Christmas in Vancouver

This is definitely a different Christmas for us. For Thanksgiving, it was our year to have everyone at our house. The Christmas holiday this year is for the married kids to be with their in-laws. Steve and I, Kimberly and Greg took off for Vancouver a few days ago. It is a classy city, but COLD. We are lucky it hasn’t rained since we got here. I can’t imagine what we would do in the rain. While the Olympics will be held here in two months, we haven’t seen even a flake of snow, even at the base of Grouse Mountain. Since it was below freezing at the top, we didn’t ride the sky tram to the top.

Stanley Park is a beautiful wooded area not far from our hotel. We walked up on Tuesday, enjoying the Oceanside, birds, and fresh air. They have an amazing aquarium. The jellyfish were beautiful. I’m going to have to read more about them. There was a little marmoset that was sitting on a branch eating. The cutest thing was a little two year old who kept repeating, “It’s a marmoset!” The macaws were so noisy! There were hilarious.



Many things were closed for the season, so we walked a long while before we found a fitting place to eat. We decided just to grab the rental car and visit China town. After loading all of our spare change into the parking meter and walking to the Jade Dynasty, we decided to send Greg and Kim back to the car to move it into a regular underground parking lot. China town looks just like China – all the store fronts announcing their wares in Chinese. Lunch was great. We went to a famous Chinese park nearby. It must have been lovely in the summer, but not much to look at in December.



We visited a world class Indian restaurant – Vij’s. Kim had been told by a friend it was the best Indian restaurant in the West. We tried to get in the first night we were here, but there was an hour wait. On Tuesday, we got there twenty minutes before it opened, but there was already a line. After waiting until people had been seated, we were told we could come in for a drink or go elsewhere and come back. The restaurant was so small, there is no way they could handle all those who wanted to wait, so non-drinkers hit the road. When we returned an hour later, we stood at the back until a table was available. The food was really exceptional. They just assumed everyone would share their food, so it came family style. We later read that the restaurant was “going green” and offering a fare of insects which would require fewer resources to produce. Good thing I didn’t know about the trend before our visit, as I doubt I would have been willing to stand in line at a restaurant that was offering insects. I really didn’t see any insects in my food, but there were some flavors I didn’t recognize.

(Sorry about the random layout. I haven't figured out how to control where the pictures go...)