Ah, Vancouver--this is the weather on the first day of my trip. Bright, sunny, and gorgeous! Boy did it have me fooled, because for most of the rest of my trip, it was cool, cloudy, and rainy. Although it did end on a sunny weekend so really, I can't complain, and hey, any vacation is a good vacation! But I'm getting ahead of myself, because even before I got there things were looking up because for the first time ever, I got upgraded to business class on the flight out. Woo-HOOO!! I was very, very excited, because Cathay Pacific has got those individual cubicles with seats that recline completely flat into a bed. Oh man, they are so roomy compared to economy! And then of course, the food in business class is about 1000 times better...and they even set your tray with a tablecloth.
Dinner started with seared scallops on salad. This was really pretty good!
And then I had fried rice and prawns in XO sauce--this looks more like regular airplane food, but was also pretty tasty.
And then a cheese plate! I thought for sure I would stay awake through the whole flight (I mean, it is only 5ish hours) and watch movies on my relatively giant screen, but the lure of the completely reclining chair was too much to resist, and I got a couple of hours of shut-eye and almost too soon we were landing in Vancouver (they have one awesome airport, by the way.)
The next day, we went out for breakfast to The Elbow Room, which I gather is something of an institution and certainly is a place with character! I can't seem to find their rules anywhere on the Internet, but when I went up to pay, the proprietor lectured Pyota on letting a woman pay. Heehee.
Anyway, here is a picture of my breakfast, the Big Ben. Totally hit the spot!
And then we rented a Zipcar and drove out to the Camosun Bog which was smaller than I expected, but was a nice walk nevertheless. Most of the ground is, well, boggy, so there are boardwalks that run above it, with helpful signs about the kind of plants you see in a bog.
Like blueberries! Above are blueberry blossoms, and below, wild blueberries (I was very excited, but restrained myself from eating them.)
On another day, we went to Stanley Park and saw some wildlife in the form of a great blue heron (we also saw a whole lot of nests! But I didn't get any good pictures.) over by the Lost Lagoon. And of course, my favorite, the resident raccoons:
You can see a video of racoons that Pyota made, too. I love them, they're so cute!
I had lunch with Py a couple of times during the work week, at places like Boss, which is a totally HK style cafe where I had the most enormous serving of pork chop rice noodle soup ever (it came in a pie plate!). Above is a more reasonable serving of Taiwanese style beef noodle soup from Favor Eat in the Crystal Mall. So delicious.
And of course, a bubble tea. But really I just wanted to take a picture of the lid, as it depicts one of my favorite activities--eating watermelon. And on that note, time to go! The really good food pictures are coming up in the next post....
P.S. I cannot wait to see the last Harry Potter movie. I know I'm going to cry like a little girl. Maybe I shouldn't have admitted that....
2 comments:
I've had Oh Canada in my head all day (not sure why) so reading this seems appropriate. ^_^ And yay! More raccoons!
Haha, Oh Canada?? I only know the first line or so... I love those raccoons! They're so cute. People seem to leave peanuts and stuff for them and it's hilarious to watch them digging around with their little hands.
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