Long-delayed write-up.

I spent the first three days of my Canadian vacation looking for ‘authentic Vancouver experiences’ and realized I’d gotten one on the morning of the fourth day when I had leftover sushi and fresh coffee for breakfast. It was worth the wait – it was good sushi. Thinking back on it, the whole four days were really what I’d been waiting for – time to relax, stop worrying, see old faces again and learn new ones, just spend some time with people enjoying someplace I’d never been before. It’s a place I need to go back to. The whole time I kept saying ‘next time I’m here’ and I meant it. I know I came at just the right time for clear skies and perfectly in-blossom flowers and more than enough blueberries, so I guess I’ll have to come back at the same time next year or so. I'd gone as a sort of reward to myself for finishing grad school, and it was totally and completely worth it.

The four days started with tartary_lamb getting hugged in the airport, moved onto realizing from the signs around the airport that Canadians really are that polite, a sheepish labradoodle named Charlie, the realization at dinner that I was in spitting distance of the ocean and could order fish guilt-free, and seeing crimsonquills again and webgirl for the first time. I was more than excited to be there but I’d driven across Pennsylvania the long way the day before, and that and the jet lag caught up to me, and I was asleep fast and hard.

I got up early the next day, not for any reason I could tell except anticipation to be up and moving. We went to Victoria that day had to be up early enough to catch the bus to get to the ferry to get to the island, and on the island I had to get to the bus stop for the shuttle over to the Buchart Gardens, so for a relaxing day there was a lot of rushing and moving. Which was fine by me, since I was more than ready for some of that. On the ferry ride over we saw dolphins in the channel and got mooned by fishermen, and I had candied salmon salad for lunch. Real food and metal utensils on the ferry – fantastic.

One of the nicest things about the vacation was that everyone understood it was okay to do things alone, so after lunch with tartary_lamb and webbgirl and a short visit into a local used bookstore, I took the afternoon alone in the Gardens, taking pictures and sniffing flowers and jumping back and yelling in surprise when a huge garter snake slithered across the path too fast for me to take a picture. Some other people thought I might’ve seen a spider in the flowers, and all of them laughed when I corrected them to snake. And it was such a cutie, too. On the bus ride back I was the only passenger, so I sat up front and got a guided tour of the island from the driver.

There weren’t mooning fishermen or dolphins on the ride back. I stayed out front at the ferry’s bow anyway, where I got to pass another ship in the night and live out another figure of speech, and watched the sunset go on for hours and hours. It took so long for the sunset to finally end, and by the time it did, we were almost in Vancouver again.

I was up early again the next day to head over to the University of British Columbia and the Museum of Anthropology, which was on the same level of awesome as the anime convention’s costume contest. I didn’t get a picture of the person dressed as the L block from Tetris or crimsonquills cosplaying Guy Gardener, but got the Companion Cube, an away team, Princess Mononoke herself, Kiki the witch, some gothic Victoriana, and Domo-Kun. So it was a pretty typical anime convention. After lunch and a tour of crimsonquills’ little rock museum, I went to the Museum of Anthropology. At first I thought I could breeze through it and see everything, and after I pulled out one drawer realized that if I wanted to try I’d need at least a month. So I let myself take my time and look at the things I thought were interesting.

The next day started out a bit slower, watching commercials online and walking over to a local coffee shop to have something to drink and a nearby shop to get some presents for mer_duff, who took me out to lunch in downtown Victoria where I got lost on the way but got to the restaurant in time for what might have been the best eggs I’ve ever eaten. Long-cooked poached eggs – I need to learn how to do that. After lunch we walked around Granville Island and had a great time chatting in spite of all the noise, just getting to know each other in person. We had tea, and I bought two and a half pounds of kickass blueberries that got eaten after dinner for dessert. I’d cooked risotto and chicken for odditycollector, who’d brought over jumbo sushi and pretzel-like bagels and a lot of jokes and fun. She and I and tartary_lamb ended up on the little deck on top of the house, eating blueberries – I had at least a pound of them, which wasn’t very smart since I got on a sugar high like I haven’t had since grade school – and joking and laughing, and we ended up back downstairs to watch more silly things online and swap anecdotes and wish we didn’t have to leave.

For context, tartary_lamb was housesitting and dog-watching, so the next morning we packed up our stuff and after a trip to Tim Horton’s and some comic book shops, headed over to her place for my last night in the country. Even several hours of Arrested Development didn’t stop me from getting antsy and restless, so we went out to get the ingredients for pumpkin bread so I could bake something. It worked, and I got enough energy out of my system I could fall asleep without much fuss. The next day we said good-bye and I went back to New York, sad to be leaving, not just to leave a friend behind but because I didn’t want to leave such a wonderful city. I had one last salmon burger and one last cider before I got on the plane, both of which helped.

I heard some people compare it to Seattle; I’d peg it as a northern cousin of San Francisco. Not for the water and fog, but for the density and good infrastructure. The whole time I kept raving about how well everything was planned, how gorgeous it was to have good public transit, how nice the houses were and the apartment complexes and the little social nodes and how nothing was really a suburb – it was just gorgeous to be in a really well-connected city again. Pittsburgh is a giant small town and always has plenty of surprises, but it doesn’t have that same transportation network. New York would close if it got a good scrubbing.

I saw a lot, but I know I missed things – not just the drawers in the Museum of Anthropology but all the parks and the other museums, all the hiking, and I still miss all the good and delicious fish. I wasn’t kidding about heading back when I get another chance. I just hope it’s soon.