British Columbia

[kareid]

As I mentioned earlier, frolain and I went to the pacific northwest last month. We went to several cities over about a week and a half along with SJ.

We started in Portland, where we met with my sister (SJ) and visited various family members. We went to many of my favorite Portland spots, including the International Rose Test Gardens, and Saturday Market. I learned that they're moving the market across the street into Waterfront Park. Not really sure how I feel about that; though the overhang they're building will be nicer and newer, it'll lack the 'under a bridge, in a parking lot' flavor, and be windier. We also saw this sign.

Next we took a train to Seattle, and from there to Vancouver. The train was beautiful. In places it was so close to the ocean that the rails must have been on the beach. This doesn't do it justice, but should show you I'm not exaggerating. We saw herons, ducks, and all kinds of other water birds on the way. I would recommend the train for anyone traveling to Vancouver or Seattle from Oregon.

In Vancouver, we visited the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and the city park next to it. Vancouver has a reasonably sized chinatown; we even got vegetarian dimsum. Being engineers, we all had to go look at the steam powered clock, which chimes the hours with four steam whistles. It's powered off city steam which heats the surrounding buildings, but despite the style was only built in the 1970s.

The next day we visited Stanley Park. I particularly liked the totem poles. I've never been a big fan of native american art, but I saw several examples I really liked on this trip. The park also contains the aquarium, which has beluga whales. The three whales on display were a grandmother, mother, and baby. The baby spent most of its time chasing a seagull that kept landing on the water in their tank. The grandmother was very pregnant; she's going to have another calf in 1-2 months and they have a 14-16 month gestation.

Our last day, we visited Granville Island. Somewhat touristy, but some neat markets and shops as well. We took a tour of the Granville Island brewery. Generally, we tried a lot of local beers in British Columbia. There was an older dog waiting for his owner outside one shop, next to a stuffed frog. When she came outside, he picked up his frog and trotted off with her. For some reason this was really cute.

From there we took a ferry to Victoria. The bus from the ferry dropped us off in the middle of downtown, where we walked out into a protest march or strike by the paramedics. We walked quietly through that to our hotel, then went back downtown to the Bug Zoo. Downtown Victoria feels like a summer tourist town, but I liked it anyway. The inner harbor area with the Empress hotel, the parliament buildings, and the harbor walkway was lovely. We got sunburnt sitting next to the harbor and reading.

We took a city bus out to the Buchart gardens. I had heard that they're famous, but was underwhelmed. The style was very Victorian, massed plantings of a single annual which would be dug up and replaced several times a year. That style made the gardens feel very shallow, as though you could take in an entire bed at a glance and be bored with it. There wasn't anything more interesting to see if you looked closer, nor did things change gradually over time. I did like the plantings they put on top of their trashcans. (Faint praise, I know.)

One thing we were foiled at was getting afternoon tea. We tried several places but were unable to find one that had a chef in and sounded like it could deal with vegetarian food. We did see Darth Vader playing the fiddle.

Sunday evening, we took the Victoria Clipper back to Seattle. It's a crowded passenger-only ferry. In Seattle, lakmiseiru (SJ's roommate) gave us a tour of the greenhouses she works in at the U of W. They had plenty of strange plants. We also got to see her adviser's day-old baby harris hawk chicks. Extremely cute little carnivores with dried blood on their beaks.

Taking so many different city buses (Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria) left me very confused about how to ride the bus, and with a pile of wildly different transfers. I'm also appreciating the simplicity of the fares in Boston. The buses in Seattle post on them what the fare is right now (they need to) because the fares change based both on distance and time of day, as does whether you pay when getting on or off.

It was also interesting seeing all the compost bins in restaurants. If we were given disposable silverware, it was always compostable, as were nearly all containers. Coming back to the land of recycling dumped in trash bins when people aren't looking makes me sad, though I have noticed that compostable containers are becoming more common here. There's just nowhere to _put_ them.