Vancouver notes

Uneventful flight to Seattle and drive to Vancouver last night; though we ran into some traffic getting through Seattle (the airport is south of town and Interstate 5 basically takes you smack through the city), we made it to the hotel after 12+ consecutive hours of travel from NYC in reasonably good shape... wanting nothing more than a hot shower, a room service supper, and a good night's sleep.

Unfortunately, that's when things got interesting.

When Carrie and I travel for pleasure, we try to stay in quirky little independent hotels, as we generally enjoy that experience more than the HiltonHyattMarriott in whatever city we're staying in. When we're headed someplace new, or someplace we haven't been to in a while, we rely on multiple information sources to zero in on hotels and restaurants, and usually we do fine.

Every now and then, though, that strategy doesn't work, and we find a place where the definition of "quirky" includes "unacceptable levels of service."

This was one of those times.

The centrally located, "luxury boutique hotel" we selected for our Vancouver stay last night presented us with a festival of incompetence on check-in.

They couldn't even manage to organize a tray of sandwiches and a couple of beers for two tired travelers at 8pm last night, despite repeated phone calls and even an in-person visit to the front desk.

Our first meal in Canada last night? The execrable but ubiquitous Tim Horton's.

We're relocating to a competently managed hotel--one of the sterile corporate international chains, as it happens--this morning. And then out into this lovely city in the Pacific Northwest.

I don't think the management at the hotel we're checking out of will forget me soon.