppose.

As for Toronto itself?

At night, it’s majestic. I was fascinated by the CN Tower. It’s North America’s tallest free standing structure. It pulsates a light all evening from it’s center, acting as a beacon to show city dwellers and travelers alike that “you’re welcome here.” At least, that’s how I felt. I wish I was able to take a picture of it at night, but I felt that my camera wouldn’t be able to capture it quite how I remembered it.

There are so many stories from the weekend I suppose I’ll save for another time. For now, pictures can tell some of them through our Flickr feed.

With that said, the re-entry to the United States is a story worth telling.

As we pull up to the booth, the U.S. Border Patrol Guard greets us with a few formalities, asks for our passports, then presents Kim with the following query.

“What part of America are you from? North, South or Central?”

Understandably caught off guard at 5 in the morning, she fumbles for an answer. Next to her, Emily wonders how this man divides up his map of America.

Struggling to answer, Kim thinks out loud: “Illinois. Midwest.” Through deduction, she settles with a with a confident “Central.”

I facepalm.

The guard laughs. He then checked our car trunk and allowed us to pass.

Ah, Border Patrol humor.

There’s a certain amount of envy I feel for those who’ve been to far off places all over the world. When they return and post their photos on Facebook or Flickr, it’s there that I get glimpses of what it’s like outside these borders. I’ve lived a very lucky life, had opportunities that a lot of others have not, but until last fall, I’d never left the continental United States.

For the most part, I never really had any desire to leave the United States as a kid. It wasn’t something we planned on doing as a family, and instead my parents opted to go overseas to see what they wanted, because of my and my brother’s indifference. Only in recent years have I had any desire to leave the states to see the world.

The first real opportunity to go anywhere came last September. I went to visit a friend of mine in a gorgeous area of upstate New York in a town called Potsdam where she went to school. Farms stretch for miles. It makes you wonder when you hear that America’s farms are disappearing. Not up there. It’s all unblemished.

My friend Kim (not my girlfriend Kim, but Kim Harrison, obviate contributor) explained to me that we were about an hour to the U.S.- Canadian border and about two hours away from Montreal, Quebec. After a little bit of goading, she agreed to drive us up there for the afternoon. Needless to say, I was pumped. It was the first time I’d leave the states.

Let me state that I have this weird obsession with border crossings. I’ve spent hours on Wikipedia reading this article. There’s something thrilling about crossing an imaginary line that divides one place to another that I find completely fascinating. As a nine-year-old visiting Four Corners in 1995, I was thrilled that I could be in FOUR STATES AT ONCE, and took my time hopping from one state to another before my parents ushered me off.

For border crossing enthusiasts as myself, this is porn.

The U.S. – Canadian border is the ultimate manifestation of my preoccupation with border crossings in North America, because it’s so close, and Mexico is very, very far away. It’s really either that one, or the fact that you have to enter Delaware for twenty minutes to get to New York City traveling up from Baltimore. That one rules too.

Many jokes are made about Canada’s apparently lack of definition as a foreign country. Most of the time you’ll hear about how Canadians say “Eh?” and “Aboot”, or how they drink milk out of bags. (Actually, I learned that one today.)

Perhaps some of these things are true, but in my experience, that really wasn’t the case. Montreal was very different from America.

As we pulled up to the Canadian border, I handed over my birth certificate and Driver’s License (I didn’t have my passport yet) and was amazed how the guard just looked at it, told us to enjoy ourselves, and let us in. As we drove into Quebec, it hit me that for the first time in my life, I wasn’t in my country anymore. It’s weird. I was no longer in the place of my birth. I was just a guest. As miles and English turned to kilometers and French, I felt for the first time I wasn’t home. As a kid, it’s drilled in your head that the United States is the greatest country in the world (it is), but you’re never told that there’s other places in the world that are fantastic too. Obviously, It was a bit of a culture shock.

I immediately took out my camera and took a video. Excuse my fat head, gibberish about the Expos and the 1976 Olympics.

Quebec is striking because it’s just nothing for miles and miles and it’s beautiful and totally undisturbed. Kim and I stopped at a vegetable and fruit stand where I scribbled this note in my journal.

September 20, 2008, 8:53 AM

I’m in a town outside of Montreal buying plums. It was cute. Kim spoke French to the lady. They had a port-o-potty. Congratulations Canada, Brendan Hilliard just soiled your land.

Darling, right? Those plums made me gag. No bueno. Or should I say “Pas Bon”?”

As you’re driving, it’s as almost the city just kind of pops out of nowhere. I tried to retain as much as I went along. There was a familiar red octagonal sign saying “Arrêt” instead of “Stop”, gas stations that said “Petro-Canada” and a humorously titled shop called “HIGH TIMES”.

The city itself is fantastic. From what I saw, it’s a mixture of modern and classic architecture, winding streets, shops with crazy nicknacks and funny names – a store devoted to selling condoms and another pot themed store: Weedstock. There were PLENTY of record stores. We counted five on one block.

We ate at this little restaurant called “FRITE ALORS!” with a server that pretty much spoke nothing but French. I was terrified to order lunch, and even more concerned how to pay for it, being that I didn’t have any Canadian currency. I managed to order a ham sandwich with a slice of tomato which wasn’t at all appetizing. My stomach initially turned with Kim’s order of the Quebecois specialty poutine, and despite my fear of cheese curds, I tried it. It was quite good. I’ll go for my own order next time. Oh, thankfully were able to pay with our debit cards. Crisis averted.

No piece of art was ever truer.

I’ll spare you the minute details of the trip. That’s what the photo gallery is for. We only spent a half day there due to a show to attend in Potsdam that evening, but it was well worth it. It was just enough time to soak up the atmosphere of Montreal.

Montreal, or the country of Canada for that matter may not be the most exotic place in the world, but after 22 years going nowhere outside the border, it very much was for me. I feel very grateful that I got to go, and it was an experience that I look back on fondly.

I’ll remember it as something else, too.

The day my perspective really changed for the first time.

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You can view the photo gallery of my day trip to Montreal here, if you didn’t get that subtle little link above. Ha!