A lot has happened in the last few weeks, especially being back in Orlando two weekends ago. My heart is filled with sadness for the city in which I have so many memories and friends. I’m not really sure how to express myself in written words regarding this awful event, but if you’re reading this and want to talk about it with me, I am always available to do so. I’ll just say that it’s not easy and I am constantly thinking about the many people this directly affected, as well as what it means to the country as a whole. It was hard to prioritize this blog during that time, but I’ve finally been able to finish up this post about Vancouver, which was an incredible trip! So my latest adventure, and the topic of my blog post, was flying from Saint Paul to Vancouver for a long weekend with my cousin, Sophie! We hadn’t had a ton of time together over the past 4 or 5 years, so I was really looking forward to the time. Plus, we look alike so it’s fun to play the doubles game with her! I left Saint Paul on a Thursday to get to Chicago, and then got on a flight from Chicago to Vancouver. Ultimately, it meant I had to be up at around 3:45am to get a 5:15am flight. This is the bad part of traveling standby. I could have waited for a later flight, but that might have risked me not getting to Chicago. Which would have obviously been the worst thing. So I spent about 8 hours in Chicago-O’hare. We’re real close now due to all our bonding time, that airport and I. I mostly tried to sleep, but sleeping on airport benches just doesn’t really do it for me, ya know? Anyway, I landed in Vancouver at 7:30pm, flew through customs, and met Sophie right at the airport! I was so excited to see her!! On the way home, she drove me through the city. I think I could really like living in Vancouver, so much outdoorsy stuff to do. Including a lot of hiking! Which is what we did on the first full day of my visit. We drove north of Vancouver towards Squamish along the Sea to Sky highway to where the new Sea to Sky Gondola had been built. Sophie had done some research beforehand and found out that while it cost $34 to take the gondola round trip, if you braved the hike to the top you could take the gondola back down for only $10. So duh, that was the only option. It was a pretty cool hike too! We started at Shannon Falls, which is right off the road, and from there headed up the Sea to Sky trail. We gained a lot of elevation in the ~3 hours we were on the trail. It was pretty neat because at one point we ended up at the top of Shannon Falls so we got to see it from both perspectives. There weren’t very many people on the trail at all, I think we spent about half the time alone. As far as trails though, I’d call it pretty diverse. We climbed stone steps, muddy slopes where you had to rely on the branches around you and even some boulders that required ropes to help you. And there were quite a few times that we were a little unclear as to where the trail went, so thank goodness for trail signs. Once we made it to the top, we walked across the Sea to Sky Suspension Bridge, which was completely awesome. I don’t have a fear of heights at all, which is good, because it does seem a little precarious. But it was great. And on the other side of the bridge was the most important part: the bar! We rewarded ourselves with a pitcher of blueberry beer and time to take in all the views. We also took the gondola ride down, which was nice but also a little demoralizing. Our ears popped from the altitude change, which proved just how high we’d gone. But the ride only took 8 minutes. 8 minutes to go down what took us 3 hours to climb up. Whatever. We got some beer out of it. Speaking of beer, the next day Mike and Sophie took me on a microbrewery tour of Vancouver. We started the day with a brunch of eggs benedict topped with goat cheese (so yum!) before heading to the first brewery: Strange Fellow. Now, we had quite a few beers that day, but I’ll try and recall the ones that stood out to me the most. Sophie and I shared a taster at Strange Fellow, and our favorite was an elderflower saison. Not quite sure how to explain it, I’m not really a beer connoisseur, but for those of you that are interested, I tend to like lighter beers, so that would be saisons, wheats, blondes, belgians, kolsches, lagers, that sort of stuff. I’m also into beer that doesn’t really taste like beer heeeheee. Anyway, the elderflower saison was light and fresh, not super sweet. Pretty good. From there we went to Bomber, where my favorite was their Park Life Passion Fruit Ale. This is an American style blonde ale infused with passion fruit. So refreshing and delicious. The next stop was just a block up the street, at Off the Rail. Honestly, none of the beers we tried here really stuck out to me, even the award winning pale ale. But what did stick out to me were the light fixtures in their taproom. They were made of simple materials, but were really intricate at the same time. The next tasting was at Storm, which we actually completely missed and drove right by the first time. The outside of the building is completely graffitied and honestly looked like it should have been knocked down a long time ago. We went inside to discover that the inside doesn’t look much better. That being said, this was all three of our favorite tap rooms. Thought that makes it sound a lot fancier. Their “tasting room” is also where they brew, and apparently they do all their brewing for the week on a Wednesday so they don’t have to do much over the weekend and the room can be used solely for tastings. They also operate differently to any tasting room I’ve been to before: instead of being able to buy a flight of tasters, each person is given a plastic cup and a wristband with six boxes on them. You get to sample 6 of their beers and then you pay before you leave, but it’s all donation. It’s a pretty cool concept, like being at a house party but with lots of different flavours of beer! They have 6 beers that are consistently on tap, and then they had about 12 different flavours of beer (so one type of beer that was infused with different flavours). I tried a cucumber jalapeno saison, which was actually pretty good. After we’d had our tasters, we went to our fifth and final stop, Bridge. We didn’t hang out here, just filled a couple growlers and headed home to cook dinner and hang out. Sophie and I played cribbage and I got my butt kicked. But it’s fine because obviously that’s an old person game and she’s older than me. The next day was definitely more of a lazy one. We went to the beach to hang out before going to Mike and Sophie’s slowpitch softball game. It was so fun to watch them play, honestly I was loving it. Plus, one of their teammates brought their super cute puppy! I want a dog so badly…but that’s an entirely different conversation. I also tried a caesar in the morning, and I don’t mean the salad. It’s apparently the Canadian version of a bloody mary, but I think they’re better. The tomato juice isn’t as thick, which is where I struggle with bloodys in the first place. Afterwards, we watched Game of Thrones with the classic Canadian popcorn and nibs combo. Nibs are little red licorice pieces that are then mixed in a bowl with the popcorn. Kind of a weird combination, but I’m not complaining. I also had to pack up all my stuff because I was headed out on a red eye flight back to Chicago the next day (I won’t even tell you about my experience in Chicago trying to make my connecting flight to Minneapolis. It involved a lot of impatiently waiting, frantic calling to my mom, an angel who let me skip to the front of the security line, and me running through the airport in only my socks carrying my jacket, shoes, laptop and anything else I had had to throw in a bin to get through quickly. I’m so not embarrassing at all.) So before all that madness, Sophie and I biked over from her house on the North Shore of Vancouver into the city, which included a ferry ride. Awesome. The setup of Vancouver reminds me a little of Auckland (there’s a North Shore and ferry systems as well) so that was pretty neat. Once we were off the ferry, we headed towards the Seawall, which is a biker/walker only path and offers some really neat views of the city as well as a number of beaches to enjoy. But first we had to take a stop off at the 2010 Winter Olympic torch, which is right there on the water. I love the Olympics, so it was great to be able to see. It was a pretty neat bike ride and it was the perfect way to explore the city on my last day there. Shoutout to Mike for letting me use his bike! We ended our ride in Gastown at Mike’s work building, and he gave me a little tour of the building he manages, which included an awesome new roofgarden/patio that they’re completing. But the best part, by far, was the Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) offices. So, for those of you that don’t know, ILM is a motion picture visual effects company that is a division of LucasFilm, which George Lucas started in 1975 when he was working on the production on the Star Wars series. This company has worked on many hit films and series apart from Star Wars, including E.T., Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, and Avengers. It’s currently the largest visual effects vendor in the motion picture industry. Well, their Vancouver office is in Mike’s building, so he was able to bring me and Sophie around to see it all. I think this is pretty obvious, but I had to sign a waiver saying that I would not disclose anything specific that I saw while being shown around (like about the movies they are currently working on), but I can say that I was able to glance at some coding that was going on and my inner nerd was freaking out. And then of course there were all the Star Wars memorabilia decorating their floors, so then I was nerding out over that too. This includes original costume pieces as worn by members of the cast during filming! And a life size Boba Fett, which I was able to take a couple of pictures with, one with a red lightsaber. Because that’s how nerdy I am. On top of all that, I was given a copy of a test print that they had recently printed in studio and I am so excited about it! I said thank you a million times in person, but I’ll say it here again: THANK YOU SO MUCH ILM for the tour, for the photos, for the present and for letting me be the nerd that I am. Mike had a little bit more work to do, so Sophie and I went for a beer and to watch the steam clock in Gastown. There aren’t many steam clocks still running, but the ones that are were mostly created by Canadian Raymond Saunders. The one in Gastown, Vancouver is his first steam clock and was built in 1977 to solve the issue of a steam vent in a popular sidewalk in the newly renovated neighborhood. It vents every 15 minutes with a little song so we sat out on the patio and enjoyed it for a while. Once Mike was off work, we enjoyed one last dinner, where Sophie and I shared some poutine (because have you truly gone to Canada if you haven’t had poutine), and then took in the Vancouver skyline one last time before taking me to the airport. And now a little bit about my past weekend: I was in DC visiting one of my best friends from college and I will begin by saying the amount of support for Orlando I saw around our nation’s capital was a wonderful thing. I won’t be writing a new post about that weekend, just because my visit was so short and mostly revolved around watching sports and eating amazing food, but I have included a photo I took of one of the many tributes to Orlando that I saw while exploring the city with Emma. She showed me multiple parts of the city that I didn’t get to experience when I last visited in high school, and we also did a little sightseeing around the National Mall and at the White House, and obviously you can’t go to DC without going to a museum so we took a little time in the Natural History Museum as well. It was so fu to be back there and definitely amazing to have been able to spend time with Emma in my short visit home before heading back to NZ. Which is happening in only two weeks! Can’t wait for that. Til next time!
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Meet AnyaHi, Hola, Bonjour, Ciao!
I’m Anya Phillips, a data analyst and travel enthusiast who is always on the lookout for the next adventure! Categories
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