Food, glorious food!

As I sat down to write this latest update on our Canadian adventures, I thought to myself "gee, we haven't really done anything interesting to write about this week" .... and then I remembered we'd managed to consume double our weight in a variety of delicious food - hooray! - so here goes ...

I'm happy to report I am blogging alone, at lunch time this Monday morning as Steve is working (I know - miracle!) and I'm job hunting (oh how the tables will turn once he starts his own blog!). I've found heaps of admin jobs to apply for so I'll get to that in a minute!

Although we've been trying to cut down on unnecessary spending of late (because we need to save for San Fran this weekend), food is of course essential for life and coincidentally pulled pork sandwiches fall into the category of 'food'. Last week Steve took me on a day date to the pulled pork sandwich van in the heart of downtown and yes, they tasted as good as they look! I'm not a lover of pork at all (only Helen's roast normally) but this sandwich was pretty good! I think we had soup for dinner to compensate!

One of those is mine porker!! (pun not intentional!)

Delicious sandwich.

Friday night I was desperate to achieve something for the week, so we headed off to dinner at Guu Japanese restaurant (it's pretty much Japanese tapas) so I could cross one thing off my giant list of things to do in Vancouver. Dave & Missy came along too and we had a fun night eating all kinds of interesting sashimi and other uncooked and cooked goodness. We may or may not have had waffles for dessert ...

I am also happy to report that we had a gorgeous, sunny and warm (16 degree max temps!) weekend. Saturday was spent walking around and enjoying the sunshine, bike shopping for Dave & Missy (add another two people to the list of triathlon converts care of Steven Wehlow: triathlon brain-washer) and exercising.

On Sunday we ventured over to Kitsilano to check out the farmer's markets which turned out to be an adventure! Really, it was only an adventure because neither of us had bothered to properly look at a map or take notice of street names before we left for the bus. So after two buses and about 20 minutes of walking (and thanks to my trusty nose for farmer's-markets-smell and other detective skills) we found the markets! Thankfully (to go with the theme this week) they were mostly food markets, so we bought a couple of things and had some lunch - crepes - while we sat in the sun and watched the local cricket game. Funniest thing was when we were both watching the game on and off and looked away for a second at something else there was a brilliant catch. The entire team cheered and ran over to the guy who caught it and as we quickly looked back we both said "dammit ... oh well, we'll catch the replay" and it took maybe 2 seconds for the penny to drop.

Markets.

Steve enjoying the crepey goodness.

Mmm crepe.

As you can see, there were plenty of other people out enjoying the beautiful sunshine - no one more than this guy! (... I'm pretty sure he was breathing...)

May-or-may-not-be-alive guy - enjoying the sunshine! (Cricket in background).

Sunday afternoon finished with a little more bike shopping, a car trip around University of British Columbia (UBC) - very beautiful and very impressive looking - a game of bocce at English Bay and Wings for dinner.

On Friday morning we're off to San Francisco for 4 days as Steve is participating in Escape from Alcatraz on Sunday 5th. I've started to get a few ideas together for some kind of itinerary for the remaining 3 days, one of which includes a Napa Valley wine tour which I'm pretty excited about. I've wanted to go there for quite a while now, so that's exciting. As for the triathlon, Escape from Alcatraz involves a 1.5 mile swim (from Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay),  18 mile bike ride and an 8 mile run. It's one of those triathlons that's 'on the list' for many athletes so he's pretty fortunate to be able to compete. I'll of course be there as lead Support Crew and will be trying hard not to blind everyone with my now translucent skin.  If you're interested to know more about Steve's race, click HERE.

Race report & San Fran summary to follow in the coming days!

Adventures & Origin

This week has been slightly less full-on than previous weeks, primarily because I finished up my month long stint as an executive assistant last Friday, so we're both unemployed once again. On the upside we've had a chance to do some more city exploration at our leisure! Not concerned on the job front for the moment though as Steve has a couple of potential opportunities coming up (if he wasn't so damned "over-qualified" he would've had about a million jobs by now) and I had one potential, but it was during San Francisco trip time so that wasn't going to work for me! Admin jobs are fairly easy to come by at the moment coming into summer and all, so I'm not worried.

To start with some good news for all involved, I visited my new favourite Vancouver hairdresser (although she didn't have much competition!!) last Saturday morning to rid myself of Dolly Parton/Troll/Stripper/Cheeseburger hair - what a relief! Sadly, the work required to undo the initial damage cost almost as much as it did to create the catastrophe in the first place, alas I must say goodbye (for now) to my Marc Jacobs messenger bag purchase planned for next week's San Francisco trip - boo hiss. Having said this, should the Australian dollar continue to be awesome I might still be able to justify the purchase - I'm working on it, I'll let you know.

In more good news, last Saturday (prior to my hairdresser success), we indulged in our naughty meal for the week - breakfast at the waffle cafe on Robson Street - and yes, it was most definitely worth it! Steve had the Canadian style waffle breakfast (waffle, bacon, eggs, maple syrup) while I gorged on a waffle with nutella spread, gelato, whipped cream, strawberries and maple syrup - indeed it tasted as good as it sounds! For some reason I can't upload the photos off Steve's phone, so here's one I got from the site - it's pretty much mine, but substitute the chocolate for maple syrup and add some nutella.

Waffles anyone?

Thankfully we've both been really good with our exercise of late so no worries on the porker-front. Steve has found a few trails in Stanley Park and we are both now converts of trail running. And I HATE running! It's very easy to lose time when you're running trails through a forest in the middle of a busy city (!) and there's pretty much no one in sight. We actually went for a walk up to Prospect Point (touristy, look-out spot) via the trails on Sunday which was really nice and got a couple of good photos. You get the idea of the trails anyway ...

Lions Gate Bridge (view from Prospect Point).

Trails through Stanley Park all pretty much look like this!

Tourist!

Steve spotted a raccoon sneaking off into the bushes

Steve outsmarted by said raccoon. Caught on camera.

Like the true Queensland supporters we are, we faithfully got up at 2 am and made our way over to Dave & Missy's to watch the first Origin match. Glad we did! They've got some gorgeous views from their apartment which is on the 23rd floor of a pretty impressive building just off English Bay (naturally they've got nothing on our basement views of shoes and legs!). I made Steve have a photo with Dave's big TV (I ordered him to look more enthusiastic at 5 am, prior to taking this photo ...)

That's more like it!

Views.

More views.

In other sporting news, the Canucks are in to the Stanley Cup playoff finals following their win over San Hose last night. It was a great game to watch too because we scored an equalizer with 10 seconds to go in normal game time and then scored the winning goal in double overtime. What a great time to have jumped on the bandwagon! GO CANUCKS GO!!

Things I have learned in the past 24 hours

A pre blog-post disclaimer: Brace yourselves for the most hideous images you will ever see. 

1. Never book a hair appointment on impulse.
2. Never book a hair appointment with a hairdresser named Silvana. I should've known better.
3. Never allow a 'stylist' to do your hair when her own hair resembles Shakira's 're-growth central' (Shakira - see below).

Since when did - "can you please just touch up my roots, I like to have a natural blonde look" translate to "please make me look like a stripper" or "give me Lady Gaga hair ... but YELLOWER!" or "I really love the look that albino monk in Da Vinci Code was channeling - let's do that!" or finally - "I just love cheeseburgers so much, I want my head to be a shrine to MacDonald's cheese!" ... I could go on, as you know, but I'm saving the ranting especially for my lovely fiance. He just loves to hear me rant.

Anyway, now I resemble a combination of the following:

Long and painful story short, I now have bright yellow hair. I may have had a little cry this afternoon. Thankfully I have booked in to another (recommended) hairdresser to get the issue fixed. What makes it so much worse though, is that I actually paid $50 more than I would have at Julie's (Julie - my Brisbane hairdresser) to look like a clown. Naturally, as the massive push-over I am (in all situations minus Lions arguments) I didn't even think about stepping foot back in the salon to ask for it to be fixed. It has actually been such a terrible experience that I just never even want to walk past the salon again. Oh I had it so good with Julie, why did I ever leave?!

This time I'm taking a photo of my normal hair to the appointment, just in case.

In other news we had some excitement in the street last night. Just as we were going to sleep we heard this woman scream in the street and a man yell something at her and then we heard some running and 2 police cars, lights flashing, speed around the corner. Turns out we think someone had just robbed them, they'd gone to look for the thieves and ended up running into one of them who was carrying their television! I think they caught whoever it was, but the most exciting event as a result of all the commotion was that while we were peeking out the bedroom window, we saw a skunk run across the road! It was a big, fat, awesome skunk and super cool because, again, I've never seen one in real life before! Awesome!!

So this week it's supposed to be four days of beautiful sunshine and even 21 degrees on Friday! Woohoo! We're looking forward to it and will try and make the most of the long weekend ahead. Steven also managed to score a temp job for two days so we'll have some weekend spending money! We have plans to do the Chinatown night markets on Friday night and then no doubt indulge in some outdoors activities - perhaps a little hiking (though it'll have to be post Saturday morning, or else my troll hair will scare nature).

xx



Oh, P.S. ->

Harrison Not So Hot Springs

It's nice to have friends with a car!

On Sunday we (Dave, Dave, Steve, Missy & I) decided to make the most of the overcast but (thankfully) dry weather and embark on a road trip to the little town of Harrison, about 1.5 hrs drive from Vancouver. We were hoping to enjoy a day of relaxing in the hot springs and checking out the tulip festival - little did we know there would be no hot springs and the festival would be closed a day early!

Overall, Harrison was a gorgeous little town and I can imagine it would be absolutely packed in Summer - there is a huge lake and plenty of decent sized hotels which line the main street and overlook the lake ... there's even a Baskin & Robbins, although I still can't believe it'd ever be warm enough for ice cream there! Nevertheless, we have grand plans to return in Summer and perhaps spend a little time on a boat out in the lake.

Harrison Lake.

I actually don't think I ever found out why there were no proper 'hot springs' to swim in in Harrison ... I'm pretty sure I was too busy chowing down on a muffin while we trekked to what we thought were the natural springs .. which they kinda were (gotta love that sulfur smell!) ... but not sure why they didn't have any baths there. The closest we came was the public bathhouse in the centre of town, so we spent an hour or so in the steaming indoor baths until I was about to pass out from the heat.

Thankfully our stint in the bathhouse was followed by some lunch and a visit to the local Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (!!). There were so many awesome chocolates there I pretty much wanted to sample everything in the entire store. I eventually settled on a trio of fudge samples (we shared) and a tiger caramel apple ... delish! And healthy.............. (it was an apple!!)

Mmmmm... healthy (caramel) apple.

After settling nicely into chocolate comas, we headed off to what was supposed to be the tulip festival. Unfortunately the 'festival' finished a day early (apparently it normally closes at the end of April) but of course the tulips were still there and 'entry' was half price. The display was pretty spectacular, so I can imagine how beautiful it would be in its prime. We had some fun with photos there and Steve got a lot of practice using his new fancy camera.

The photographer in action.

Endless fields of tulips.

So despite some minor setbacks the day turned out to be pretty good and was fun all the same.

Last exciting event of the day? Downtown Eastside Vancouver.  Not to make fun, because homelessness is a serious problem in this city, but on the way back to our side of town (not the homeless side) you have to drive through Downtown Eastside (not surprisingly, on the edge of the very trendy, gentrified Gastown) which is absolutely packed with homeless people and drug addicts (just picture a classic zombie movie) - apparently some travel companies even do tours through this area (!).

Driving back through here was a complete eye opener for me. We saw blatant drug dealing, completely out in the open, in front of everyone, for all to see. When we stopped at lights it was really sad but fascinating for me at the same time. I couldn't look, but I couldn't look away. Apparently the police just turn a blind eye to this sort of behaviour in certain areas of the city. Sad, but true. Apparently they're harmless but I'm in no rush to test the theory.

Hockey Night in Canada!

As we sit in our new 'official' basement apartment for two, I finally have a chance write what I promise will be a very concise another essay length blog ...

So this morning was an early start for the entire household, but for me in particular, as the much anticipated Q-Clash streamed live this morning at 2.10am. Like the faithful supporter I am, I was up at 2.10 on the dot, and promptly made my way to our tiny bathroom, where I sat silently on the toilet, laptop on lap, ear phones in, for almost 2 hours of game time. Thankfully at the start of the final quarter I heard a little knock at the door and Steven allowed me back into our room to watch the last term together. That was a big step for him, I was impressed.

Anyway, we all know what happened so I will say no more .. except .. GO LIONS. I still love you. No matter what.

The only positive to come out of this morning's early rise was that we got to say our goodbyes to Kristen & Alex as they headed off to the airport for their next big adventure!

Around lunch time we made our way to the Vancouver Spot Prawn Festival - dedicated - because it was 8 degrees and rainy outside! It actually wasn't too bad once we started walking and I was kind of hot once we got there (what is happening to me?!!!). So the Spot Prawn Festival left a lot to be desired for us, not that we knew exactly what to expect but the line ups for the food were huge and we decided we'd rather just buy a bunch of cooked prawns (I wouldn't go near any live ones!) instead ... which, in the end, we didn't do. Instead we met up with a few friends of Steve's and entertained ourselves at the Granville Island markets buying some lunch and dinner ingredients.

Spot Prawn Festival (just a fraction of the line up) - a gorgeous day...

Line up to get fresh live Spot Prawns off the boats (not my kinda scene!)

On the way to the markets we stopped to be embarrassing tourists and take photos of this wild seal being fed some fish scraps by a salmon fisherman - very awesome.

Weird bird with cool hair-do eating salmon scraps

While we were wandering around Granville Island, Dave (who was wearing his Canucks jersey) was hijacked by a cameraman who was taking footage for the beginning sequence of "Hockey Night in Canada" - mind you, "Hockey Night in Canada is every second night here! Anyway, he ended up being filmed for the opening shot of the program (with a whole bunch of other supporters) and provided some great entertainment for us, heckling him in the background.

Getting a few tips from the cameraman.

Practicing before the big take!

So at 2.40pm Steve and I took on our Canadian version of the Mother's Day Classic (which I normally do with Kimmy & Mum) to coincide with the 7.40 am Brisbane start time - a 4.5km run around English Bay and through Stanley Park - beautiful! The sun had come out by this stage and so had the animals - we saw ducklings, chipmunks and another raccoon - all good distractions from me almost dying (I blame the lack of sleep).

This afternoon has been all about cleaning our new "pad" and unpacking the rest of my clothes - I actually went to put a load of washing on not long ago and because it's only a short walk on the basement level, I thought I'd just sneek in in my pajamas and uggs. Unfortunately on the way out of the washing room I got caught out by this gay guy with fancy hair who swiftly gave me a look of pity and a half grimace-smile. Yeahhhh, so I look like a bogan.

Tomorrow's adventures include a visit to the Tulip Festival and hot springs ... can't wait!

Comings and Goings

So not much to report on this week really. It's been pretty rainy the last few days but nothing we Vancouverite's can't handle! Well, I haven't tested out the gumboots yet but I did buy a nice shiny pair in Seattle so I'm kind of waiting for a day of good rain to test them out!

Last Sunday I completed the 8km fun run which was held during the Vancouver Marathon/Half-Marathon event. Happy to report I ran my fastest ever 8km time thanks to my super coach Steven Wehlow (and his trusty old garmin he palmed off to me). And perhaps a little bit of training...

Start line with stadium in the background. Rogers Arena (home of the Canucks is right near here too)

Stretching

Finisher!

Tastes like metal...

The other big news of the week is that Kristen & Alex are leaving tomorrow morning :-( I will really miss them - it's been nice having the company around and I think we've all done exceptionally well living together in a one bedroom apartment! It was nice to have some extra friends too (not that they had a choice because they're family!) ... and now they're leaving us for their next big adventure - travelling around the US, and then back to Australia later in the year. We will miss them but can't wait to hear all the travel stories and see all of their awesome photos.

Steven is still focussing on his training and job hunting. A few opportunities may be opening themselves up in the coming week so we'll wait and see!

So far we don't have too much planned for the weekend (with weather pending) but Saturday will consist of me waking up at 2am to watch the Q-Clash, a visit to the Vancouver Science Centre (we got free tickets!), my proper training run & a 4.5km run in the early afternoon to coincide with Mum & Kimmy doing our annual Mother's Day Classic. Steven has training (San Fran is one month away!) and Sunday we might head over the bridge to Kitsilano if the weather is nice.

Sorry I don't have any more photos from this week. We've been kinda preoccupied with job hunting/working and training. I promise to do better next time!!

Miss you all x