At the beginning of the year my boss had asked us if we would want to go to Vancouver in March for their annual dental conference. We all thought that would be pretty cool to go to a dental conference somewhere other then Calgary, but we didn't quite believe it until we got our flight confirmations. I know its pretty bad that we weren't totally expecting to be going until we saw the confirmations, but oh well what can you do.
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| This is a picture of our hotel from the conference center (the Marriott) |
Thursday March 10th
Was the first day of course taking, which was the day that we arrived in Vancouver. Some of the other people that I talked to there had gotten there on Wednesday so they could attend the morning courses on Thursday with out being late. We were definitely late to the conference because we took the 7:00am flight from Calgary to Vancouver so arrived in Vancouver at about 7:20/ 7:30am. Then we had to of course wait for our bags which takes about 30minutes, while we were waiting though our boss got us a limo to take to our hotel (honestly wasn't expecting that).Once we got to our hotel we had to figure out the rooms and who's names were under which room and all that stuff, however we were not able to "check in" until 11am. So the took our bags and put them in storage so we wouldn't have to drag them around with us at the dental conference.
We then walked over to the Convention center and got our bags and itineraries and looked around the place and found some places to sit down so we could look over the different courses. My boss already wondered off at this point so it was just us 4 ladies (which was fine with us). We didn't pop in to any of the morning classes because they really were all full and who likes to have that annoying person walk into a seminar and cause a distraction? We didn't want to be that person. So at 11am we went back to the hotel to put our stuff up in our rooms. Here is the room I stayed in.
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| One of the beds |
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| The shower |
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| The bathtub which neither of us used. |
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| Spacious counter! |
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| This was the view from our hotel room window, we were on the 15th floor. |
After that we went for lunch and we were able to beat the rush which was great! In the afternoon we all went to a course, Stacy and I went to one and Taylor and Daisy went to a different one.
For Dinner our boss took us out for dinner which was really nice of him. This is what I had.
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| Yum! Dynamite Roll |
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| Me, Stacy, Daisy and Taylor at dinner |
Friday March 11th
This morning Taylor and I both slept in (only till about 8:30am) and we watched the news because it was showing what had happened in Japan and it was saying that the Vancouver coast had a warning for possible tsunami. (But no tsunami came which was really good, we just had really cloudy gray, rain weather. But what else can you expect from Vancouver in the middle of March.) It was so shocking to see what happened in Japan, at that point they didn't really have numbers of people that were injured, missing or dead. It was a bit of a freaky morning but we knew that we were safe where we were.
We went early again for lunch and brought our lunches up to where our next seminar was going to be. We wanted to be there early because yesterdays seminar was so full that people had to sit on the floor and stand at the back. After we had our lunch we had lots of time before the seminar actually started so Stacy has this really fun game on her phone called jumble line (its letters that are mixed up and you have to move them around to make words). Let me tell you we had so much fun doing this that we were laughing so much that I'm sure everyone that had passed us was probably thinking we were crazy.
Later tonight Stacy, Taylor and I had gone out for dinner just the 3 of us to a Chinese restaurant that we were told was really good (Daisy had gone out with some of her friends in Vancouver). I thought my chow-main was good but Stacy and Taylor didn't really end up liking their food. Funny story for you though, when we got there we saw that they had a huge fish tank that had live crab and shrimp and a dead fish. Ya the fish was dead, it was upside down and it's eyes were glazed over. It was really gross, but we went and sat down because well none of us were going to have fish. About 10 minutes after we sat down Stacy went to the bathroom and on her way back she said that they had flipped the fish over because there was a net on top of the tank now and the fish was up right. As we were finishing our meals the table beside us got there food and it was a really stinky fish and we looked at each other thinking did they use that dead fish? Not much long after that did we pay the bill and were leaving, on our way out we looked at the fish tank and the fish was gone! They totally were given that dead fish that who knows how long it was dead for. It was gross but we couldn't help our selves from laughing.
DQ in it. I had a caramel sundae which is definitely one of my favorite treats! We walked around the mall for a little bit and bought only a few little things and then we ventured back to our hotel. We did get a little bit lost but eventually found our way back. We stayed up really late not even realizing what time it was but we figured we might as well since tomorrow we will be going home.
Saturday March 12th
Today we are going home so Taylor and I decided to have a leisurely morning and ate the rest of the snacks that I packed with me and got all of our things packed and ready to go. We had to check out at 12pm and our flight wasn't until 3pm so we got them to hold our suite cases again while we went for lunch. Just the 4 of us had lunch together and then we went back to the hotel to head to the air port. (Stacy didn't come with us because she had a later flight).
We got another limo ride to the airport and we were on time so we started signing in on the computers and one of the West Jet "helpers" came up to us and asked which flight we were checking in to. So we told him the 3pm and he said that the flight was canceled. CANCELED!!!! What do you mean canceled? We didn't get any warning about this other wise we wouldn't have come to the airport. He told us that the plane that we were suppose to be on was getting maintenance done and there wasn't to another plane to take it's place. We were not happy about this, but we went into the line where there was only 2 people working at the check in desks when everyone who was on the 3pm flight was waiting in line to change their ticket to a new flight. Once we got up to the counter (about an hour later) the only flight that was available was Sunday morning at 7am. Really we have to stay another day in the rain when we all had other things planned that evening and were ready to go home! Well they put us up to a hotel and gave us each $10 for our dinner (what will $10 buy you for dinner? not much) and $10 for breakfast (but their breakfast at the hotel didn't open until 6am and that is when we would have to leave the hotel). Here is what the hotel room looked like for us 3 girls to share.
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| 2 beds for 3 people can they not count? |
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| Super small bathroom! |
After we got our rooms us girls went and bought junk food because well we are allowed to if we feel like it and just watched a movie on TV. Then Stacy came to our hotel to wait with us before she had to fly out. Lucky her going home tonight. Daisy had gone out with some of her friends that live in Vancouver so it was just us 3 again so we used the $30 voucher for dinner and still had to pay extra because $10 per person doesn't really get you far with even ordering just waters. Once Stacy left it was early bed time because there was a time change happening that night so it was really going to feel like double for us since we would have another time change once back in Calgary.
Sunday March 13th
This morning was very early for me I woke up at 2am!I just couldn't sleep, so I finally got out of bed at 2:30am and had my shower and got my self ready. Then Daisy got up around 4am since Taylor wanted to keep sleeping. Then Taylor got up and got ready and we were all ready to go by 5:30am since out shuttle pick up was for 6am. While we were leaving our room we smelt cigarette smoke which was weird because this was suppose to be a non smoking hotel. So we made a comment when we checked out and then we heard one of the staff say that they had found people smoking in the stairwell. Really people its not snowing out, go out side and have your smoke instead of making everyone else breath in your second had smoke. (sorry I'm not a fan of smoking so I feel it necessary to rant about it sometimes) Well we caught our shuttle, checked our bags, got through security (which was a bit slow) and headed for our terminal so we would be ready to go. We went to go and try to use our breakfast vouchers that west jet gave us ($10each again) but the only place passed security didn't take them. Really what was the point of that. Anyways, we got on the plane and we were going to be in Calgary again in just over an hour. The cool thing about our flight was that one of the pilots really needed to get back to Calgary because he wife was in labor! We got home safe and sound and then my busy Sunday started.
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