Vancouver

We spent a day or two last week pondering options for an impromptu weekend, but settled on Vancouver. We found a reasonably affordable room (fortunately, everything in Canada is 30% off these days). We refreshed our list of highly recommended restaurants and M sent out a call on Facebook for more ideas.

Friday afternoon we drove up. It was pretty gray and wet all weekend, but that wasn't too much of a problem. The Subaru, the Canada Line, and all the places we went were waterproof - with just short patches of drizzle in between.

Our rooms were at the Sandman Signature in Richmond - we all used to routinely stay here before heading for Salt Spring so we could play in the pool with the big slide. Friday night we took the train into town and headed for Gastown. We checked out a couple of galleries of First Nations Art where I could lust after pieces by Susan Point (others, too). We checked out the beach at Crab Park. And then we had dinner at Cuchillo, which was really, really good.

We took the Canada Line back to Richmond and walked over the Night Market. Which was very, very different. Sort of a big Asian midway - although mainly booths, not rides. We were too stuffed to eat anything, although there were plenty of options (many quite strange, at least to us). And the merchandise definitely had sort of a corny asian theme - cell phone cases, tinted contact lenses, very cheap short socks with cartoon characters. We were able to leave without spending anything.

Saturday, we drove into town, had Belgian Waffles at Nero's on Robson, drove around a very wet Stanley Park and then checked out the downtown library (or at least the atrium, where M splurged at the used book sale, spending at least a couple of dollars (Canadian dollars) to buy several books. Then to Kitsilano and Comedy of Errors at Bard on the Beach. Which was really nicely done - and I loved the steam punk setting. We hung out at a coffee shop for a bit (for WiFi - our cell phones don't work in Canada) then had dinner at Maenam (Thai, also very good).

Sunday, we drove back into town again and had brunch at Twisted Fork on Granville. From there we went over to Canada Place to Fly Over Canada, which was fun, but would have been better had it been much longer!

And then we drove back to Seattle. And that was it.