Our Friends to the North

(well, all reasonable Americans hope they are still our friends!)

Vancouver, BC 

With visions of tulips still dancing in our heads, we continued north through Washington on Interstate 5, crossing the Canadian border at Blaine. We passed through the Peace Arch crossing and made our way through the farmland of Delta (winter tomatoes anyone?) and into the city of Vancouver. We arrived at our friends Debbie and Chris's place, where we will stay while Rowan completes her sabbatical work with the University of British Columbia.

The view from our hosts home just south of downtown.

We wasted no time getting right to food shopping once we arrived. Our first stop was Granville Island - http://granvilleisland.com/  where we scoped out the art, food and entertainment we will come back to explore while we are staying here.

Instant public art greeted us around every turn. Here is a wonderful Inuit/Eskimo mural under a bridge. 

Cement Silo's? Hugh?

Yes, that is what they are. You can see the cement trucks in front. This cement company has their business right in the middle of the shopping district on the island, or, I guess I should say the shopping district was created in the industrial district out of the old warehouses. It's cool they made these things all artsy.

 The Public Market

This huge warehouse space offers every kind of food ingredient one can imagine. A foodies dream! My head was spinning.......especially when we approached the seafood counter vendors. "Lord help me" was all I could say!

Some of the other sites from the islands arts district

These mannequins are just FABULOUS! They are showing off the hand painted silk scarves in the artists studio window.

Wire sculpture atop the Art School entrance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Carr_University_of_Art_and_Design

Inuit totem pole (currently under restoration)

Looking west out towards the Straight of Georgia

Looking across the Burrard Inlet at downtown

The harbor

More Inuit Totem

 Can I get a hug?

 

 Going out on the town

 Our hosts wasted no time taking us out on the town for a night of fine dining at one of the most interesting restaurants I have ever been in. 55 Dunlevy has a brewery, winery and upscale kitchen all under one roof. It's like a collective. The brewery brews the beer on site. The winery makes the wine on site. The kitchen stirs up amazing pairings for all of the above. What a great idea!

All the fermenting going on as we entered the place.

The place sits in the old warehouse district and is housed in an old warehouse. Many of the old original beams and bones of the warehouse have been left to create a wonderful space.

OK, so I have never seen this many bar pull stations anywhere (and this is just one of the bars in the place!). I guess when you are making wine and beer on site you need this many. Wow!

Cheers!

So, I can't remember the exact names of everything we had to eat (it has been 6 weeks since we were there) I did find some of them on the on-line menu, but the menu changes weekly so here is my best recollection.......

A margarita style pizza with chorizo. YUM! That's a cheese and crostini plate with tomato and olive tapenade

Roasted Cauliflower: romesco sauce, crispy capers, toasted almonds, herbed breadcrumbs, grana padano, fresh lemon.
Candy Cane Beet Salad pickled ruby beets, cashew cheese, sunflower seed pesto, candied walnut soil, seasonal greens

Yam Gnocchi w/ Lamb Ragu: braised pork shoulder, brown sage butter, sweet peas.
Shrimp/cream risotto: with pea cream something-or-other. 

Chris and I each had a wine sampler. I mean how often does one get to drink Canadian wine?....unless of course you are in Canada. Not bad either :o)

One of the most excellent decorated neighborhood utility boxes I have ever seen!

Meet Ladybug

Our absolutely adorable King Charles Spaniel host dog, Ladybug, who met us every morning with licks of love and became our lap dog in the evening. What a joy! Here she is with her favorite ball in her mouth.

The Vancouver March For Science/Earth Day demonstration is next :o)

 

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Mt. Vernon, Washington 

We want to thank all of you who follow our blog for having patience with us in-between posts. We completed our sabbatical about 5 weeks ago and of course after being away for 5 months, life has gotten in the way of my posts :o). I will pick up here as we left Seattle to travel north up I-5 to Vancouver, BC. 

Roughly 50 miles or so north of Seattle we passed through the Skagit Valley. Luckily is was April and the local tulip festival was in full swing. We couldn't pass by here without taking that left turn off of the freeway at Mt. Vernon to go out across the tulip fields. WOW! WOW! is all we kept saying once we came upon the tulip farms. You could swear you are suddenly in Holland somewhere when the fields start appearing. Instead of trying to find the words to describe how beautiful the whole scene was, I will let the following photos speak for themselves. Enjoy! 

We pulled into one of the farms, RoozenGarde, and went in to walk around their tulip gardens. WOW! WOW! WOW! The whole thing just puts a big smile on your face!

 There was every variety of tulip, daffodil and hyacinth one can imagine planted through out the gardens. All kinds of stuff we had never seen before. They had a shop here where you could purchase bulbs of everything seen in the gardens. Instant shopping gratification :o)

As we left the area we came across some farm workers harvesting flowers and bulbs. We tipped out hats to them. We so appreciate what they do!

What a special treat to be in this area at just the right time to witness the beauty of this valley during tulip season. We spent about 3 hours here and then hopped back in the car to continue our journey north to Vancouver, BC. That's coming up next..........

 I was able to do something on this trip to Seattle that I never thought I would have the opportunity to do - visit the Seattle Opera scene shop. My sister works at the opera office, so she offered to take me on a tour of the shop before it closes in its current location. I spent a number of years working in the scenery shop where I went to college, so this was very exciting indeed!

The shop is located in a building the size of an airplane hanger. If any of you reading this have been to see an opera at the Seattle Opera House, you can imagine they would need an airplane hanger to create the fabulous scenery that occupies that huge proscenium. The shop is between shows, so there is no scenery there during this visit.

 Can you see how tiny the 3 people in this photo are? That is how HUGE this part of the building is!

 This table alone has to be at least 10 feet wide by 30 feet long. I was trying to imagine the beautiful things that have been created on this surface in this space in the last 28 years.

Each craftsman has their own rolling tool cart with the assorted tools that match their craft.

Need a clamp? Any kind of clamp?

 There were three of these carts around the shop.

The painting section of the shop

I was really impressed with the painting shop. I did lots of scenery/scrim painting in my college theater days so this brought back some great memories.

The very important ventilation section of the paint shop.

Notice how the entire floor is covered in canvas with 1 foot square grid lines drawn across the surface. This is how they maintain the size requirements of what they are producing.

 Everywhere I looked there was something interesting to observe......

 .......scale models of things........

 ..........period figures of all sorts of characters........

..........bottle molds from every period of history........

 A welder/metal workers cart

 A blow up of the hysterical poster on the metal workers cart. I never realized a bible could be used as a unit of measure. HA!

  

The design shop where the plans are drawn

 The tools were all organized so beautifully. Everything in its place in special cabinets specially made to hold them. You can see how disciplined the craftspeople are.

Wow! Just, WOW! This whole thing is an artists/builders dream!

 We went into the coffee/break room and they has loads of photos of the work crews over the years. Here is one of them.

 You can tell how much the shop is a real family. All union jobs! :o)

 There were opera posters all around the shop. This was my favorite....'spit out your gum', that hand waiting for it. Hilarious!

What a real treat to be able to visit this creative space. It was all very inspirational.

Thanks Sis! :o)

The great outdoors

Rattlesnake Ledge

My nephew Jake decided he wanted to take us on a hike up in the Cascades just west of Snoqualmie Pass along highway 90 to a recreation area called Rattlesnake Ledge: http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/rattle-snake-ledge. The hike will take us up, up, up along a ridge and deliver us to the ledge at the top. Luckily we had a sunny day for this adventure.

One thing we can never get enough of are the breathtaking trees out west, so we were not disappointed on this hike. We walked through huge stands of Western Red Cedar and Douglass Fir.

We can't seem to avoid coming across things that seem alien on this trip :o) We saw a couple of things along the trail that would make one think we are not alone.

 We came upon this tree growing out of the side of a fallen tree. It appears a seed fell onto the rotting trunk of the fir tree and as it grew, its roots then wrap around the outside of the trunk and along the top. It reminded me of that creature in the Alien movies with its root like legs attaching itself to everything. Ahhhhhhh! It is amazing how life prevails.

OK........so this is obviously a boy tree. Look, but don't touch! :o)

These diagonal trees almost look like fingers reaching out of the mountain to get to the light. Like something right out of The Hobbit. 

The wind was really whipping as we walked up the mountain. The sound of it as it blew through the trees was exhilarating! I looked up and just had to take a video of the chaos.

The view as we approached the ledge

Me at the backside view

 Jake standing on the ledge

 Weeeeeeeeeee!

Panoramic video of our view atop the ledge. The wind up here was unbelievable! We had to really hold on to each other.

I was brave enough to hold my camera over the ledge to get a view of the trees below. You can see how high up we are by how tiny the trees are below. My serious thrill of the day.

Our 3 week stay in Seattle was better than ever. Such a variety of things to do with family and friends who are dear to us. The next stop on our journey will be Vancouver, B.C., but not before we take a side trip to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon, Washington.

You won't believe the beauty we found there! Stay tuned.