Got up very early and zoomed north through Seattle traffic (though happily able to use the HOV lane) towards Vancouver for a quick visit en route to Salt Spring Island. The trip up and border-crossing were relatively pain-free, though Beck and I completely forgot about the Canada-is-a-different-country angle, precisely as how it would apply to our phones - we both got text messages with threats of fifteen dollar per meg billing rates as we crossed the border, so we were more or less forced to turn them off and go radio silent until we could get a wifi signal. It made getting into the city a tad more challenging - funny how quickly we come to rely on GPS maps as opposed to their paper forefathers - but we made it, found a relatively cheap parking garage and got ready to hit up the lovely town, needle exchange programs and all.
We lunched at the Raincity Grille on the West End, again on Ariel's recommendation. I *tried* to go light, opting for a Canadian bacon / cheese sandwich with a side of greens instead of a burger-fries or fish-chips combo, only to discover that said CB&C sandwich had approximately two pounds of HAM on it. Egads! It was, predictably, awesome. Beck had a cucumber gazpacho and, SHOCKER, mussels, and they were excellent as well. In what would become a trend, we had a WCW (Wacky Canadian Waitress - not sure what's going on up there, but something goofy went on at essentially every meal). She basically spent the entire time flirting with Beck and threatening to steal our food, also mockingly congratulating me on eating well. And claimed to not know where anything in Vancouver was as she had "just moved there three years ago." Okay...
Highlight of the tour, imho, was the art gallery and massive pendulum in the Hong Kong Bank. Tres cool. We had some time to kill at the end (before the race to the ferry, which I already alluded to here), so we hit up a NICE coffee house called Caffe Artigiano that had come recommended - I had an excellent French-pressed coffee while we enjoyed hooking back into the tech-world via yoinked wifi. Beck found a recommended Korean place for an early dinner, and I had bul go gi for the first time in who knows how long (a Korean barbecue dish that was a routine favorite in Natick and Grafton). Our WCW for this meal stopped serving us for fifteen minutes mid-meal to enjoy a popsicle over in the corner. The meal, once delivered, was spicy enough to make us sweat, which is exactly the point of Korean food - good stuff, and we booked it out of there back to the car for a sprint to Tsawwassen.
After the aforementioned brief return to the U.S., the ferry ride was a relative breeze. Beck even saw some orcas (again, un-photoed!) as we left the original dock, and we watched the sunset over the Pacific as we crossed through the night to the highly anticipated apex of our trip, a three-night-two-day night stay in a B&B called Blackberry Glen. We unfortunately arrived at the dock at 10:45, putting us at the B&B after 11; our gracious hosts did not miss a beat, though, greeting us with baked oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies,
milk, and a complimentary bottle of home-crafted apple wine. They gave us maps of the island and all kinds of recommendations for the next days, plus our suite was, indeed, just that, and set up with a coffee/tea bar
(and that doesn't even capture the whole thing) and a bath-only bathtub in which Beck worried I would spend all my time. We were, though, pretty tired after a long traveling/touring day and very excited to sink into a plush king-sized bed. Miles away from Phoenix heat, work, and concern in general, we sunk asleep, thrilled to wake up to a couple of days of island touring and self-indulgence. And at that, we are quite talented...
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