Subject: Re: Family Epistle from Vancouver, eh?
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 08:47:03 -0600
From: Shane.Westra@onyxgfx.com
It's Sunday night right now, and we thought we'd write a
quick letter about our trip. It's been
really fun, but it will be nice to be back home tomorrow. It turned out we had a lot more time to
sight-see than we thought – this trip was part work and part play – I was
coming to help out at a trade show, but it turns out I didn't need to
participate hardly at all because one of the printers (that costs over $80,000)
was dropped and ruined! (No, I didn't
drop it).
So anyway, I guess it was the ideal trip to bring Alicia for
our anniversary!
On Monday the 5th (happy B-Day Dunk), we flew to Vancouver,
and got settled in. Our hotel has an
excellent view of the harbor! We walked
around the city a bit, and went to the Aquarium, which is located on a
beautiful peninsula called Stanley Park.
We also saw the Gastown Clock, which runs off steam.
Tuesday, we did some shopping, and enjoyed a day and night's
view from a lookout tower.
On Wednesday, we rented some rollerblades and skated all the
way around Stanley Park. It was really
fun, and it was great to have such beautiful scenery all around us. There were a few parts where the pavement was
quite rough, but for the most part it wasn't bad.
We did some more shopping on Thursday – mostly to buy Alicia
a sweatshirt because she's been a little cold.
When we got back to the hotel, we noticed a large cruise ship was docked
there (the cruise ships dock right on the pier that our hotel is located on –
three ships can fit at once!). We walked
around the hotel promenade, and looked out at the ship. It was the "Sun Princess" from
London – it made us think of Wendy and Rick and their cruise adventures.
Later we went to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where they were
showing an exhibit of E. J. Hughes. We
looked at quite a good collection of his works, and some other works as
well. Then we went to the Samba
restaurant (similar to Rodizio, Made In Brazil, and Samba Grill
"churrascaria" restaurants), which was very good. The waiters were very excited when they found
I could speak Portuguese! We had a nice
dinner – they had great meat and excellent service, and there was live Jazz Brasileiro
there as well (guitar, tenor sax, xylophone, etc. – Played "Girl from
Ipenama" and other Brazilian and American classics). We ate a lot, had Guaraná, and even saved
room for some pudim (which Alicia even liked).
We walked back to the hotel afterwards, and watched the end of the
Canucks vs. Wild game (Stanley Cup playoffs, for those of you that aren't in
the hockey know) – when we tuned in, it was tied 2-2, but the Wild ended up
winning, 4-2, and winning the series.
Then we watched a little more TV, and wrote in a journal so we wouldn't
forget everything.
Friday (May 9) was our anniversary! We tried to find the LDS church today, but
weren't successful. So we went to the
Queen Elizabeth Gardens – they were very impressive.
On Saturday we rented some mountain bikes to ride around
Stanley Park – we brought the camera this time.
We rode clear around the park and then some. We rode around to English Bay on the other side
of downtown. It was a lot of fun and we
didn't get as tired as we had when we rollerbladed it. Later we went to see the "Bugs! in
3D" movie at the IMAX.
On Sunday we woke up a little early today so we could go to
church. We got on the SkyTrain, and then
the bus – and actually figured out how to use our tickets for a transfer! We got to the church, and the good news is
that we found it and there were people there – the bad news was that everybody
was speaking Spanish. But, we were a
little early, so we thought that perhaps it was ending and an English ward
would start at 11:30 (we had called the mission home, and the elder we talked
to said it started at 11:30). But after
a few minutes, that didn't look like a promising scenario. Some Elders arrived, and we asked one of them
when English speaking church was, and he said 1:00. So the church's website was right, and the
Elder at the mission office didn't know what was going on!
So, with an extra couple hours to spare, we decided to
stroll around Queen Elizabeth Park again.
It was perfect weather – we walked a little and saw the lovely flowers
(again). Then we walked back to the
church, and were glad to see people speaking English (I wouldn't have minded a
Spanish-speaking sacrament meeting, but Alicia would have). The people were really friendly, quite a few
noticed that we must be visitors. They
had a nice mother's day program, and Alicia even got a rose afterwards (along
with all the other women). The ward
there had a lot of people, but hardly any youth or primary age kids.
That's all from the north!
We fly back tomorrow morning.
Hope everything is going well for you!
Shane and Alicia
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