Vacation photos

Because it's always pretty in Vancouver, that's why. :)

Walking around the Third Beach area of the Sea Wall at Stanley Park

On one of only two or three cloudy days while we were there (looking out to Indian Arm from Burnaby Mountain)

Funky sculpture

More funky sculptures, this one made with armature and plants

Wouldn't be Vancouver without good food: this was at a Persian restaurant

And this was at a Chinese restaurant

Dinner at home at my dad's house - roast pork, roast duck, and choi sum

And a lovely day at Deep Cove

I've still not decided whether to come back regularly to this blog. I think I'll save it for text or photo-heavy posts. I prefer to keep my WordPress blog lightweight. 

Hope you're all having a great summer!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A few more gratuitous vacation photos

I know: it's the first Monday of the month and I don't have a video of anything. I've been busy playing catch-up, doing laundry, and hosting out-of-town friends since we got back from vacation. So, you've been spared! 

Instead, I'll continue to show you pretty pictures...prettier than I am, anyway...of Vancouver. Not too many more because I only took a total of around 25 photos there. I am #pathetic.

 My sister is currently working at...

Crescent Beach

Before we picked her up at work one day, we took a walk along the more touristy section:

Crescent Beach proper

 One place we'd not been to before...

Deas Island...more of a peninsula

 An area close to my alma mater is the always pretty

Spanish Banks

Took my Dad on a ride and stopped...

on Burnaby Mountain, by my alma mater's rival, Simon Fraser University

 We got The Best salmon at...

farmers market at Trout Lake close to where my Dad lives

Don't those photos make you want to visit Vancouver too? :) Have a great week!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

My so-called vacation

As usual, a vacation to Vancouver is only partly a vacation. This time, it was marred by sadness. My uncle (my mother's sister's husband) died while we were there visiting my father and sister. My uncle had been in declining health anyway, but he was diagnosed with pneumonia and pulmonary fibrosis, and likely died from complications of those two things.

We were able to visit him the evening we arrived, so we got to say good-bye to him one last time. The funeral service/burial was a lovely service: a family-only affair where we sat with our own thoughts and offered comfort to my aunt, my cousins, and my cousin J's in-laws. It was the complete opposite of the stressful and crazy circus that was my mother's funeral. We didn't have beer and barbecue like my cousin S promised, but we had a nice dim sum afterward - still just family - and it was, all in all, the best funeral I've attended.

The weather cooperated, as you can see from the photo of the burial. Apparently, they had a wet and cold spring in that region of the world, but 2 days after we arrived, the weather turned, becoming sunny and warm. Nice warm, about mid 70s F, instead of horrid warm, about 100+ F like it was back home. We did do some hikes and took a few pictures of butterflies (Lorquin's Admiral)

birds (a nice profile shot of one Cedar Waxwing and a nice butt shot of the other)

four-legged mammals (mule deer)

and two-legged mammals (wow, there was still snow on Mount Seymour).

Then, of course, there's the food. I tell people we visit Vancouver because of my family, but, truthfully, we go there for the food. Yes, that would include durian (entirely hubby's fault this time)

 and chicken feet, which I can't get enough of and order every single time we go to dim sum.

As usual, we went to Steveston for the guys to rent bikes and ride along the water. Steveston is the cutest town that's pretty much an extension of Richmond, but has a much slower pace. The guys found the recreated village of the fishing community that used to thrive there, complete with a chicken house that still has two hens and one rooster, as an example of how the villagers used to live. What was most interesting to me was the bunkhouse that was temporary home to the Chinese labor that they used to bus in from the neighboring areas such as Vancouver:

But most importantly, we spent a lot of time with my dad. When mom was still alive, we didn't spend half as much time with him. He is really a dear man, but boy does he drive us nuts. Mom was sharp as a professional chef's knife, but dad...well, he's smart at certain things, but he doesn't have that all-round intelligence that mom had. We used to rely on mom's help to talk to him (she translated things we didn't know how to say and got him to tell a story straight), but now we have to talk directly with him. Somehow, we're still smiling...hah! Here we are, not throttling dad. ;) My sister, Monica, proprietress of the cool soap shop, Soap Sudsations, is on the left in the photo.

Guess I've bored you enough with tales of my vacation. Have you taken vacation (or "holiday" if you're part of the Commonwealth) this summer yet? Where did you go and did you have fun or need a vacation after your vacation just to recuperate?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Get ready to be inundated

Because it's always feast or famine, people!

No, sorry; it's actually because I tend to put things off and then throw everything into the pot...or the blog post.

So, let's rush through our Vancouver trip. Luckily for you, unlike some of my friends who are good about taking a million photos each time they go on vacation, I think we (the kids, hubby, and I) took a total of maybe 30 pictures. And I'm not sharing all of them - you'll be grateful to know that, for example, I'm not sharing the photo of the dead caterpillar ds#1 found in his salad or his stunning photos of various slugs they found while hiking.

Speaking of hiking, no trip to Vancouver is complete without a trek to Lynn Headwaters in North Vancouver:

Now that ds#1 is feeling more confident with birding by ear (and is really good with IDing by sight), we're doing more and more birding outings.  We went to Whytecliff Park, which we hadn't been to in years, and were rewarded with lovely views and some unusual birds.

Hubby likes to bring the boys to wholesome places for birding too (click to see larger photo):

That place (Wreck Beach, in case anyone wants to know) is pretty gorgeous though:

We also went to check out my mom's headstone at her grave site.  My sister and I helped our dad order the tombstone back in November. It arrived in February when I was already back home, so this was the first time I've seen it.  Dad wrote out the Chinese characters that they used to make lettering with.  I think it looks pretty nice.  And I think it's pretty generous of dad, who is an atheist, to honor mom, who was Catholic, by putting religious symbols on the stone.

Besides Lynn Headwaters, a trip to Vancouver would not be complete without eating authentic Chinese food...and lots of it.  My kids have gotten really fond of chicken feet now, so we order it at every dim sum:

This next item was a first for the boys (and hubby) - and a warning to the squeamish: you might want to skip down to the garden photos - care to guess what it is?

If you guessed "duck tongue", you are absolutely right!  Most older cultures still adhere to the "waste not, want not" ideal.

The funky thing is that inside of a duck tongue is some sort of bone or cartilage which makes the tongue stiff.  Consider this is your anatomy lesson for the day.  Traveling is very enlightening. 

We're back home now, in not-as-exotic southern Indiana.  But, we have fresh food back home, so even if we don't have anything unusual, it is all tasty.  Here's hubby between the broccoli and corn:

And what was hubby doing with a pitchfork, besides posing as model for an American Gothic revival? Digging potatoes, of course!

A few more random garden photos...summer squash that got too big while we were away in Vancouver enjoying the duck tongue:

More corn because we can never get enough:

The frisee, gone to seed...but look at how pretty the flowers are!

Not as pretty as the frisee flowers, but lovely in its own way is the asparagus forest:

Hubby put our indoor banana tree out in the garden where it's been enjoying the killer heat and humidity. I'm glad something is.

Aren't the cherry tomatoes adorable?

Well, enough of my babbling for one post. I plan to post shorter, less gross posts more regularly.  (Was that confusing to use less and more within 2 words of each other?)

If I've not already visited your blog, tell me about your vacation/summer/garden, and I'll swing by for a look-see!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Vancouver - a photo-heavy post

Yeah, yeah...it took me forever to finally post this. Life gets in the way of a lot of things, but it's all good.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I must have a tome of War and Peace proportions here. Hope your connection is fast because there are a lot of photos to load!

In June, we took a trip to visit my folks and sister in Vancouver, per usual. My mom had been ill for a while and this was a trip mainly to see her. As it turns out, she's has recovered from her near-death experience pretty well and was perky, quirky, and, best of all, willing to cook.

So I begin my Vancouver post with, what else?, food. When we arrived, Mom was at dialysis, but she had made one of my favorites: salty pork and thousand year old egg congee. See the gelatin-y brown mess that is stinky egg manna?Mom also picked up a couple of starfruit, which no longer has a *wow* factor due to being over-circulated in North America. Still tasty though.
One of the best things about Vancouver is the wacky Asian foods there. We try to hit T&T, an Asian grocery store, at least once while we're in Van. Yum...cow stomach, anyone?
A grocery store with tankfuls of live fish...now, why doesn't our local Kroger carry these things?

My sister (not me for a change) craved this, so we bought a big, honking jar of it and pretty much polished it off in less than 2 weeks.
After eating, and eating, and eating, and...you know...we took some walks and hikes. This is Minnekata Provincial Park:
And look! They have bears at the park. We always hike loudly in B.C.
No visit to Vancouver would be complete without one slug photo.
This is my old elementary school (ecole, en francais) that I'm still not fond of after all these years. I did grades 6 and 7 there. My poor sister was warped for grades 2 to 7. They were doing renovations to make it more earthquake-proof.
Walked by a comic book store downtown, and thought of all my geeky FB friends.
The Vancouver Art Gallery...I'd not been in it since a pre-dh date.
We finally broke down and got a whole durian.



You know, it really isn't bad tasting, but you have to plug up your nose to eat it. It's like a sweeter, and stinkier, version of pawpaw.
And it has giant pits.
This is the building where they had the speed skating event of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Right next to it is a new development going in. It will be modern and amazing and many of the nicer apartment/condos were going for a cool $1M and up.There were a lot of funky sculptures around town by Chinese artists. This is the tai-chi cut-out sculpture.
But back to the important things, like chocolate. Stopped by a really cool store called Chocolate Arts where they have a giant chocolate dinosaur in the window.
Bought a box of very pricey, but very tasty chocolates from them. According to my sister, they use Valrhona chocolates. Excellent!
Because we watched the recent winter Olympics with the boys, we thought a trip to Whistler with them might be a fun thing to do to see where they did the skiing and bob-sledding events. Click on the photo below to see the sign in English and a Native American language called "Squamish".
Stopped at Porteau Cove Provincial Park; the scenery is fantastic:








A view of the Stawamus Chief as we head toward Squamish:
At Shannon Falls Provincial park:
Another view of the Chief from within the Park:

Finally at Whistler:



What's a girl to do when she can't get her hands on an elephant ear? Buy a beaver tail! (That's dh's hand for size comparison.)
Black Tusk on the way back to Vancouver from Whistler:

Then, just a whole series of pretty snow-covered mountain photos...partly for Tom in response to his Norway photos. :)










Oh, and a corresponding sign, on the way back to Vancouver (click to enlarge)...
We always head to Spanish Banks, close to my alma mater, UBC.


My kids love jellyfish, so Mom tries to order it for them when we go out to eat.
Gratuitous Stanley Park shot...
Had dinner at The Teahouse at Stanley Park. It was The Teahouse for years and years, briefly changed ownership and name to Sequoia Grill, but now it's back to The Teahouse. Never let it be said that people aren't sticklers for tradition.
This was my truly incredible meal of sablefish at The Teahouse.
Ds#1 took a pic of his equally amazing meal there too. It was a smoked salmon flatbread.
Evert visit to Vancouver we take a hike at Lynn Headwaters. This is a steep area that one has to rappel down:
Lots of tall conifers...
There's an open area where we usually head back:
Some lichen covered rocks...
Funky mushrooms:
The guys usually take a bike ride from Steveston. They rode all the way to the skating oval in Richmond.
An cormorant sunning itself by the waterfront:
Ds#2 imitating bizarre statues at Coal Harbour:
Lunch at one of our favorite sushi places, Tsunami Sushi. The boys (all of us, really) like the floating boats that the selections come on.
My sister eating mini cupcakes by the waterfront:
More waterfront photos:


This was the Olympic "bonfire"...

A green roof:

Saw the biggest-*ssed cruise ship at the harbor; it was like 4 city blocks long!



Since I started this post with food, it's only fitting that I should end it with food. My mom likes to get these pastries - they're filled with bbq pork and taste so good fresh out of the (toaster) oven:
I hope this was a lot less painful to look at than it was to put together. ;)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams