Visit to Vancouver

On our way to Barbados we had a short wait at the Toronto airport (before the second leg of our trip to Barbados), and I thought I should write a note about our short stay in Vancouver.

We left Puerto Vallarta as planned and we looked forward to having a fun-filled, problem-free, one week pause in Vancouver before heading into the warm again. As it turned out we had several issues to deal with that took a lot of extra time and caused some concern for us. We have never driven so many miles all at once, and made so many phone calls, just to get a few things done... I have to say we're exhausted and are glad to be leaving the big city life behind us again.

The saving grace to the entire stay in Vancouver was being able to crash at my daughter's house. It's one of the best all-inclusive places to stay in the lower mainland, beautiful and comfortable surroundings to relax in, and, on top of many other things, my daughter is an awesome cook.... I gained 15 pounds in one week!

We arrived in Vancouver at midnight and grabbed a cab to a nearby hotel to have a quick sleep before renting a car the week.... Checked out of the hotel and arrived at the rental agency mid morning. We discovered that Cyndi's Visa card had been compromised by someone in Puerto Vallarta just before we left, and both of our cards were put on lock down. We couldn't rent a car as our cards were denied, and so we got on the phone for over an hour with Visa security to get permission to rent it. Then we discovered that our contract didn't include car insurance so we had to go back to get permission from Visa security to buy that the next day.

The compromised cards got cancelled and new cards had to be ordered from Toronto on a rush basis, as we were leaving in a week. We had three long phone calls to sort things out along with a visit to our bank manager. On our departure date we found out the new cards had arrived in Vancouver but couldn't be delivered to our bank as the post box number had been left off the delivery instructions for Purolator. Our bank said the box number was not needed but the delivery was cancelled by Purolator anyway. Visa security said they were try to get it delivered to the main branch again at some point in our departure date. As it turned out, the Purolator delivery didn't show up before we had to leave for the airport.... In order to get some sort of plastic payment method we decided to get a "pre-pay" card that we can load from our bank account and then use it to make purchases. The Scotiabank Client Service Supervisor - Marilyn - was very helpful in communicating information and making suggestions for solutions and now we are even more happy with our bank than we already were. Gotta be the best bank on the planet. Marilyn said she would make sure we got our card sent to us as soon as they got it. So, with no thanks to Purolator, off we go to Barbados with no credit card...

We went to see our doctor to get new medications and found out that she had relocated to a new clinic. We managed to get 6 months worth of prescriptions from a walk-in doctor (we got permission from MSP first) and dropped them off at the pharmacy. They told us we could pick them up in two days, as they needed extra time to fill all of the things we needed. We went back to get our stuff and they didn't give us everything for the 6 months as directed, and then we had to argue with them to get them filled properly. We finally got them 5 days later – the last full day before we left.

Our BCAA membership renewal process went without a hitch - we had to pay cash - except that we needed to tell them to cancel our automatic renewals on the old card. We will need to advise them to add our new card number (hopefully it comes soon) for future renewals.

We asked BCAA for an international driver's license so we could drive rental cars in the Caribbean, but couldn't get them as both our BC driver's licenses were due to expire while we were away in Barbados. So, off to the government offices to get new driver's licenses. Apparently, you can only renew licenses within 6 months of expiry. Cyndi's was about to expire in a month (she had already planned to renew) but mine was still good for 10 months. I had to get special permission from the supervisor to renew early and then they reduced the 5 year renewal to only 4 years. Oh well, at least we got that done before we left so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. The international license was easy after that – 50 bucks.

We went to our tiny little storage locker and I couldn't get the keys to work in the padlock. It was another “oh great” moment and then I figured out I was trying to open the wrong locker.... oops... and whew!

My daughter prepared an early Thanksgiving ham dinner for us to help us feel better and I have to say that helped a lot. Woohoo!! It also helped to make the dial on the bathroom scale move a lot. With the cool weather, great food, driving in a car and no walking it was easy to put on some pounds. It will be good to get back to the warm weather so I can sweat again....

We got all of our shopping done and are leaving with full suitcases and happy hearts. It was great to see family members again and spend some time getting caught up. All of the kids are doing great and they all make us proud. My daughters and their husbands already have tickets to come to Barbados to see us – we are going to have a blast!