Happy Hump Day

Wednesday saw us start the day getting massages at Ark Underground. I'd bought the massages at a discount on LivingSocial.com . . . I'd paid for shiatsu massages but they only had a single masseuse trained in shiatsu, so if we wanted simultaneous massages one or both of us was going to have to opt for the Thai massage . . . so we did. Not sure if anybody out there has ever had a Thai massage before, but if you haven't, I highly recommend it. Consider the following image which gives a great visual for what we experienced:

After massages, we took a visit to Granville Island, which has probably become our favorite place in Vancouver. We intended to start our visit with lunch at Edible Canada, which, after much wandering around, we eventually found.

It turns out the bistro had just opened up less than a week ago, and it was totally up our ally . . . locally sourced food, beer, wine and spirits:

an open kitchen where the chefs were hard at work keeping up with the lunch rush (the lunch rush came a little later)

and delicious preparations:

Roasted baby beets with whipped goat cheese and mustard greens

Burger with smoked bacon, aioli, cheddar, caramelized onions, and house-made pickles. Also, a side of duck-fat fries.

DMM, if you're reading this, I wanted to save the pickle for you.

 At one point, I excused myself to use the restroom, which I normally wouldn't take the time to write about, except that in this case I found the following sign in the co-ed restroom:

No peeing allowed?

Naturally, I ignored it.

After lunch, we walked over to the Public Market and walked around for a bit. On our way to the market, I snapped a few pictures of the Vancouver skyline:

We arrived at the market and discovered it is full of artisan vendors: fine meat markets, fish-mongers, butchers, bakers, chocolatiers, etc. At one point we watched a butcher wheeling in 4 whole lambs in for processing. The market was kind of like Pike Place in Seattle, except perhaps generally higher quality and nobody was throwing fish around. Pike Place seemed like it was filled with tourists; the market on Granville seemed like a place the locals frequent.

One place we spent a fair amount of time was at the Granville Island Tea Company

which, we discovered, does 80% of its business online to customers in the US. At any rate, we had a pleasant chat with Liam. He let us smell lots of different teas, and was very generous when measuring out the 50 g of tea we ordered . . . I was watching the scale and it was closer to 75 g for each of the two varieties we ordered. He also gave us some free samples, which were probably about 50 g each . . . for free! Thanks Liam!

After we finished with the tea, we browsed the market for a bit more, had a drink at Granville Island Brewing Company, then headed back to our car since our three hours of free parking was coming to an end. But we knew we had to come back, since we had only seen perhaps half of the island.

On tap for Thursday: Wine tasting!

Tuesday, redeemed.

Monday night we decided that on Tuesday morning we would drive to Whistler. After what has become a typical morning routine of coffee . . . breakfast . . . lounging . . . etc . . . we got in the car and embarked on the 2.5 hour drive to Whistler. It was a gorgeous drive, winding along the coast, through Squamish valley, and finally into Whistler itself. We arrived right around lunch time. So our first task was finding somewhere to eat lunch. Our first thought was to hit up Whistler Brewing Company, but after finding it, we discovered they didn't open until 2:00. The next idea was to hit up pub that had good online reviews, but after walking in and looking at the menu, we decided to pass. The third idea was to hit up a sushi restaurant, but after driving over and walking in, we discovered that they were a cash-only operation, of which we possessed none. By this time we were ready to start gnawing on our arms, so we settled for Boston Pizza which was in the same shopping center as the sushi restaurant. Ugh. I really pride myself on trying not to eat at chains, especially whilst on vacation . . . I love checking out all the locally-owned restaurants . . . but this time hunger and convenience won out.

Having been frustrated by all the driving around just to end up at Boston Pizza, the day got worse when we tried to find a local chocolatier, only to be frustrated by the apparent complete lack of parking near Whistler Village. We also had it as a goal to watch all the mountain biking that Whistler is allegedly known for, but were further frustrated by our inability to locate them. So having spent the better part of an hour driving around looking for things we couldn't find, we finally headed back to Whistler Brewing Company for a little tasting and tour of their facilities.

We were there a little early for the tour, so while we waited we sat in the tasting room and had a couple of samples.

Shortly thereafter, the tour commenced:

The Lauter Tun (L) and the Brew Kettle (R)

It was a small tour group, so they let us climb up the ladder to inspect the lauter tun.

The fermentation tank, capacity 30 hL.

The Sample Cock on the Bright Beer Tank. Yes, that's really what it's called.

Filtration system. Yes, their beer is cold-filtered.

Canning System.

The highlight of the tour was when he explained that the lauter tun & brew kettle had bought from a little brewery in Nevada called Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and asked if anybody had heard of it. I graciously explained that in fact they were in California, right up the road from us. A second highlight was going back to take a picture of the sample cock and getting a sneak-peak at one of their recipe sheets. Cool.

After the tour was over, we chatted a bit with some folks in the tasting room and they gave us the beta on watching mountain bikers, so we drove back up the road to Whistler Village, found the parking lot, and walked up the hill a bit. I took a ton of pictures, here are just a few:

It started to drizzle and we were getting tired and hungry, so we decided it was time to head back to Vancouver. We had dinner at a wonderful little sushi restaurant called Sushi Mart where we had a great meal. The dining room is tiny, the menu is small, but all of the food was super-fresh and delicious. They even brought us miso soup although we had not ordered it.

We were really impressed by Sushi Mart . . . a great restaurant concept. Small dining room, quick turn-over, low prices, fresh sushi. Seems like a guaranteed money-maker.

Thus we concluded our Tuesday, and what started out as somewhat of a frustrating day was redeemed by a fun tour of the brewery, a nice walk up the mountain while watching the mountain bikers, and a lovely meal.

On tap for Wednesday: Granville Island!

Monday is Fun-day

While we watch the latest stage of the Tour de France this morning, I will blog about Monday. Monday, Monday...

We borrowed bikes from the local Bed & Breakfast, the one that rented us the cottage. We rode our borrowed bikes across an old wooden bridge, past many berry fields, and finally parked our bikes in front of the first giant "U-PICK" sign. Then we picked strawberries! I ate most of the ones I picked. Really, instead of weighing the basket for the price, they should have weighed me before, and then weighed me after.





We continued on our bike tour and made another stop for local honey. I LOVE local honey. It's one of my passions in life. When we stopped for honey we also saw cute baby goats! And one UGLY cow.


The cuteness of the goats have not deterred me from my plan to kill a goat and make goat tacos for my 30th birthday in November. The plan is still on.

We then rode our rusty old bikes to a fruit winery, Westham Island Estate Winery. Oh my goodness, I loved their raspberry wine. We bought a bottle of that, and a bottle of blueberry port.

My bike had the basket - FAIL - so we loaded my bike down with strawberries, honey, and wine, and rode back to the cottage, exhausted.

We spent a lazy afternoon reading. John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany for me (which is taking me FOREVER to finish, because it's so layered and literarily chewy), and a Russian spy thriller for Jason.


This post has taken me all morning to write! I keep getting up to make coffee, drink coffee, eat a raspberry, pray and journal, hug Jason, make more coffee...it's time to peel myself off the window seat, put on my shoes, and go bird-watching and kayaking this afternoon.

Goodbye Victoria, Hello Vancouver

While Jason cooks me dinner, I will blog about Sunday. He's making scallops and asparagus, per my request. And I'm DANG hungry right now, so here we go with some hunger-clouded blogging...

What did we do on Sunday? Let me remember back...

We went to church at the Anglican cathedral in Victoria, Christ Church Cathedral. I would have preferred the Catholic cathedral, but those Catholics don't make it easy to follow along, and I didn't marry a Catholic, so Anglican it was.


I like to go to church on vacation. I like the weekly rhythm. I like the community. I like the comfort of the liturgy. Plus, I feel drawn like a giant magnet to old stone church buildings with bells. I seek them out on vacations. Old churches, as well as old cemetaries filled with white crosses. I scan the roads for churches and cemetaries, for their beauty and for their stories.

What else?

We packed up and got on the ferry bound for Vancouver. I read my book and took a nap, and then Jason taught me how to play gin rummy. I won each round.


(That was a lie. I lost each round.)

At around 2:30 we made it to Ladner, a little village just south of Vancouver. We're staying in a cottage with a kitchen. Neither of us wanted to eat restaurant food the whole honeymoon; we really wanted to cook for ourselves. Ergo we shopped the farmers' market/artisan market in the town square. I picked out basil and tomato for a caprese salad. Jason bought us some Hungarian sausages. We got a free loaf of fresh-baked bread when we bought a bottle of a balsamic reduction. And all of that was dinner. (Yummmmmmm. Man, I'm hungry.) We ate in the backyard that night.

While we waited for the grill and our dinner appetites, Jason and I played rummy. Again, I won.


(Again, that was a lie.)

Alas, I feel kind of sassy when I'm hungry. But the scallops and asparagus are almost ready for tonight. I know because I just walked into the kitchen to scope the scene and say thank you to the chef. And now we eat! Yahoo!

The Ghosts of Victoria Kept Us From Blogging

So a few of you have inquired via facebook what had happened to the blog . . . well, long story short: We caught the ferry from Victoria to Vancouver on Sunday at noon, and in my haste to pack up my things, I somehow missed the power adapter to my laptop, as well the whole middle-drawer of the dresser which contained all of my shirts. Needless to say, when we arrived in Vancouver (well, Ladner, actually) and I discovered what I'd left behind, I was super-irritated with myself. A quick phone call to our hotel confirmed what I'd left behind but they promised to express them over. On Monday morning, we saw a Canadian mail man literally running back and forth from his truck to the houses on his route, so we that a good omen for a quickly delivered package. Indeed, the delivery was attempted on Tuesday morning, but unfortunately we were on our way to Whistler (more on that later). So we picked up the package yesterday and now we're back online. Yay.

So . . . Saturday. On tap for Saturday was a visit to the Royal BC Museum and drinks at the Empress. The highlight of the museum for me was the Modern History exhibit in which a full-size replica of a turn-of-the-20th-century town has been built including a movie theater playing old movies:

There was also an old bike propped up outside one of the shops:

Other parts of the museum we enjoyed:

After the museum, we walked over the the Empress to have cocktails on the veranda.

Left to Right: Empress 1908 and The Original Bengal Tire

Both drinks we very light and refreshing. I especially enjoyed the froth from the egg white in the Empress 1908. We had a great view of the harbor from the veranda:

The room where the Empress hosts its high tea was right behind us, so I went inside to use the restroom and snapped some pictures while I was inside:

There was a huge yacht in the harbor so once we had finished our drinks we walked down to take a closer look:

The yacht was named Tamsen, and a little bit of googling reveals a few details: 171' long, complete automation via touchscreens, 12,000 square feet of sail area. It was really, really, impressive in person.

Not far from the boat there was a guy dressed in a Darth Vader costume playing the violin. Novel idea, except he really wasn't very good . . . and even saying that might be generous. My view is that if you're going to be a street performer, you should be bringing something unique to the table . . . and anybody could go buy a Darth Vader costume and draw a bow across the strings of a fiddle.

On the way back to the hotel, we walked past this guy:

We'd walked past this gal the day before:

We finished our walk back to the hotel, and while Carolyn rested, I drove over to a local cigar shop where the owner picked out some lovely cigars for us. We sat on our balcony, smoked the cigars and had a drink:

Finally, having spent a few days walking around Victoria, we were surprised at the number of on-street hot dog vendors. They were everywhere. So we thought we would make hotdogs for dinner:

On tap for Sunday: church at Christ Church Cathedral, and then a ferry ride over to Vancouver for the second half of our trip.