We Just Traveled to VANCOUVER CANADA! What's it Like Now?

greetings fellow explorers we just returned from a week-long trip to vancouver and victoria in beautiful british columbia canada and in this live stream i'm going to share with you what it's like to travel there right now i was debating whether to do this as a recorded video because i have tons of footage from the trip but decided it would be better to do it as a live stream so i could take your questions and also get the information out right now we literally just got back yesterday so this information is hot off the presses about what the conditions are like right now and so in this video whether you're planning a trip to canada to vancouver or just curious what it's like or you're planning a trip in the future and you want to know some agenda ideas or things to do this video will be helpful for you as well so just up front i would describe uh travel to vancouver right now it was fantastic we had a fantastic trip though things are things are definitely different than a usual place that you might travel to because because the pandemic obviously that we're all living through and so everything is in the new normal so just in summary if you are planning to travel to vancouver you want to bring your mask you want to bring your cell phone you want to bring some form of plastic payment like a credit card or debit card you want to bring an umbrella because it's also going to be kind of wet we're going to talk through all these different things as we go and why each one of these things are important and so the first thing i want to walk through is going to canada so canada reopened to u.s travelers two months ago and for u.s travelers to come to canada on leisure travel people need to get a covid test before so we belong to this uh hmo health management organization like insurance plan called kaiser they do free covet tests uh if you're going on travel so we did our tests there three days before we went we got the swab in each nose and the swab in the back of the throat of course our results were negative to go to canada you also have to be fully vaccinated against covid19 and so part of going you have to download this app on your phone you can also do it on the website by canon's website called arrive can and you have to fill out a whole bunch of information about where you're going you have to upload your vaccination status to the government and then we flew out on air canada and we can start with the pictures because the pictures are fun uh we flew out uh we'll get to air cannon in just a second but we flew out of john wayne orange county airport right here and john wayne orange county airport was actually fairly busy i would say like it wasn't as busy as it used to be but there were definitely a lot of people flying out of our home airport though not enough that they've opened the economy parking lots yet still just the central terminal parking and then we flew air canada right there you can see the traveling princess was happy to be on board but as we were checking into air canada the night before we were supposed to upload our covid negative test results and for the life of me i could not do it on the website uh so we had to print it out and bring it to the airport i took them like 20 minutes to check us in at the airport because we also had a toddler that had her own seat which i guess is maybe unusual a lot of people do infants as a lap child we had the traveling prince to have our own seat but it was the check-in agents who looked at our covid test results that we printed out and said yup good to go um so that was kind of as formal as that verification of the negative coveted tests were going to canada um what was different about the actual plane ride is instead of like you know you go on planes they'd often give you an amenity kit that would have like headphones and eye masks they're giving out the clean care clean care amenity kit what is in the clean care amenity kit a face an extra face mask in case you forget yours a little bottle of hand sanitizer and a couple of uh what sanitary wipes so you can sanitize the table or things around you so that was interesting i think it's also a way to avoid the arguments of people who say i i lost my mask um or i stepped on it or something i can't wear it anymore they're like i got an extra and we got a whole bag so it was nice just to have that little hand sanitizer and that sanitary wipes in there somebody's trying to call me but apparently that was a telemarketer so they just end up with a dial tone on the answering machine um they were doing food on board air canada they did the buy on board snacks we had booked our flight as award tickets using united miles and so booked in the full fair economy which gave us free food on the plane we really enjoyed the fruit cheese plate it was also really interesting to see the apple juice in a box we usually fly united or other american carriers and you get the apple juice in a cup but they had juice boxes which is really great for the traveling princess our flight orange county to vancouver new flight that air canada has just started operating as canada's reopened really not that full at all as you can see here flies on a airbus a220 which is a two by three configuration so two seats on one side three seats on the other side maybe 25 full um pretty empty flight which means we had lots of room on the plane uh which i would say is a good thing but i don't see air canada making a whole lot of money at this point now related to not being busy we arrived into vancouver's airport three hours later to this scene uh this is not like the crack of dawn this is not the middle of the night this is like 4 p.m at vancouver airport there's nobody there the airport was empty it was like super empty the airport felt like a ghost town i don't think i've been in an airport that has had like it's vancouver airport's a huge airport and so i don't think i've been in a big airport that has less people in it than in vancouver airport very few things were open um but the great part about that is that there were almost no lines for passport control or any of those sorts of things though vancouver airport i think canadian airports do have this nice feature that if you have a stroller they actually give you access to the kind of same line that wheelchairs have and things like that to be like bypass any line there is because i think they've decided that if you have a whiny crybaby toddler it's not good for you it's not good for them it's not good for other people and so the short lines uh there were we were able to bypass those with um we were able to bypass those with the stroller the shady brunch says westjet is better than air canada we really enjoyed the air canada flight westjet only flies to orange county like every other day or like once a week and when we were booking them they still weren't flying yet and so we didn't want to book flights that actually hadn't resumed yet so that was only booked on arcana also because we could use our miles a lot of people say i feel bad for you because you had to fly our canada but we actually we actually really enjoyed air canvas so i don't i don't know what all the what all the disdain for air canada is but our flight um was pleasant okay um so well before i get to this one about picking up our rental car you know we had to go through uh customs and immigration and when we got to the passport control officer you know we handed him our passports and he was like congratulations you have been selected for a random covid19 test and handed us this paperwork and said yeah just go ahead and go out that way follow line a there's line a and line b line a's apparently if you've been selected for a covid test and uh just go see the people out in the lobby it's all in the arrivals lobby of the airport they will get you your covid test so we go down there we find the people in the you know health bunny suits that they're wearing that you know sign up baller information the thing and then direct us to the second set of people it was quite a production um where we then had someone give us some nasal swabs on arrival they were like really um thin nasal swabs as compared to the ones we did in the us that are like q-tips that feel like they're poking your brain and make you sneeze these things were like really tiny they felt like a like a thin like a thin spaghetti noodle or something in your nose so it didn't like it didn't feel like they were getting to the brain it was um pretty easy easy production only for myself and oc girl the traveling princess did not have to get the random covet test and then they gave us a little piece of paper that said here's a website you can go to to check your results when you get them you'll also get an email with it but what was funny is there was a password you had to use to get the results and they gave you the password on a piece of paper that that password was not in the email or those sorts of things so that was just a first time on arrival anyway we've ever had to get a random covid test as you can imagine since you probably saw instagram stories in the snap and we're back in less than 14 days we did not test positive but that's that's given away the story too much at this point we picked up our rental car this is the rental car facility at vancouver airport it is one of those central rental car facilities for the whole airport as you can see by this picture there were no lines because there was nobody else there when i say there was nobody else there there was literally not one other person in the rental car facility other than us picking up a rental car between hertz budget avis dollar thrifty all those companies in here we were the only customer you know four o'clock uh on this day pick up rental cars so that tells you how few tourists are currently arriving at least by air into vancouver uh and alex points out that the kovid test sounded super easy barely an inconvenience yeah it was like a you know like 15 minutes out of our arrival but it really it was not that bad um like it could have been way worse um you know we've seen pictures where like in hong kong airport they give you coveted tests and then have you sit in a big room while you wait for the results that's not how it works in canada you get the kovid test they they ask you where you're staying and then they say hey we're gonna you know if you're positive we're gonna come and get you or have you quarantined or something like that so um it's it's nice to kind of let you go about your stuff now what was funny is that uh in in our email a day later we get this email that says you're receiving this email from the government of canada because you recently entered canada an emergency order applies to all travelers and since you recently entered with no symptoms you must quarantine for a minimum of 14 days this means don't leave your quarantine place avoid contact with others obviously we are on the since we're fully vaccinated and covid tested we're not quarantining but you wouldn't know that from this email and i think this is just like a forum email that people to vancouver get luckily i had read someone else's blog that they wrote about going to vancouver knowing they got this same email as well so if you are going expect to get this email that says hey you need to quarantine this has nothing to actually do with your test results or nothing to do with the fact that you're not quarantined this is the form that everybody gets for arriving into arrivedcan but it can be a little bit shocking if you get it right away all right we then checked into our hotel this was the hotel the hyatt regency in downtown vancouver uh a number of you uh suggested hey chris be careful because it's um part of the maybe like unsavory part of town uh we we did find it surprising to realize that downtown vancouver does has its version of skid row on what east east hastings um but uh definitely not not as bad as anything that goes on in los angeles we're kind of amazed that those people can hang out on the street because it's so cold but we'll get to that uh probably probably probably another one so let's talk about the hotel checking in we didn't have to show anything special to check in unlike when we went to hawaii when we went to hawaii we had to show our app and negative covid tests and all that stuff here we're just we're in the country and so we checked in normally like we would check into any other hotel but there was no valet parking there was no lounge they did have daily housekeeping and this is what our room looked like they did give us a free crib it didn't really seem like anything in the room itself was different the restaurant was open the gym was open and the swimming pool was open we were uh globe we're globalist members with hyatt so a lot of people ask chris why are you staying at this hotel because we have the top tier hide status we just love kind of all the special perks and bennies that we get funny to say benny's because it includes free breakfast and i really like eggs benedict so i got like eggs benedict nearly every day this hotel and their eggs bandit was quite good nice view of downtown vancouver here i'll have a full review of this high vancouver hotel and uh that was a a really nice stay other than the hotel seeming really empty breakfast restaurants seemed empty everything seemed empty but that also meant that we didn't ever have to stand in line for anything uh stanford bridge points out that that email would have scared me i agree i really hope somebody in the canada government stops sending out that email uh yaritza says wow zero people at the car rental place you don't even need to power walk together like for sure uh and so being like hertz gold members with like the gold like the gold booths weren't open like none of that was open because they they just don't need it um alex asked how badly were we gouged on the rental car i don't think it was that bad actually because nobody's going so they there's no shortage of rental cars in vancouver we paid um 700 us dollars for the week and we were in a full-size suv so we had a toyota highlander i think it was a good price um for that much liam asked how much of the airport was open space wise the whole airport was open but most of the shops most of the restaurants were closed in the u.s departures terminal and i'm sort of getting to the end a little bit but it was because we saw that when we were there flying in and out of the u.s there were four restaurants that were open starbucks tim hortons uh joe and the juice mind you these are all coffee shops and then there was one full service restaurant open that was the only food options all the other food options were closed and probably about half the stores were closed the air canada lounge was open uh but um we didn't go in so i'm not sure what the situation inside the air canada lounge looked like kind of whether they were doing a buffet or self-service and let's hit the road jack asks when do i think countries will drop testing requirements for fully vaccinated travelers i'm i'm not sure i hope soon because it's really it's really kind of annoying i will say um but i like i get it since people can be positive with covet even if they're fully vaccinated so i'm not sure that it's anything that we're going to see dropped anytime soon kathy says uh she really likes eggs benedict good minds think i like kathy comey asked if we went to any breweries traveling with a almost two-year-old we did not go into any breweries um and rt says that canada's thinking about dropping tests between the us and canada i think that'd be good and clearly um canada reopening to the us two months ago i think there was a perspective that a lot more people would come and people just aren't people just aren't coming there aren't a lot of u.s people coming jake asked if our california driver's license is valid in canada absolutely california that's what i showed to pick up the rental car no international driver's license or anything else required and let's hit the road that says i don't know why saliva testing isn't more widely available interesting point about that is that when we did our covid tests at kaiser to leave they gave us the option of a nasal swab or a saliva test and so i think it is becoming more available but i don't think it's widely available yet uh just the saliva test wasn't uh drive through like the nasal swab was so easier for us to take a toddler through a drive-through than uh go in michael asked if we took the metro system we did let's go ahead and talk about public transit um so and this kind of relates to the mask situation uh here we are in the waterfront skytrain station where skytrain is the name of the subway public train light rail in vancouver and then this connects to some of the fairies that you can take but in public transit you have to wear your mask all the time actually in vancouver you pretty much have to wear your mask all the time anywhere inside obviously in your hotel room or your house you don't have to but in any common areas in public that's indoors you have to wear a mask we also found outside just walking around the city probably about 50 percent of people were wearing their masks so there's like a high wet mask wearing even outside with the general population though mask wearing is not required outside the one place outside we did have to wear our masks was on the capilano suspension bridge in the capilano suspension bridge park because they say the bridge is crowded as you can see the bridge was actually not that crowded uh but we still had to wear our masks it's kind of a drag for pictures because pictures work out better without masks but there were some times where as you can see it was a little bit more crowded on that bridge but the people ebbed and flowed and this is one attraction that people say you really want to get there early because it's extremely busy when we parked in the parking lot there's a pretty big parking lot there were like 20 cars in the parking lot so it was not very busy because there were not that many people here that was probably all the people that were in the park at the time were on that suspension bridge when we took this picture other things about masks in general on flights kids don't have to wear masks on inter canada flights if they are under five years old and um also we didn't we didn't really feel like the mass police was out in canada just people wearing masks and pretty complying about it unlike maybe in the us where you see people who like stand at doors of stores to make sure everybody was wearing masks it wasn't it wasn't that way in canada there would just perhaps be a sign posted and people would do it but the the mask police wasn't out there uh questions about that bridge how much did the bridge swing uh that bridge swayed quite a bit for sure and uh garrett said the mask is really important uh to wear to not catch covid 19. um and brandon says i would not do the nasal cover 19 test but would do the saliva test yeah and the uniplex says all over bridge columba you have to wear a mask inside thank you for that vancouver says did you have a rainy trip the weather was quite rainy yeah this is november to april is the rainy season in vancouver people joke that vancouver is called raincover and so it rained most days that we were there maybe not every single day but and not all the time but rain throughout it didn't it wasn't so bad that it kept us down it was just more of a annoying rain rather than um rather than rather than a constant rain stephanie really likes the capilano suspension bridge as well and people say chris you're buffering um sorry about that apparently the bandwidth gods are not there with me today but hopefully in the archive it will catch up a little bit okay now the next thing i want to talk about is i want to talk about stores so going inside stores um here we we're at the herschel store in gas town herschel big canadian supply company i picked up a little yellow shoulder bag at herschel but generally we would see hand sanitizer in stores as we would go in sometimes hand sanitizer was offered to us by a person sometimes it was required like please sanitize your hands before you come in the store we saw one store that had a big stuffed moose in front of it and that stuff moose had a sign that said um i'm fully vaccinated against covet 19. it's okay if you take a picture with me hahaha which was funny for the stuffed moose sometimes we saw posted capacity limits but we never saw like a line to get into a store so whether they were enforcing those capacity limits or whether they were just old things for them i am thirsty now because i've been talking for a while what am i what am i drinking today today i'm drinking this made in japan kimono yuzu drink this is a sparkling yuzu juice let's give this a try i've never actually had this before i was at a local japanese market here in southern california oh it's sour yuzu is kind of a cross between grapefruit and an orange and so that definitely has a little bit of that hint of grapefruit taste but orange but lemon all three combined it's pretty good this sparkling yuzu juice all right youtube says youtube says my stream is healthy again so hopefully the quality comes back now that i've i probably had the drink for the bandwidth gods to come back again all right let's talk about what it was like to eat at restaurants because that's something different in british columbia vancouver victoria you see this all about there then maybe a lot of other places in the world and that is to go to a sit-down restaurant or actually many big indoor attractions in british columbia you need to provide proof of vaccination obviously somebody who's flying into vancouver you provide proof vaccination to get there so it's probably not a big deal for visitors outside but perhaps visitors from other parts of canada that are driving in you need to be fully vaccinated and have that proof with you in canada they have a vaccine passport that you can show on your phone for visitors from the us you can show your passport or your driver's license along with your cdc card to prove that you're vaccinated it's a little gets a little old and tiresome to have to show it to sit down at every sit-down restaurant or go in every attraction but that is uh what's going on now most restaurants have also kept their kind of like plexiglas stuff this was our meal at uh chuanjuda which is a peaking duck restaurant from beijing that has a newly opened location in vancouver i find a lot of the restaurants here in southern california san diego orange county los angeles have like dropped all their plexiglass because they don't want people to still feel like it's a pandemic but i found most restaurants in vancouver still had their plexiglass you can see some around this restaurant right here you can also see some plexiglas right around here i found very little social distancing of tables i felt that most restaurants were still packing people in and packing tables very close together if you look at this japanese restaurant the counter seat you know like those seats are lined up as if as if it wasn't a pandemic so yet be vaccinated maybe the theory since you have to be vaccinated everybody can sit close together but the tables weren't you know most places weren't skipping tables or doing any of that many restaurants were still take out or to go only we went to this bakery in downtown vancouver bakery coffee shop called purebred we could not sit down in there everything was to go or take out we found a japanese restaurant that was like that too so going there as a tourist if you want to eat at a restaurant you need to make sure they're actually offering sit down dining because um because it's not uh let's hit the road jackass how do you keep your cdc card from getting bent folded beat up when you travel i i carry a tumi passport size wallet um and so that it's it's a size for the cdc card it just fits in the pocket it doesn't bend that's how i do it i don't i don't have it here in my reach to show you um but i've shown it in some other videos if you just search for like 2me passport wallet you'll see it uh stanford bridge says i've laminated my card uh and that probably works too although if you're getting a third shot then it's hard for them to to write that on there uh but hey um let's see what are other people drinking brandon is drinking pink lemonade and kathy is drinking cup of tea we had a lot of really good tea in vancouver and victoria in victoria in particular we had high tea at the empress which we'll talk about and high tea at butcher gardens which one was better you'll just have to find out and see shea asks if you've seen any chinese buffets in vancouver i didn't i didn't see any that doesn't mean they don't exist but i just i wasn't probably seeking out any chinese buffets and natalie says they also sell i think that's supposed to say passport wallets at officemax thanks for the tip and stephanie says british columbia just lifted the ban on mac's table capacity in restaurants all right thank you for that update stephanie appreciate that that probably makes sense okay um now the places that did not require proof of vaccination were places like food courts food halls so here at the granville public market at the victoria public market at food courts and shopping malls no proof of vaccinations required so none of the hassle there you just walk in eat no big deal the other thing related to mask wearing and this is i feel maybe a little bit different in british columbia than in los angeles in in los angeles they generally say um you should wear your mask while seated at the table until you have your food in british columbia this it was generally you need to wear your mask in a restaurant until you're seated at the table but then when you're seated at the table then you can take your mask off even if you don't have food you're not eating and drinking some signs had slightly different signage posted usually the asian ones had signs to be like keep it on until you eat but most other restaurants had signs posted that said you need to wear it just until you get to the table okay um now let's talk about money many restaurants and shops which used to take cash don't take cash anymore it seems like cash is not a useful currency in british columbia currently in vancouver currently maybe in all of canada i'd be interested in my other canadian explorers on here let me know if this is the case in in the rest of canada but at least in vancouver most stores had signs posted that said credit cards or debit cards only no cash and some places like the butcher gardens gift shop were so adamant about it they had someone standing at the door not to enforce mask wearing or that sort of stuff but to tell people just to let you know we're only accepting cards at this point the one place that didn't take credit cards or debit cards which was weird was the aberdeen center this is the asian food court there nearly every vendor in this food court was cash only cash only cash only cash only it's like they hadn't heard the news about the pandemic that everybody else has heard uh may's just the asian thing about trying to avoid taxes i'm not sure but um because we didn't end up needing cash for our whole trip we got out very little money we got out like a hundred dollars canadian for a whole trip and played you know credit cards everywhere else and then the last day we want to use this aberdeen center and we're like what what what everything is cash only there were a few places that took debit cards and so we ended up eating at one of those because we had given away all of our cashes uh tips at the hotels esther asked if they allow cloth masks in canada um we did not see anything that told us that they didn't i saw plenty of people wearing cloth cloth masks vancouver dave asks if we visited stanley park that's a great question and it's actually my next picture that i have loaded up here so we did visit stanley park and speaking of crowd levels we found stanley park to have very few people in it it was oh sigrid myself the traveling princess and the canadian geese of course i thought it was so great that as we rolled into the park we had to wait for this flock of canadian geese to pass on the road you know some places it might be herds of cattle or sheep or things like that it was very canadian to have to wait for this flock of geese to walk along this road very very slowly as if they had no idea they were walking across the road because of course they they didn't um and so like the airport most touristy attractions we went to were empty uh you know covid certainly one reason people not coming the other reason it's the off-season vancouver's a very seasonal place and so like there's the summer season you know which is april or may to roughly october and then kind of like november is like ah we're all closed so in stanley park there was only one place to eat open there's like maybe normally eight or so restaurants and food stands yeah there was one one that was open while we were there everything else was closed so plenty of place to park which was good and the other nice part about going this time of year is the change of colors of the leaves the leaves are all turning red and so i just i love this tree because it was that red uh canadian maple leaf to me but tons of leaves to play in and throw around and the traveling princess enjoyed um frolicking in the frolicking in the leaves uh the uniplex points out i use tap all the time that was something i also found interesting about vancouver more so at least than here in california places are just kind of like catching on to the whole tap thing probably with people want to pay by google pay and all that stuff but i found every credit card reader that i went to took uh like the tap credit card the only place i had to insert my credit card was at the gas station and the only place i had to swipe my credit card was at the fairmont hotels probably because their point of sale system seemed like it was 42 years old or something i say that because they're like oh it works i'm not sure why we need to change it and angelo says yes cash in richmond only for people who don't know all the geography in vancouver richmond is the city to the south of vancouver it's where the aberdeen center that asian food court that we ate at was same city where the airport is um richmond is the city in the world outside of asia that is the most asian like the population is something like 80 percent of asian descent so yes it would make sense that that's where um you know and a lot of people saying yep cash only in a bunch of asian places brian says will la san francisco accept canadian vaccine passports i'm i'm sure brian um i'm sure we'll accept them in la and san francisco because people come from those sorts of places so joe asked if i ate at the joe fortes seafood restaurant i did not eat at that one uh is that is that your is that your um joe f is that your kitchen where where is that one uh i and uh pat says also tap is everywhere in ontario okay so i think the fact that few people were there was actually really nice reason to go right now like if you're considering going and you know like alex asked the question like how much were you gouged for the rental car wasn't how much were you gadged for the hotels weren't uh how much were you gouged for ticket price weren't because nobody's going to vancouver so if you want to go uh tickets are probably going to be cheap flights are going to be cheap hotels are going to be cheap because you're not competing with a lot of other people for the space now one of the things i found i should say uh is that there were many attractions that we went to that were only selling their tickets online and only selling timed tickets online in particular this conservatory at queen elizabeth park that we wanted to go in and see the parrots which ultimately did but they were not selling any tickets at the door you had to buy tickets online and you had to buy a time ticket for a certain time there was nobody there there were like three people inside the conservatory but they wouldn't sell me the ticket at the gate i had to buy it on the phone which means that you need to have a phone and you need to have a data plan because you need to be able to be like outside these places and go ahead and you know like buy the ticket which we did it took another minute or two it's just an inconvenience to be like i'm here can i buy a ticket no you need to buy it online because we need to make sure there's capacity there's nobody here you know look hey i get it when it's busy or all that sort of stuff but um i think that's something ready to drop in my uh thing right jack says i love the travel in the off season lower prices and crowds for sure zachary says have you taken an alaskan cruise not yet zachary um have you or has anybody taken alaskan cruise if so did you enjoy it okay now some other things that were closed outside the airport we talked about the airport lots of shops being closed there definitely the pandemic has hit a lot of businesses hard we saw a lot of businesses that were closed or businesses that had multiple locally multiple locations had some of the locations closed in particular we ate at japadog and japadog's original cart was like all their cart locations in downtown vancouver were closed the so they normally have like four locations like three carts and then one brick and mortar store the brick and mortar store was the only one that was open uh when we were there what is a dog japan dog is a japanese hot dog chain that started in vancouver and uh they look like this they you know like japanese inspired toppings like a japanese pancake or you know teriyaki may or things like a pretty good hot dog and they use um kurobota pork so kind of like the high-end pork definitely uh japanese people are reading there this place was uh they're open until like one or three in the morning or something like that so if you're looking for uh late night eats uh that's that's definitely where you can get them okay now i want to talk about uh our experience in victoria um and so we took the ferry over to victoria victoria is the capital of british columbia um victoria is on the vancouver island not to be confused with the city of vancouver which is on the mainland of canada the capital of the province of british columbia is on this island called vancouver island and to get there there's no bridges there's no tunnels you have to take a ferry and the primary ferry from the mainland to canada is operated by bc ferries it's an auto ferry is the route that most people take and we really enjoyed this i'll have a full ship tour of the spirit of british columbia the ship that we took coming out um and we got the ruffles all dressed chips on board which were pretty good that was a recommendation from a fellow explorer on my post about hey what should we eat while they were there this canadian flavor um the ship the things that were closed the buffet was closed on the ship half of the cafe line was closed but the kids playgrounds were open which was nice the sun deck was open most of the ship was open other than the buffet being closed also the coffee shop was closed but they was closed coffee shop was closed cafe which is probably the most casual quickest place to get a meal was open but only half of it because i don't think there were that member that many on it um and uh let's see to answer my question about joe fortes uh the shady bunch says that's amazing seafood just off robson amazing happy all right thank you for that uh shady bunch uh and river pixie also loves joe fortes and then there was a comment about the money uh that it might be infected with cove it might be the money might have a cough uh murder credit mafia asked if we visited the university of victoria we did not get out there in victoria uh and jake asked if we tried the nanimo pie on the bc fairies amazing was that the one that was like i don't know raspberry and rhubarb or what what what no i guess probably not probably we didn't tell tell me what it is uh scotman895 travel says i love those chips the ruffles all dressed chips i got them twice actually got them on the ferry ride there and i also got them on that ferry ride back just as a unique canadian flavor um okay so then getting into victoria we got in like right after sunset this is a picture of the inner harbor and the empress hotel which we checked into this place was a ghost town there was like nobody in the inner harbor of victoria i mean there were a few people but particularly when night came it was dead this is maybe seven o'clock um and as you can see there's maybe one one human standing there in this picture victoria was very empty victoria's a big cruise ship town uh they also rely on a lot of fairies from washington state from people coming over from the us the fairies were not running when we were there um i think the ferries are going to be starting up now that the us is allowing ferry traffic to it as of today um but then it was it was really empty and you know people would ask us when we were going around the town where we're from and when we said we're from um you know california people like oh it's really great to see americans back in town again because i think it's just been so long since they've had uh visitors now this is the hotel we stayed in the empress it's the grand hotel in victoria it was built in the what early 1900s named after queen victoria um it seemed pretty normal as operations you know it's not the kind of place that had a breakfast buffet to begin with so didn't have to worry about the breakfast buffet being closed this was the inside of the room nice room we got update we booked the double room and got upgraded to a two queen room we booked it with our american express platinum on the fine hotels and resorts rate which gives a lot of perks like room upgrade free breakfast 100 food credit towards other things so if you have an amex platinum card and you're going to stay at this hotel i'd highly recommend you take a look at the amex fine hotels and resorts rate their lounge was open unlike hyatt's lounge that we're not fairmont gold members so we didn't take advantage of that the pool the gym and the spa were open uh afternoon tea was open but afternoon tea was really empty it was funny we asked about the front desk and he's like yeah i think we have some reservations open for high tea and this is the afternoon tea room and it was it was fairly empty i mean i would say that maybe 25 of the tables were taken in the afternoon tea room um we really enjoyed the afternoon tea and this hotel usually serves half half a million cups of tea a year and uh oc girl when she was here before a number of years ago was like in in like the overflow room they usually like open up other rooms to serve the high tea because they're so busy um but even then they weren't filling up the main room um brandon says related to the room at the empress it's a great looking hotel it was a nice uh it was a nice hotel a nice room michael says lots of canadians are very nice i felt people were very warm and friendly while we were there so i agree with that pippin says victoria is beautiful um and uh let's see carol asks if i had any ketchup chips no we did not have any ketchup chips maybe next time and then jake answered my question about the nanima pie it's a cross between a boston cream ply and a black and white cookie all right thank you for that jake i'll have to try that next time by the way um can i just get a sound check from people how does the audio sound today i asked this question because the microphone that i had issues with some six weeks ago i finally got a new mount for it the issue is it was like i've mounted it to the desk it's like boomed right here right above my finger i've mounted it to the desk and it was picking up the vibrations from my laptop uh hard drive vibrating or the fan and that's the noise we were hearing like when the fan turned on then the um microphone started to go so probably when i talk up here it sounds a little different than when i talk down there because the microphone's right there all right uh rico says sounds good pippin says sounds good michael says sounds good that's awesome uh the shady branches we stopped by mercy's tea we stopped in but then it was our last day there and we had to catch a ferry and the line was long so we didn't actually uh partake in any of the mercy's tea but we did go in and you will see it in the video on victoria including they've got this like um i don't like like a i don't know vaudeville or old arcade machine that has like ladies drinking tea it was built in like that like 1885 or something in germany you'll see it when when the victoria video comes out all right uh and thank you everybody that says the audio sounds good and no static i appreciate it okay so the kind of first big attraction we went to on vancouver island and it's about 30 minutes from victoria is the mala malahat sky walk this is on the first tribe lands for the mala hot tribe this skywalk is a 10 story spiral thing kind of reminiscent of the the one in new york city that they built though this one's open air and it has a big slide down the middle admission was about 30 dollars per person at huge parking lot that looks like it could house a lot of people i think 10 cars in the parking lot i think we saw in the two hours we were there i think we saw 10 other people the whole time which like included the employees who were very nice i should point out um but it was really quite unbusy which was great because we had the whole place to ourselves but you can see in that picture of the ten stories of this thing there's nobody else there side note that is the fastest slide i've ever been on this 10 story slide uh going there you'll see a full video on this skywalk coming out but this is the newest attraction uh on vancouver island and i think uh pretty neat and worth a visit now back in victoria we visited victoria's fisherman's wharf which is this floating p it's like it's a pier where you could dock boats but there's like house boats there like everything floats on this like the pier floats the houses float the shops float and when i say the houses float there's actually people that live on these floating houses and i just thought this was a pretty cool attraction but it was it was also dead um most of the restaurants were not open most of the tour operators were not open the stores were not open they were like three seafood restaurants they were open they were really good we ate two of them and we had some really good oysters there so it was still worth a visit to walk but we didn't get to go in any of the stores or things like that the parliament building we didn't actually get to go inside because now the time they are they have reopened for free tours inside the parliament building in victoria since it's the capital of british columbia but you do have to have proof of vaccination that you have to show in order to take those tours butcher gardens that we went to this is the probably biggest single attraction on vancouver island we had the place to ourselves this is another one where they've got like two massive parking lots um and they parked us in the rv and bus parking lot because there were no rvs or bus not a single one not a single bus not a single rv maybe about 40 cars uh parked in that but it's really great for a garden because you get to feel the nature and just be by yourself and take pictures of the garden like this without any other people we walked in for afternoon tea didn't have to have a reservation because there were just plenty of tables available and um so we had this afternoon tea and we had the empress afternoon tea but if you want to know which one we thought was better well you're just going to have to you're just going to have to wait for the full video on a full video on victoria to find that out and then our final hotel we stayed at was the fairmont vancouver airport hotel we our flight was like a 9 a.m flight uh out of vancouver airport back to orange county we thought that was fairly early we're with a you know two-year-old and so we said hey let's just stay right at the hotel of the three hotels this was our honestly our favorite hotel of the three it was just a really nice comfortable room people said like chris but isn't it going to be noisy from airport noise we could not hear the airport at all this was inside the room nice room i mean it doesn't look quite as classic as the empress but it was the most functional of all the rooms uh and this was the view from it of the kind of like terminal area and the runway and things like that which was just cool i'm an airport geek and actually just before i started this video i was working on editing that review so that'll probably be the first full video of canada that comes out later this week okay and then our flight back so before we could board this flight back um we had to get a covid test to leave canada to come back into the us and this was sort of an interesting thing and if you're planning to go to any other country like if you're an american and you plan to go to any other country listen up because you need a negative covenant test to come back into the u.s and while you could go someplace and pay a bunch of money and drive someplace and try to find it another option are these abbott binax now covet 19 home tests that you buy through emed i have to point that out that these are available for purchase in a lot of places but the ones through emed in addition to giving you this test kit that has a swab and has a card that you put it in to tell you the line to make it um like approved to come into the u.s yeah you download their app and use on your phone you like connect and somebody watches you do it and like they talk you through it like okay put three drops in the card take the swab put in your note hey make sure on the camera so i can see you okay put the put the swab in to the card and they'll be like make sure i can see it on the camera and then close it and then leave it on the table and then in 15 minutes this line here this lo focus focus focus this line here focus focus okay we won't focus we'll say control or sample one line is covered negative two lines is covid positive uh and after you do that for say 20 minutes to your hotel room then they'll email you a negative covid result assuming you were negative and you can show that to check into your plan to come back to the us i think these six of these kits is 150 which is like cheaper than any of the places we could find that did um antigen tests in canada and also we didn't have to leave our room like we just did it in our hotel room with our thing so that was uh that was beneficial um the youtube experiment said emed or emen the first one e-m-e-d you can go to emed.com this video is not sponsored it just it took me a while to kind of research like what are the best ways to do tests and um i really like this one i'll probably do a full video about these covid home tests too uh kathy said cool view of the planes it was a cool view of the planes from the hotel uh and then jake said butcher gardens can be fantastic if you open things in bloom i was there at the peak of orchid season may and blown away we will have to go back in peak bloom season rather than just a changing of the leaves season um and uh matthew says it's the legislative not uh parliament all right two two corrections on that thank you very much matthew and carol okay um and then uh at vancouver airport so here's another thing to know if you are flying back through vancouver airport to the us the security lines were like ridiculous we heard from a friend of ours who was there last month she had to wait like three hours in the security line uh coming back to the us i would say the lines we were there were probably an hour and a half for two hours they were really long and i don't i don't really know why they were so long probably they're just not very well staffed with security officers because there aren't many flights there aren't many people going through but they just don't have that many security people to process the line luckily we got the stroller line so if you have little kids bring your stroller with you so you can get the stroller line and so we kind of got to go around the people um we tried to use the global entry machines they were broken if you do want to use global entry coming back from vancouver to come into the u.s to bypass the lines you need to bring your global entry card it's the only place that i've needed to show my card to use the global entry line why is this important because vancouver is an airport that you clear u.s customs in the vancouver airport instead of at the airport you're arriving into so that's why it takes so long because you're clearing customs leaving vancouver instead of um while you're arriving and uh yeah there were only three places to eat starbucks tim hortons joe and the juice and one full service restaurant so we got donuts from tim hortons and then on the flight back um it was less full than the flight there there were maybe 20 people on the flight coming back uh and what was super funny now that we're back today i got this email that said that's 10 day of your quarantine and you must complete your final covid test if applicable it's still important to remain in quarantine for a minimum of 14 bit clearly all the emails so if you're going to vancouver just know you're going to get these emails about your quarantine that you are likely not quarantining fellow explorers it is now q a time if you've got a question i've got an answer [Music] well fellow explorers that is what it is like traveling to vancouver right now if you asked a question i didn't get to it earlier ask away because now is q a time i also want to thank everybody who provided tips for our trip i know there were many of you that left me notes about go here eat here i couldn't go to all the places and i couldn't eat at a lot of places but um you provided a lot of great tips that really helped us plan a great vacation to vancouver and victoria and hopefully make some good videos that y'all will like again um antonio says do americans need to do a test before going to england even though i'm fully vaccinated i'm not up to speed on the uk entry requirements uh but if we have any uk uh residents here help fellow travelers out uh dunkin donuts yeah tim hortons or dunkin donuts i don't know i think i like i think i like dunkin donuts better i know those are probably fighting words um shea says pcr tests in ken are 250. yeah i found all the places that were doing covet tests were like super crazy expensive um stanford bridge asked if we had cream teas going with clotted cream and jam when we both afternoon teas that we had they had scones with clotted cream and jam the one uh the one at the empress was really good the scone and the clotted cream it was like a different cream at the [Music] butcher gardens it was more like whipped cream instead of like a stick of a clotted cream but yes jay asked for travel to toronto um not yet edith asks if they accept the california coveted qr code on the phone or do you need the cards i don't think they have a way of scanning the california covid qr code so if you're from the us i think you need something that like more like printed out or that they can see it we didn't show them phones we showed them the piece of paper it worked carol asks if we preferred victoria or vancouver we liked both um we liked all of the nature in vancouver and then we liked all the just kind of british-isms of victoria i mean i would say there's probably more to do and eat in vancouver we probably like the food in vancouver better but we like the quaint feel of victoria better i mean so i like yeah i think it's a great vacation to do both places i think our next time going to vancouver which we're definitely going to do again because we now have these direct flights at orange county um will be to visit whistler uh we want to do that um the uniplex asked if we jumped on the trampoline there wasn't a trampoline when we were there i don't know if they removed it or whatever there's like an adventure net at the top but no trampoline we did walk on the adventure net brian asked if we had any dim sum i ate at chef tony's dim sum in the food court of metropolis metroplex because i thought that was better than wait in a long line to eat dim sum it was good food court dim sum uh michael asked if we had any really bad experiences this trip if so which was the worst um i don't like canadians were all really good and friendly other than a lot of rain uh i don't think i have anything negative to say melly asked where would you recommend staying in vancouver we really like the hyatt regency i'd also recommend the fairmont like basically i think the city center in the central business district is a great place to stay because it's well connected to the skytrain and everything else uh jake asks in general do you think vancouver is a good food city uh for asian food i think vancouver is a great food city i think vancouver is known to have some of the best um at least particular chinese food like outside of china and hong kong uh and eating at chenjuda the peking duck restaurant from beijing the peking duck in vancouver was like 98 as good as the one we had in beijing so we we ate uh pretty good um we did not make it to beacon hill park matthew s what'd you think of the wi-fi and the fair we didn't connect to wi-fi and the ferry but actually i got cell phone service on a lot of things on the ferry so i thought that was pretty cool we did four days in vancouver and we did three days in victoria edith says did you go to grouse mountain uh no well with the two-year-old hiking sort of doesn't doesn't work all that well for us right now um jennifer uh says hey chris i just made i love vancouver but like victoria even better awesome jennified welcome to the live stream um bob says i'm hoping uh taiwan reopens its borders and does away with the 14-day quarantine yeah they're really serious about the quarantine in taiwan uh we are hoping to electric great cast if i found any pinball machines no i didn't find any pinball machines though on one of the ferries back and forth from victoria to vancouver or vancouver island to vancouver uh they actually had an arcade on board which was neat but no pinball machines i think like arcades maybe aren't something that's like really reopened yet in british columbia js if uh we found vancouver expensive i've never been canada's uh so big it's hard to see at all i did not find vancouver to be that expensive of a destination because most of the activities are outdoors also coming from the us there's the exchange rate between the us and the canadian dollar so i found things relatively inexpensive for the quality of stuff you'd get you know the peking duck that we had at chonjuda was 95 canadian dollars for a duck um but it was a really good dollar it's like 80 u.s the high tea we had at the empress was you know 85 canadian dollars a person uh but it was also really good too like good high-end stuff cost money and then it helps just to have that um exchange rate go uh let's hit the road jack asks how did we handle cell phone service i have t-mobile which gives free international calling and then um osu girl has verizon she had international roaming but hers would hit a cap at like 500 megabytes for the day and then she couldn't do anything on her phone so then she would tether to me um because i had like the mobile hotspot on the on my plan so then she could just kind of continue to browse the internet from my phone i am on texas i'm sorry about the rain we had a drought during the summer and i think mother nature is trying to make up for it uh yeah it's okay like you know vancouver rain so we don't we don't uh we didn't let it hamper any of our fun uh stinger ass if we did the tree walkways a capital that we think that was actually one of the neatest parts about capilano were the tree top walkways you'll see if you have no idea what i'm talking about you'll see that when the video comes out i'll have a whole video just on the capilano suspension bridge park michael says where are you planning on traveling to next uh next up we have death valley national park just outside of vegas malia says what was your favorite restaurant uh probably our favorite food was chen judah the peking duck place and best food you ate that peking duck um you know worst food lee's donuts at granville island market i don't like i don't get it it was a donut or tim hortons i don't get it it was a donut i don't get the like amazement for those places they just seemed like donuts but maybe because in california like don't there's like a whole like resurgence of donuts and um but lee's donuts there's like this usually like a massive line from the granville market like i've seen pictures of it there wasn't we just walked right up i would not stand in that line at all for those donuts jenny fights at the empress hotel is amazing it was amazing i just wish it was a little like newer updated tech wise um esther said about to drive from montreal to new york city soon any tips for road tips esther maybe not canadian road trips but i have a whole video about road trip tips if you haven't watched it search for yellow productions road trip tips yes it's the time you've been waiting for it's time for the giveaway [Music] all right fellow explorers it is the time in the video where i give away a yellow productions crew shirt to anybody who can answer one of my questions and my question not just what this one question my question is to you where are the two places that we had afternoon tea in victoria if you're the first person to name the two places that we had afternoon tia you'll win a yellow productions cruise shirt shipped to you anywhere in the world um you know a couple of things we picked up as souvenirs while i'm waiting for your answers pure maple syrup of course whole foods actually had a really great selection of maple syrup and jams things like that so we picked up also some really interesting like ice wine apple jams and um we haven't eaten these yet we picked up a few packs of maple glazed smoked salmon i love maple syrup and so anything with maple maple just catches my eyes and i couldn't leave vancouver without getting one of these to keep me warm in the winter um and now we have a winner winner chicken dinner tiffany takes on life congratulations you are the first person to guess correctly the empress hotel and butcher gardens are the two spots that we had afternoon tea not in vancouver but in victoria so tiffany send me an email you'll find my email in the description of this video let me know what size shirt you want where you want me to send it and i will get that out right to you all right and if you're wondering chris when is the next live stream there will likely be one next week which day next week i am not sure yet but if you don't follow me over here at the yellow productions update head over to update.yellowdashproductions.com sign up for my email list you'll be the first to know the date and the time of future live streams well fellow explorers really enjoyed hanging out with y'all for the last hour now you know what it's like to travel to vancouver and victorian fabulous british columbia it is great there's few crowds they'll have to put up with a few pandemic restrictions but where are you going to go to in the world that you don't have any of those so stay tuned for my whole vancouver and victoria series if this was your first time here subscribe so you get all those in your inbox if you're interested in them if you enjoyed this video please give it a like really helps me out helps the youtube algorithm and as usual i won't say goodbye because i'll see you in the next video [Music] everyone else [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Yellow Productions

Views: 9,487

Keywords: canada, canada travel, canada reopening, vancouver, vancouver travel, travel vancouver, vancouver reopening, reopening vancouver, vancouver restrictions, traveling to vancouver

Id: _OhTJKjnr_g

Length: 63min 19sec (3799 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2021