Vancouver: Day Three

Breakfast at Scoozi's. The owner took one look at me and knew I needed to be fed. Food was pretty good. The inside of the restaurant looked rather like being in your Aunt's kitchen - spice racks everywhere. Elvis playing on the radio. Weather forecast: yet more rain. According to the guide book, June has 6 rainy days on average. Clearly we're getting most of them.

A photo to prove that I actually was in Vancouver, while very pregnant with twins. This is me, typing to you while trying to get the swelling down. On my chaise lounge.

Then we walked down to Canada Place to check out the giant cruise ships and other water front related items. We watched seaplanes land and take off. Very cool! You know, cruise ships are big. Really, really big! I mean B! I! G! I can't imagine traveling on one. Looking at the ship docked next to us, we were 3 stories up and still there was more ship to go. I looked down over the edge to the black water far below, lapping at the sides of the ship and got that same crazy suicidal feeling.

What is it about standing next to an edge, a cliff, a really big drop off somewhere and wanting to jump? I don't understand that weird compulsion. I don't actually want to die, but that weird feeling grabs hold of me every time I look down from a really high place. Creeeepy!

We had to climb a lot of stairs to get to the top of the observation area and I mentioned to Eric that we wouldn't be doing that again. The twins, they don't like stairs. As a matter of fact, they like stairs less than they like walking. I had to sit down and rest at the top, grateful for the increased oxygen here at sea level. Yay oxygen!

Kinetic art in the bank across the street from the gallery. What can I say? Canadians are wacky!

In the afternoon, we went to the Vancouver Art Gallery

Across the street from our hotel. Nice short walk. They wouldn't allow me to photograph anything inside (Whaaaat?!), so this is all you get.

where we checked out the Impressionist exhibition that was on loan from Cleveland, OH, of all places. Cleveland?! Why does Cleveland have a massive collection of original Impressionists? I'm so confused. Anyway, it was very nice. I have determined that I like the Impressionists but not Post Impressionism or Cubism. Then again, I like photography, so this isn't exactly a big surprise. One of the more fun exhibits, after the Impressionists was Andrea Zittel's Critical Space. Very neat! Basically she pared down living space into areas that would fit into large steamer trunks and it was all on display. Several of them were put together to create a house that I really wanted to crawl into (the doorways were large circles) but we weren't allowed in. Too bad, because it looked like a human sized gerbil house! No spinning wheel, though.

For dinner we went posh again and went to Le Crocodile. The service was slow, but they were very nice and although I was disappointed that they didn't do the Dance of the Waiters, the food was excellent. They were very busy and perhaps short handed because both the hostess and the Maitre D' were working the floor. I didn't bring my camera which turned out to be a good thing - the place was packed and I'd have felt really obvious, in a way that I didn't at C's since we were there so early.

We ate well. I had heart of avocado with snow crab in a buerre blanc sauce to start, lobster and prawns with fettucine in something buttery and yummy as my entree and for dessert (there's always time for dessert on vacation!) I had an "up to the minute" pear tart, in a sea of caramel sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

We were given tiny chocolate crocodiles with our bill, the same way one normally gets mints. Mmm! They gave us two extra to take with us for the twins. Yay!


Then we shuffled slowly back to The Met and passed out, awash in happy full tummy feelings.

Vancouver tastes great!