On Good Friday, Sara and I made our second ever trip to Bowen Island. We had front row seats in the ferry, beautiful day and beautiful view.
It was a short ferry ride. When we arrived on Bowen, we took a different path from last time we visited. We found a cute little lagoon, looped back into town, ate lunch at The Village Baker, then hiked up a hill to Artisan Square.
We didn't even realize it existed! Great find - lots of neat little art shops. I bought some chocolate ice cream at Chocolate Cafe and then we wandered some more until we found a lovely residential zone on our way down the hill from Artisan Square. The houses were gorgeous - all different, and all looked pretty new. Many were quite large and had amazing views of the mountains and water. We'd arrived at Bowen at 11:20, and by now it was 1:40. We were pretty tired from all the walking, so we just headed back to the ferry pickup. Sat around admiring the view, went to a coffee shop until it was time to return.
On Saturday, we did the usual weekend chores before meeting Steve and his friend Dave at Esso Avitat, part of Vancouver airport. They'd flown a CT-155 Hawk from Seattle.
We had a nice dinner on the patio overlooking the water at The Flying Beaver. After dinner, we dropped Dave off at his hotel downtown and then headed back to our place with Steve. Sara took a phone call with her mom which lasted awhile; Steve and I watched a boring DVD during that time (a retirement roast for one of my colleagues).
Sunday the three of us still had the Zipcar that Sara and I rented the previous day to meet Steve at the airport. During breakfast, we decided to drive out to Point Roberts. I've wanted to go for awhile, and I thought of it when Steve mentioned flying over Point Roberts on his way in yesterday. Point Roberts is ~45 minutes from where we live. The cool thing is that Point Roberts is entirely surrounded by water or Canada - not attached to the US by land and yet is technically part of Washington state.
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| Sunday morning breakfast |
We packed some snacks, and drove out to PR. There is a full border crossing (even though PR is less than 5 sq. miles). We drove around the perimeter of PR, and walked around Lighthouse Marine Park which had gorgeous views of mountains - we could see many more mountains than when we're in Vancouver. At one point, we decided to look for the town - until we realized there really wasn't one apart from a few gas stations, some shipping receiving signs, a hardware store, and a grocery store.
It was approaching time to return our rental, so we drove back and dropped the Zipcar at 13th and Granville in South Granville. From there, we walked all the way to Gastown which Steve had never seen before. Near the end of Gastown we were attracted by what looked like some sort of festival from a distance - as we walked through the crowed, we realized it was a street garage sale of used items, attended by downtown eastside residents. From there, we found ourselves a block from Main + Hastings. We kept going through to China Town, then grabbed a bus to Kits Beach.
On Kits Beach, we sat at a picnic table to eat the rest of our food. We played a game of Boggle (yay!). Steve was ready to go home after that. Our bus tickets had just expired, so Steve and I Car2Go'd home while Sara took a bus (we thought this might be the most economical way to get home given you can only fit 2 in a Car2Go).
(Is Sunday still going?) We ate a Thanksgiving Dinner with the boarders. The kitchen staff had arranged the tables in a giant square so all ~40 of us felt like we were eating together. The dinner (and dessert) was delicious! After dinner, Steve, Sara, and I played Monopoly City. We had to read the rules since the game is quite different from classic Monopoly. We started the game just after 7PM and didn't finish until 10:30!! It was a loooong game (if you must know, I won. My strategy? roll well and pick up good Chance cards)
So that's been our Easter Weekend so far. Steve will be heading out tomorrow (Monday) back to Moosejaw, SK.
