A Great White Trip North: My Experience In Vancouver

My apologies for not getting this out sooner. I guess I delayed writing about Vancouver because that means that I'm now back home in Texas, and the greatest trip is now come to an end. Sad panda, indeed.

We arrived in Vancouver early on game day, and while flying in from Calgary I admired the beautiful snow covered mountain tops. We walked out into what was an absolutely gorgeous sunny day. We got off the Canada Line (the mass transit train from airport to near the waterfront) and walked about six blocks to our hotel. Again, my sense of direction is not so good, but luckily we only walked one block in the wrong direction before turning around! As we were checking in, we noticed a ton of Vancouver Canucks bedecked fans checking in as well.

The hotel we stayed at has package deals where you get a night at the hotel with Canucks tickets. Pretty genius marketing tool I must say. The hotel is literally two blocks down from Rogers Arena, so it was a very convenient place to stay. We had a beautiful view where you could see some of the waterfront along with mountains in the distance. Also part of the view - very mean looks from Canucks fans because you're wearing the opposing teams' gear. By far, Vancouver gave us the dirtiest looks for wearing our Stars stuff!

After the jump: oysters, beer and bread and how it felt to witness a win in Vancouver.

After getting to our hotel, we decided to go try a place recommended to us called Rodney's Oyster House. Everyone said that in Vancouver, you have to eat either sushi or seafood, and I now know why. Because it's deliciously fresh! I tried my first ever raw oysters (yes, I'm 26 - almost 27 - and never had them before.) We had so many different hot sauces to choose from, it was hard to decide what to have. It all tasted good, though. I had scallops which were absolutely delictable.

The best part about Rodney's was the bartenders. They were so nice to us, even if we took some ragging about our attire. Recommended food, beers, bars to go to - very hospitable! We even ended up sitting next to the assistant general manager (unknowingly for a while, of course) and turns out he's a Red Wings fan. Not everyone can be perfect. ;)

We left Rodney's feeling pretty good and impressed with Vancouver's hospitality. We walked over to Rogers Arena, which is right next to a larger football stadium (at least, I'm pretty sure that's their football stadium.) They had the coolest looking outside arena of the three Canada cities we visited. Big banners of the Sedin twins and other Canucks players were hung on the outsideof Rogers, and the lighting was all Canucks colors.

Navigating to our seats was a little bit confusing, as we came in on the wrong concourse level, and we had to stop and ask someone how/where you get downstairs. The evil stares continued towards us, and didn't really stop the rest of the night. We went down to the glass for warmups, and unlike the other two stops, were actually allowed to stand on the glass. I met several Stars fans while we were there (shoutout to the guy wearing the Steve Ott jersey - you, sir, are a braver soul than I to wear that in Vancouver!)

Our seats were second row behind the glass, right behind Richard Bachman for two periods. It was a crazy scary start to the game, with a penalty shot right off. We were front row and center for a lot of the goals (a nice change from where the Stars had only scored in front of our end once in the other two games!) We cheered loudly, yelled "STARS" during the anthem (as we did for all of the road games) and when we cheered for the empty netter that sealed the game...we had bread thrown at us. BREAD.

We were also booed for cheering for the win. But in the grand Canadian way, the guy that threw bread us offered to buy us a beer and show us around Vancouver.

Never change, Canada. I will be back.