Happy New Years 2014!
I still have few hours to go to welcome 2014. Friends from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Thailand, Germany, UK, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Zambia and South Africa already in their first day of 2014 and perhaps they are on bed by now after partying last night.
This morning, I had a chat with a friend from Indonesia. While I was greeting her with Happy New Year 2014, I shared her our story about our incredible and memorable trip in our New Years Eve 2013. We were on our way to Vancouver from Seattle. I would say it was a long day for us but it is always sweet to remember that day.
It was 31 December 2013 in the morning, I forgot the time.
We started the day with turning off the alarm, had a cup of coffee and saved some bagels for our lunch at the Hampton Inn in Seattle. Taking a shower? We passed it! We were in a very tight schedule to get custom approval for our shipment from Indonesia, collect our stuffs from the warehouse, drive to Mount Vernon from Seattle, unload store it at our storage unit and catch a bus to go to Vancouver. In normal traffic, it will take 1 hour from Seattle to Mount Vernon and another 2 hours to Vancouver from Mount Vernon. This also depends on how busy it is in the border.
As I felt that the coffee was kicking, my husband, and I went to the U-Haul facility to rent one of the trucks. While my husband worked on the paperwork and payment, I watched over our bags that we brought from Indonesia to the US by plane. Let me count and try to remember how light was our travel. One, two, three and four bulky suitcases, two carry on bags and two backpacks. Hmmm… it was not that bad for a family who’s about to live in different country.
Done with the paperwork, we drove to the US customs office to get a stamp to release our stuff that was at the shipping facility. It was a long story why we had to wake up early in the morning and hit the road. Two days earlier, on Saturday, one of the staff at the warehouse informed us that we need to get a custom approval to release our stuffs. If only I could choose, I would have preferred to have breakfast in bed that morning as the weather was really good for just staying in bed. It was cold, wet and dark.
All was well at the customs office and we went from there to the shipping warehouse to retrieve our boxes of treasures from Indonesia. Here’s Jamie’s picture, arranging all the stuff we got from the warehouse and the luggages we brought through airplane.
Ooopsss … I guess we thought that we had a lot of stuff. We did not!!!! It did not take a lot of time for us to hit the road to Mount Vernon where we were going to put our stuff in our storage. And look at the size of the truck in comparison of my body size.
Some pictures from the road started with a picture of Jamie. He was my most favorite of truck driver of the day :). Trust me, I tried for few times to take this selfie picture. It was kind a hard to take picture in a shaky truck.
Few from the road was nice in some places. We could see mountains when the dark clouds were blown away by the wind. It’s like the mountain tried to have a peak when they can, to watch over those driving on the highway. The first picture showed Mount Rainier and followed by the view of Mount Baker.
Three hours on the road after leaving our hotel, we arrived in Mount Vernon. I guess I forgot to take pictures of our activities in this city. We were too busy in the storage unit. Apart from unloading the truck, we also tried to get some stuff from the boxes that we needed to bring to our next destination in Zambia. We then took a taxi from the storage unit facility to the bus station in Mount Vernon. We were done and ready for the next ride to Vancouver.
It was 31 December 2012 at 7pm.
We were finally on our way to Vancouver. The bus was late as the traffic was pretty busy and we were in a long bus line at the border waiting for our turn to greet Canadian immigration. With all the bulky luggage we carried, it was quite challenging for us to drag it out from the bus and line up with all the partygoers ready to have a good time in Vancouver. The bags slowed us down, and we did not get a chance to stand in the first row of the line. But at least we felt a relief when we were in the line.
Oh wait! Not so fast! It was not that simple for us.
After checking our visa, the immigration staff sent us to different table to deal with. Apparently the officer had to fill some forms to give us our Canadian student and working permits. Arrrggghhhh …. We were almost the last in line at the immigration and we still had to deal with the paperwork to get the permit. Indeed not the best time to deal with this. The bus driver even said, “Guys, wrong time to get the permit. It’s new years eve!” This caused the bus to leave us at the border and we had to wait for the next bus. Lucky, there was another bus close behind. Not sure if there’s anymore seats to go to Vancouver though! It was a big relief for us once immigration gave us the permits and let us go with the next bus. Around 45 – an hour later, we finally reached the bus station in Vancouver. Relief!
It was 31 December 2012 at 10pm.
We arrived in Vancouver, in the cold, dark, wet, and hungry. There was only one small taxi waiting for passengers, as again, we were the last off the bus with all of our bags. No hesitation though, to just ask the driver to drop us to the Bed and Breakfast we had booked into. We were so glad that even though it was a small taxi, we could put all our bags in the trunk. As a bonus for that night, the taxi driver played jazz music. Not so long until we arrived at the B&B. I thought we could easily rest after check in, but we had to carry our luggages up to the third floor. Arghhh … there was no escalator nor elevator!!! After this long journey, it was a challenging climb! We decided to bring only two luggages to our room.
Here are a couple pictures of the B&B, and me enjoying the day in the living room.
It was 31 december 2012 at 10:30 pm.
We were hungry and had to go out to find a restaurant. It was already late but we had a good faith that there will be some restaurants open. And yes, we found an Italian restaurant and it was very good. Our picture in the restaurant shows how happy we were celebrating our 2013 new years eve in Vancouver. Yes, we finally made it!
And a picture of me ready to deliver a pizza. Can you tell that I was so cold that night?
Eventually this particular new years eve is one of stories that several times we mentioned to our friends. With all the hassle of carrying bulky luggages, being left behind by the bus and climbing to the third floor carrying bulky luggages, we still managed to have fun to close the night with good Italian food and had peace of mind to get through the day. This is one of my favorite stories to tell and now, we can tell this story with laughter and fondness.
Yulia Hadi 