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!