van city

We're in Vancouver BC. Drove up to Bellingham last night after work, arriving after midnight to spend the night at Dan's mom's house. This morning we finished the journey up to Vancouver, and after parking at the hotel, Dan, Abby, Aspen, Erik and I took a bus downtown. We walked up Robson to the HK-style eatery Erik and I enjoyed last time: Hun's House of Noodles. Then we walked back up Robson, up to Canada Place along the water to ogle the gargantuan cruise ships, through grody Gastown and cracked-out China town, and all the way down Main Street back to our hotel. That's a looong walk, and I enjoyed it.

Our idea for the evening is to have dinner at the Naam and go to the Asian night market in Richmond, recommended by Erik's coworker Nu.

vancouver day one

Erik's coworker Gerry was originally to be our guide, but he bagged out the night before. We never really got out of the lax mindspace to organize anything, so it's no surprise that we started out late: almost 11am.

Traffic wasn't bad until about halfway to Seattle, in the middle of nowhere. Erik phoned around to see if anyone could find out if an accident was causing the slowdown. Just when he got his mom on the phone, traffic loosened up and we took off.

I took the wheel around Olympia. Getting over the border was quick and easy. I actually felt some panic nearing the line, as though it would be a difficult thing to drive over, or I wouldn't understand road signs on the other side, or some untold foreign difficulty would thwart me.

I don't drive much when I travel. Erik has much more experience with winter driving, and gets carsick reading in the car. I, on the other hand, am easily distracted by cool places to stop, not very aggressive, and can navigate the hell out of a map. It's a good partnership.

Anyhow, it's an odd event to drive into another country, for the insular US of A.

I half expected everything to be different on the other side, half expected nothing to be. It was a bit darker. Street and traffic signs were smaller and looked older. Different font, perhaps. Reading metric measurements was a bit odd.

Then we hit insane traffic, still a ways outside Vancouver. Stopped. For an hour. It took 1 1/2 hours to slog through five lanes merging into one through a short tunnel, for no apparent reason. The drive through the city, downtown and our hotel wasn't bad at all.

We parked in a huge garage, called a "parkade" in Canadian, and checked into the Lamplighter. After choosing a room and resting a bit, we decided to trek out to a vegan-friendly pizza place. It was a bit far away, and we had no maps (since Gerry was going to be our guide), so the sweet, fumbley guy at the front desk called Rebellious Tomato Organic Gourmet Pizza for us to get directions. I ended up teaching him how to use Google Maps.

Erik drove, we both ate tasty curry-sauced pizza, then went back to our hotel to hit the hay. But as Erik turned the key to open the door to our room, I realized that the music-- coming from the nightclub attached to the hotel, two floors below-- was actually good. We sat in the room for a moment before deciding to go down to the bar. We had a couple of beers, watched the rest of In Flight Safety's set, and sat through a bit of the next band. The best part was people watching. Such an odd place, in the most mundane details. We went upstairs to bed around 1am, and I slept great on the saggy bed with the ear plugs that came with the room.

foreignsgiving

Left the country for the long Thanksgiving weekend. I have to say, it's my preferred method for dealing with holidays.

It's a bit of a farce, though. Erik and I drove up to Vancouver BC. We've got my car, all of our electronic devices, and we can still use our cell phones. At the same time, Canada is definitely not the 52nd state (Puerto Rico is 51 to my mind) we joke about. More on the differences and our adventures later.

tofurkery

People are invariably surprised by this, but I love Thanksgiving. A holiday based on cooking and eating? The only thing that could make it better would be costumes.

This year Erik and I are driving up to Vancouver BC during the long holiday weekend, so we'll miss all the feasts. That's why I was very excited when John invited us over last night for a pre-Thanksgiving tofurkey feast. I guess that should be Tofurkey(tm).

Besides tofurkey, there was gravy, fresh veggie salad, quinoa and tempeh salad, a risotto corn dish, a rice dish with accompanying collard greens, and I brought mashed potatoes. Yum! They also had glogg, which was incredibly tasty, like warm, spiced cherry wine. Love those Swedes.

This, however, is not where our Thanksgiving ends. I'm picking up my own Tofurkey and dinner rolls from our favorite bread bakery tonight after work. We'll probably devour it next weekend.

I'm pretty excited about Vancouver. Erik's coworker who has spent time there and was supposed to go with us bailed, so now the trip has got a more adventurous feel. And I printed out a list of 101 vegetarian restaurants, cos now I know I can drag Erik around to them. My main hope is to walk around alot and see neighborhoods. Hopefully Vancouver is nearly as wonderful and quirky as sweet Portland.