Friday, August 28, 2009
Photo
Kit and Kirsten at the Fisherman's Memorial at Point Grey. (on our dyke ride)
Vancouver Birthday
A short adventure without Ida... We went up to Vancouver on Wednesday to celebrate my birthday--and Kirsten's, belatedly. Both border crossings were amazingly slick. Going up there was NO line at all. We finally got the see the house where Kirsten is now living--in a very nice and convenient neighborhood. Because we couldn't check into the hotel until 3pm we took the bus into town to go to the Art Gallery (Museum). It was lunch time when we arrived. And what should we find (totally accidentally) less than a block away but the great Indian restaurant where Kit and I had lunch when we were in the city last fall. The show at the museum was "VERMEER, REMBRANDT, and the Dutch Masters. Since Kit and I have a thing about Dutch Masters we wanted to take Kirsten. Well, there was one Vermeer, and 2 or maybe 3 Rembrandt's. We had a good time anyway. When you've been to the Riksmusem in Amsterdam, the Louvre, and the Metropolitan in NYC you get a little jaded. It turns out there are only 30 Vermeer's in existence and this is the first time one has been to Canada in 50 years.
We had booked a room for the night at the Sylvia Hotel which we do love--right on the beach and right down town--a hotel with character. It also has a wonderful bar where I was waiting while Kit and Kirsten went to fetch the car. We had dinner at a very good Melanesian restaurant in the neighborhood (where we'd also eaten before).
Thursday we checked out after breakfast and met Kirsten in Richmond for a bike ride along the dike (or dyke as they spell in Canada). It was a perfect day for bike riding. There are views of the river, the wetlands, the airport... We found a very interesting cannery museum with good displays in little houses. We found lots of lunch spots in the cute village of Steveston. We had to cut the ride a little short so we'd have time to go to IKEA and get across the border before dinner time. The only mar to the whole wonderful weekend is that I didn't get the lamp I thought I was buying. It's totally wrong.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Oh, Eugene
Kit and I are back from a quick weekend trip to Eugene. I didn't take a single photo. We went down for the 10th annual Blackberry Bramble which is a bike ride that Kit's old bike club (GEARS) does every year. He was there for the first one and so this one was kind of a get together for some of the "old timers". He did the 60+ mile ride and I took off by myself and enjoyed riding up and down the river trails. Oh I do miss the wonderful bike trails in Eugene. (We have some good riding here in the Skagit Valley but it always means packing our bikes on the car and driving somewhere.)
We left Ida at home this trip and stayed in a hotel on the bike path--and right next to the Housing Authority where Kit used to work. Not only could we bike out from the hotel anywhere we wanted to go--it was an easy walk to the Steelhead and North Bank (both brewpubs and favorite hang outs in our Eugene days). Actually we walked all over downtown--so sad--downtown Eugene is now a complete wasteland. Everything out from the core seems to be thriving though.
