On vacation

I am writing you from my friend Mario’s place, after a few days in Vancouver I already had a lot to tell you so I thought I would update the blog. The last few days have passed really fast, on the night of my arrival I went shopping and bought a new cellphone (I am back in 2010!) and a lot of food to cook some homemade meals.

The next day and I took the sky train (kind of metro here) and went downtown to walk around. Of course there were lots of shops and boutiques and malls and I couldn’t resist. After 48 days of wearing the same outfit, do I need to tell you that I was happy to go shopping and buy some new clothes? One of the salesladies actually spoke french (she was from Quebec), I found it funny! I met Mario in the afternoon after his workday and we walked down Davie street trough the gay neighbourhood to English Bay beach. It was very hot again, so we just enjoyed the heat and the sun on our beach towel. We had a beer on a terrasse on Davie street and then a poutine in a restaurant owned by a Québécois. It was delicious, and we had a nice décor! I liked to walk on the streets downtown at night, with all the lights, bars and restaurants.. I love big cities. We went in a bookshop and of course I bought 3 books that I probably won’t have time to read before I come back. But they were calling me from the shelves ‘buy me! buy me!’ so once again I couldn’t resist.

The next day I stayed home and did some cleaning and cooking. One of the flatmates was leaving for India for a month so we had dinner altogether. I decided to cook a traditional québécois meal, a pâté chinois. Everyone liked it, I was very proud of my cooking skills (I missed homemade food a lot on this trip). It was a great dinner, unfortunately we took the picture of us all with somebody else’s camera, but I will post it here as soon as he sends it to me.

Wednesday was a cold and rainy day, so I headed to one of the city’s museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery. I was not the only one to have this idea, but as soon as I went up to the first floor it was less crowded. There were four different exhibitions and as I love museums, I spent almost half of my day just there. The most interesting one was definitely the Kerry James Marshall exhibition, he is an american artist (still alive) and paints subjects related to afro-american popular culture.

Later on the afternoon the sun showed up, I did a bit of shopping again and bought a pair of running shoes to start running again. I met Mario for a beer on a terrasse in the evening, and we listened to a very talented signer-guitar-saxophone-beatbox-and more man, I really enjoyed it! Here is a bit of it.

Then Mario showed me where the Olympic torch was, and we had a very nice view on the north shore mountains (Cypress, Grouse and Seymour mountains – see little picture on the right). We walked to a nearby neibourhood called Gastown. It was more european than the rest of the city, and we saw the famous steam clock. We went to a very good italian restaurant (the old spaghetti factory) and ate way too much, but it was delicious!

This morning I went for a quick run in a big parc near Mario’s appartment. Then I headed downtown and had a well deserved facial and massage, I would have slept for the whole day in those heating blankets, it was really relaxing! Then guess what I went shopping again… it is hard to resist! I am becoming a shopaholic, but it feels great to wear some normal clothes again

So here we are, I still have a lot to see of this wonderful city! I will keep you posted about it for sure. Also I want to thank all of you who sent me some messages of congratulations, I feel lucky of having so many great people around me (virtually and physically). I am looking forward to see you all!  + a special thanks to the Marie-Victorin team for their message!

We are still collecting donations for a few weeks maybe more, so far we have raised more than 5600 $! À suivre…