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"It's like being kissed by a teddy bear."
Jan. 3rd, 2008 06:10 pmI'm back from Vancouver, BC, where on Tuesday I ferried Sharee from the airport to the YWCA hotel downtown. It's the cheapest hotel in Vancouver, says Sharee, and we've stayed there before. It does the trick, shared bathrooms and all and not the heights of look-shoory, although twelve stories high -- and we were on the twelfth floor this time, room 1211.
So, two and a half years after we last saw each other, we took it easy, as we had agreed to do beforehand -- and had a very sweet time of it, even with a raft of unknowns floating somewhere off in the near distance. I stayed an extra day after we decided neither of us had changed for the worse. Not that we haven't changed. "Oh no, I look my age!" Sharee cried one morning when she first looked in the mirror. But I'm also told that my full beard makes me look older, and that's as it should be, because I am, in fact, older.
Vancouver has always felt like home to me, having the same Pacific Northwest tang as Seattle and Portland, where I've lived. Have to say that Vancouver seems a lot more international than the other two, however, and that's even with Seattle seeming noticeably more international in the past decade than it had. Every store clerk in Vancouver seemed to be from a different nation, and I heard at least a dozen different languages in the streets and shops, including Portugese in a couple of places. Not to mention Canadian English, so close and yet not so far from the American. And even the Commonwealth Canadians couldn't understand Sharee's Queensland accent.
We had dinner at an Indian restaurant called the India Gate both days, keeping them open late the first night and then getting teased about it the second night. ("We're open until ten o'clock," said the beturbaned owner. "Last night, 10:30!") We walked around Granville St and environs, and Sharee shopped. Oh, how she shopped! She also recovered from jetlag while I read She (good book!), and we got caught up on the news of the past year, during which we hadn't communicated at all.
Now she's off to various visitations and adventures on Vancouver Island, and in Edmonton, Guatemala, and Mexico. She'll be back in BC in a month or so, and then perhaps we'll plot further mischief before she heads back Down Under at the end of February.
So, two and a half years after we last saw each other, we took it easy, as we had agreed to do beforehand -- and had a very sweet time of it, even with a raft of unknowns floating somewhere off in the near distance. I stayed an extra day after we decided neither of us had changed for the worse. Not that we haven't changed. "Oh no, I look my age!" Sharee cried one morning when she first looked in the mirror. But I'm also told that my full beard makes me look older, and that's as it should be, because I am, in fact, older.
Vancouver has always felt like home to me, having the same Pacific Northwest tang as Seattle and Portland, where I've lived. Have to say that Vancouver seems a lot more international than the other two, however, and that's even with Seattle seeming noticeably more international in the past decade than it had. Every store clerk in Vancouver seemed to be from a different nation, and I heard at least a dozen different languages in the streets and shops, including Portugese in a couple of places. Not to mention Canadian English, so close and yet not so far from the American. And even the Commonwealth Canadians couldn't understand Sharee's Queensland accent.
We had dinner at an Indian restaurant called the India Gate both days, keeping them open late the first night and then getting teased about it the second night. ("We're open until ten o'clock," said the beturbaned owner. "Last night, 10:30!") We walked around Granville St and environs, and Sharee shopped. Oh, how she shopped! She also recovered from jetlag while I read She (good book!), and we got caught up on the news of the past year, during which we hadn't communicated at all.
Now she's off to various visitations and adventures on Vancouver Island, and in Edmonton, Guatemala, and Mexico. She'll be back in BC in a month or so, and then perhaps we'll plot further mischief before she heads back Down Under at the end of February.
