vancouver again, plus cascades
Apr. 8th, 2009 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishMaybe at some point I'll even get around to talking about my very cool weekend, featuring belly-dancing, aerial antics, lots of books, and new Girlyman songs. (Plus "Superior," which I don't think I'd ever heard live. Good stuff.)
Photos will be up eventually.
After staggering into work on Tuesday and more or less coasting by for two days, I flew back out of Dulles and through O'Hare on Wednesday afternoon. Vancouver was as pleasant an airport the second time through, though for some reason the flight from Chicago didn't provide us with customs forms. The waiting area before Customs was full of Americans laboriously declaring that they had nothing to declare, while a handful of Canadian customs guards grumbled about how flights out of O'Hare never give out the customs forms properly.
Breezed through Customs and was met on the far side by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nixve, which was quite nice. We spent the night in the same hotel in the same sketchy, under-construction part of town. (They'd finished paving the street out front, but still weren't letting cars through.)
The next morning we wandered off through the rain to the crepe restaurant. We got the same waitress I'd had before, and she was still cheerful and friendly and awesome. She brought me a Nutella crepe by mistake (oh darn) and then gave us a tuna-and-cheese crepe on the house ("we're supposed to just throw it away when we make one by accident, but you look like you'd enjoy it"). Amazing.
About the time we were stuffed so full of crepes we couldn't lift our forks, the power went out for several blocks. We paid our (hand-written and -calculated) bill eventually and wandered down to the waterfront. Passed several intersections where the traffic lights were out, and cars were quietly taking turns, in the rain, without any traffic cops or anything.
Took the Aquabus to the market and wandered around in there for awhile. Bought supplies for future dinners and generally oohed and aahed over things. Then Aquabused back and drove out to Stanley Park for a walk around the beaver pond (black squirrels!), and back to the States. Customs was kind enough to relieve us of our green onions on the grounds that there's a moth infestation in Canada, and also of our lemongrass, on the grounds that it looks enough like a green onion that the moths might get confused. Oh well.
K's spending the year at the North Cascades Institute, high in the mountains, where she can learn to teach by teaching. It's a neat thing; just a little far from civilization.
So we had to leave Vancouver early to make sure we were back for the graduation of the class before K in her grad program the next day. It was, um, a ceremony. I expect it was more meaningful to the people involved.
Satyrday we went out tromping in the snow. Moderately poor planning on my part meant that I had boots but no snow pants, which is a problem when the snow's waist-high. Saw some beautiful mountains, a large hydroelectric dam with accompanying lake (not really frozen, alas), and enough snow to tide me over for a few days. That night we went back out to look at more stars than I'd seen in years.
Sunday we packed up and headed back down to Seattle for the obligatory bookstore wandering (mmm books), and then back on the airplane and home to yet more rain.
I miss Vancouver. I miss the northwest. I'll miss it even more when summer gets going in earnest; it took about a year to remember how much I hate DC summers. I also miss vacation, I think. I'm burning out again. Been displeased with work and life for, oh, months now, but it's worse these days.
And of course I missnixve.Update: photos now available.
Photos will be up eventually.
After staggering into work on Tuesday and more or less coasting by for two days, I flew back out of Dulles and through O'Hare on Wednesday afternoon. Vancouver was as pleasant an airport the second time through, though for some reason the flight from Chicago didn't provide us with customs forms. The waiting area before Customs was full of Americans laboriously declaring that they had nothing to declare, while a handful of Canadian customs guards grumbled about how flights out of O'Hare never give out the customs forms properly.
Breezed through Customs and was met on the far side by
nixve, which was quite nice. We spent the night in the same hotel in the same sketchy, under-construction part of town. (They'd finished paving the street out front, but still weren't letting cars through.)The next morning we wandered off through the rain to the crepe restaurant. We got the same waitress I'd had before, and she was still cheerful and friendly and awesome. She brought me a Nutella crepe by mistake (oh darn) and then gave us a tuna-and-cheese crepe on the house ("we're supposed to just throw it away when we make one by accident, but you look like you'd enjoy it"). Amazing.
About the time we were stuffed so full of crepes we couldn't lift our forks, the power went out for several blocks. We paid our (hand-written and -calculated) bill eventually and wandered down to the waterfront. Passed several intersections where the traffic lights were out, and cars were quietly taking turns, in the rain, without any traffic cops or anything.
Took the Aquabus to the market and wandered around in there for awhile. Bought supplies for future dinners and generally oohed and aahed over things. Then Aquabused back and drove out to Stanley Park for a walk around the beaver pond (black squirrels!), and back to the States. Customs was kind enough to relieve us of our green onions on the grounds that there's a moth infestation in Canada, and also of our lemongrass, on the grounds that it looks enough like a green onion that the moths might get confused. Oh well.
K's spending the year at the North Cascades Institute, high in the mountains, where she can learn to teach by teaching. It's a neat thing; just a little far from civilization.
So we had to leave Vancouver early to make sure we were back for the graduation of the class before K in her grad program the next day. It was, um, a ceremony. I expect it was more meaningful to the people involved.
Satyrday we went out tromping in the snow. Moderately poor planning on my part meant that I had boots but no snow pants, which is a problem when the snow's waist-high. Saw some beautiful mountains, a large hydroelectric dam with accompanying lake (not really frozen, alas), and enough snow to tide me over for a few days. That night we went back out to look at more stars than I'd seen in years.
Sunday we packed up and headed back down to Seattle for the obligatory bookstore wandering (mmm books), and then back on the airplane and home to yet more rain.
I miss Vancouver. I miss the northwest. I'll miss it even more when summer gets going in earnest; it took about a year to remember how much I hate DC summers. I also miss vacation, I think. I'm burning out again. Been displeased with work and life for, oh, months now, but it's worse these days.
And of course I miss
nixve.Update: photos now available.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 12:29 am (UTC)Are these different from the DC variety of black squirrels?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 04:02 am (UTC)They're actually dark brown, of course. The one with his head in the chip bag was easy to see but didn't photograph very well
no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 07:35 pm (UTC)I have now survived two winters in the colder-than-Vancouver (but warmer-than-Winnipeg) part of Canada, and I still haven't managed to acquire the kind of snow pants that most adults here own. They would in fact be useful. Probably next year.