Snow is Cold

This morning I went out and bought a bunch of 6 sunflowers (her fave) and got some croissants and donuts for breakfast. What a legend. I hope she was pleased anyway ;)

Today our agenda was to climb Grouse mountain, which is over in North Vancouver and one of the ski hills which borders the city. I’d heard reports of it being fairly fearsome (and Phil I think you might have missed out by not taking it in, or did you?!), but we weren’t phased so after dinner on the waterfront at the other side of the ferry (or seabus, whatever) crossing we headed up to the base of the mountain.

The climb itself was pretty ok up to half way, but then my legs started to tire a bit after it got pretty ropey higher up! Looking back at it from the bottom it looks insanely steep, but once we were in to it we were committed to reaching the end :)

I probably sweated out the equivalent of my body weight on the way up (as it was 26 degrees or something and I was carrying a backpack), but we made it in 1 hour and 25 minutes, which I believe is very respectable! It was a great feeling of satisfaction to make it up there anyway, and the views over the city are incredible. Unfortunately we missed this lumberjack show they do up there, but I pretty much know what happens anyway from other people telling me, but we did see the birds of prey jobby, which was ok I guess :)
Also saw a couple bears and 3 wolves which are kept in captivity there in an area enclosed by an electric fence, and rode a chairlift down to this lookout point, which was kinda surreal as it was the first time since Whistler that we’ve ridden a chairlift, then took the insanely fast gondola ride back down to the base.

We had been invited over to Cynthia’s house (where I stayed back in April) for dinner, which we thought was going to be an extension of Yuki’s birthday, but turns out it was her niece’s birthday too that day so they were having a party for her, and had in fact forgotten that it was Yuki’s birthday at all :) so that was kinda funny. We got there so late that the party was winding down anyway by that stage, so we grabbed the free food, had a quick chat, then scarpered, hehe.

Now I’m pretty much exhausted from the day’s excursions, plus the fact I went to bed at 4 and got up early (although exactly how early is a secret), and I think we’re supposed to be heading over to Vancouver Island tomorrow pretty early, so now I’m off to bed! Wanted to get this all down before going tho cuz otherwise it would be a mission to catch up again..! Hopefully I’ll get my ass in gear and put some more photos up too, as I have millions, but we shall see, eh? :)

We kind of had a pre-birthday event today as apparently that’s just how it goes down, and also technically Yuki’s birthday (which is also incidentally my sis’ birthday, Daz’s sis’ birthday, Pete’s bro’s birthday, my friend Sophie from Whistler’s b’day, etc etc) starts some time on Saturday due to the 16 hour time difference in Japan. Anyway despite my consistent hankering her about it she refused to do anything particularly special (maybe coz she’s getting old :) so I made us a nice dinner and attempted to make a birthday (cheese)cake. I say attempted because something went wrong with the gelatin and it’s as if there lumps of glue in the cake, but anyhoo. It’s the thought that counts (and we’ll still eat it anyway).

After going to the aforementioned fireworks we were going to go up to this revolving restaurant on the 26th floor of the Empire Landmark hotel, called “Cloud 9″, however the guy on the hotel door put a major spanner in the works by saying they closed at 10.30pm that evening as it was a special event (and we turned up at 11.30, bugger) so after some mild sulking I managed to reconcile her into a green tea frappucino (like an ice cream float) from Starbucks by the beach, so that was where we celebrated in the 7th!

Town was destroyed with litter everywhere again, which was pretty disgusting, but the guys did a good job of clearing it up by the next day!

Wednesday night we were going to have a pretty quiet one, but then I learned that a certain Mr Duncan Muir was back from the wilderness of BC interior (he’s spending 4 months or so drilling for gold living with a team of 4 in tents in the middle of the woods on a mountainside), and Gurpal got in touch with one of his ladyfriends that was his old manager at the clothes store he worked at in Vancouver 3 summers ago, so we thought it was only fair if we went out properly again.

We co-ordinated a meetup in a bar called “The Beaver”, which is underneath the Samesun hostel – where we originally spent our first nights in Canada (hence the clever 3 way post title), although we were a bit dubious as to whether the girls (she was supposed to be bringing 3 friends, conveniently) were going to flake out. Fortunately they managed to make it down though so from there we headed to the Royal as they weren’t up for going crazy and clubbing it straight away (even though we wanted to..). Tia, Gurpal’s friend, knows the manager of the Royal so we only had to pay like $1 each to go in, which was a bit of a bargain seeing as the drinks in there were dirt cheap! We got one of these big leather booth things and started chatting the night away. Two of the girls peeled off pretty early, around 12ish, but the other 2 stayed ’til about 12.45, at which point we decided we were still all up for going to a club! We headed to Caprice, the scene of mayhem the week before, but we were never going to get in there in time so we crossed the road to a bar called the Cellar.

A couple of flaming drambuies (which didn’t want to light) later and me & Gurps were all over the dancefloor, although the place wasn’t rammed by any means, while Dunc & Daz propped up a post somewhere. The night was over pretty quickly to be fair as they kicked out at 2, so after chasing some people round outside for a while we headed home via Super Valu and went to bed at a fairly respectable 3. Was wicked to see Dunc again and Gurpal seems to have gotten some joy from this girl as they’re going to a party together Saturday night! I’m waiting to find out how he got on though.. He’s headed over to his cousins’ place for a couple of nights now so I’m left to prepare for Yuki’s birthday…

The China fireworks were awesome – they had some stuff that I’d never seen before! Then they had the grand finale on Saturday. Saturday was a little bit of an anticlimax as the individual shows were pretty well co-ordinated in comparison, but anyway I guess we’re all fireworksed out now!

My housemate from uni, Gurpal, arrived yesterday afternoon, so we’re going to spend a week doing lots of fun things that I wanted to do and he didn’t get round to doing when he was here before!

We started yesterday by eating sushi then going out to a night called “Toonie Tuesdays” at a bar called the Backstage Lounge over on Granville Island. Apparently it was a happening night back in the day but at $2.50 for drinks we couldn’t really complain. We played loads of games of pool (been a while) then ended up singing “No Woman No Cry”, by Bob, in the karaoke which was going on. The view out the window was amazing cuz the bar is right on the waterfront, except it looks back at all the flashy apartment buildings in Yaletown and the mountains in the distance. On our way home Gurpal wanted MORE sushi, but it had finished serving by the time we got back at 1.40 :) so we went to Super Valu (yeah, there’s no e on the end) to interrogate them about other possible targets. After launching an orange across the shop floor, and also interrogating a poor unsuspecting hottie who was buying cat litter at 2am (we were asking her why the hell she was buying cat litter at 2am, was v funny) and having an open argument with each other about the ridicule of trying to find a sushi place at 2am, we settled on going to a burger place for late night munchies. Well I say we but I was just sitting there while the food machine did his business :)

Today we went to a Vietnamese restaurant (although Gurpal initially wanted to go for sushi) for lunch then went to play pitch and putt!!! Golf is awesome. The pitch and putt was very well kept actually, although a bit on the short side, I overpitched pretty much every hole. Anyway it was very pleasant and great to play again. If you’re interested I was +10 for the front 9 and even for the back 9. Shocking.

Then we strolled back along the beach around 5.30 and it was already pretty packed even tho the fireworks don’t start ’til 10! We were both hungry again so I agreed to go for… sushi. Man this guy is an addict. He ordered 38 items from the all you can eat menu, lol. I could only finish two thirds of my rolls so got the rest to go! And now here I am. And I have to go make dinner. Adios.