Category: Trips

Old Germany

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Last night some of us drove to Amherst, a nearby town, for some dinner. My brother had eaten at a new German restaurant in town the last time he was here, and he quite liked it, so we opted for that. It wasn’t a hard choice; there’s just never been a good restaurant in this town for as long as I can remember.

What a pleasant surprise the Old Germany restaurant was. We all left stuffed full of delicious food (enormous hunks of meat & fish, spaetzle, mashed potatoes, etc.) and proper (Lowenbrau! Erdinger!) German beer. The couple who owns the restaurant, one cook and one server, were very pleasant and friendly. It was extremely reasonably priced too: I had fresh bread, tasty garden salad, delicious Talapia in a mustard sauce, lots of mashed potatoes and two large beers for $22, tax in.

The ambiance is a little weird, since it’s built in an old Dairy Queen (and even still has some of the cheap plastic seating) but the food more than makes up for it. Anyway, when you have nine family members, three of whom are under the age of 10, you just make your own ambiance.

[tags]old germany restaurant, amherst[/tags]

Apres lunch, le deluge

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I’ve been back at the ancestral manse since about 1AM, following a pretty painless flight and drive with my brother, who picked me up. It’s been a nice quiet day, full of chores and playing with kids, until just now when copious amounts of relatives starting showing up. We shall soon leave them to their family dinner (just my mom, her nine brothers and sisters and their spouses).

It’s been nice so far. I get the sense, however, that four days of insanity are just about to begin.

[tags]family reunion[/tags]

Final thoughts about our trip

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

  • Pictures of our trip are finally in a Flickr set. I uploaded the 30 I liked the best. Somehow we managed not to take any pictures in Vancouver…I guess we were too busy drinking and cycling.
  • Speaking of drinking, up until the last evening (when we were all about Belgian) we managed to drink only BC wine & beer for the entire trip. Some favourites: the Mt. Begbie Tall Timber Ale, several Mark James microbrews, the Blasted Church Hatfield’s Fuse and the Sumac Rudge Meritage.
  • Google Maps puts the trip from Calgary to Vancouver at just over 1,000 km; including side trips we covered just under 1,200 km. We filled the gas tank of our brand new Toyota Corolla once, in Revelstoke, at a cost of $50. We pre-paid the fuel option on the car for $60 (so worth it…I would’ve paid more than that to fill it up since I brought the car in right at E, and I didn’t have to drive around downtown Vancouver looking for a gas station) so ultimately we paid just $110 for all that driving. Not bad, considering all the griping I hear from drivers these days.
  • Animals spotted: a bear (from the safety of the Whistler gondola), marmots, hares, several gophers / prairie dogs / Richardson’s Ground Squirrels / whatever they were, chipmunks, a pika, an elk & a few big-horned sheep crossing the Trans Canada.
  • The flight attendant I spoke to on the Toronto–>Calgary flight told me about her brother’s blog, where she said he talked about “weird” music. I was trying to describe to her what I usually listened to, and she said it sounded like what her brother wrote about. She gave me the name of his blog. I checked it out…yup. She was definitely in the right ballpark. Check out Everything is Pop.

So…where to next?

[tags]mt. begbie brewery, mark james group, blasted church, sumac ridge, toyota corolla, everything is pop[/tags]

Hoteliers: fear my web 2.0 wrath

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Random catch-up from the last week, including some highlights of the thousands of feed items I just blazed through:

.:.

George Carlin died last Sunday. I had no idea. That’s what happens when you’re out of tv/internet/newspaper range for 4 days. Carlin was an important entertainer, a rare animal indeed. Jessica Hagy from Indexed puts it nicely:

.:.

I watched three movies on our trip, mainly on the flights from and to Toronto: Charlie Wilson’s War (which I never did finish…our descent began before I caught the end, but I don’t feel like I missed that much), Ocean’s 13 (yawn…the last two have just been issues of GQ magazine put to celluloid) and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (and you shall know it by its bleak, bleak trail of dead…yeesh). Philip Seymour Hoffman was the best thing about the last, and the only good thing about the first. If that guy had “leading man good looks” he’d be a superstar. I suspect in about ten years he’ll be regarded as one of the finest actors of our generation, if not the finest.

.:.

Richard Florida pointed to the chart below, by Dave Lakeland, showing the cost of gas vs. the GDP per capita (all in the US) for the past twenty years. Very interesting.

.:.

I actually quite look forward to this phase of a trip, where we can finally see how all the pictures look (Nellie’s 22″ iMac gives a much clearer idea than my tiny little sub-laptop) and I can write reviews of the hotels in TripAdvisor. Three of the hotels will be getting rave reviews; one will get faint praise and one mild scorn. Mmmmmm, feedback.

[tags]george carlin, indexed, richard florida, cost of commuting, tripadvisor[/tags]

Felix!

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Tonight was a nice wrap-up to our trip: I got to see Stanzi for the first time in ages, and I finally got to meet her fiance Trent. We all went to dinner at Chambar (yum…Belgian beer!) and caught up. They just finished a 200km canoe trip down some rivers up north, which made our little hikes seem pretty sad.

Most exciting of all for Nellie: seeing Alessandro Juliani (aka Lt. Gaeta of Battlestar Galactica) eating dinner at the restaurant.

Now we’ll just relax and get some rest before our flight back tomorrow. As much as I hate the idea of the trip being over, it’ll be nice to get home again.

[tags]chambar, vancouver, battlestar galactica[/tags]

BSS & HEPA

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Just got home from the Yaletown Brewing Co. where we watched Spain beat Germany 1-0 in the Euro final. Two things I love about the YBC, even more than their sister Brewhouse in Whistler:

1. The music. Last night, when the DJ started after 9:00, they played some really good songs, including “7/4 Shoreline” by Broken Social Scene, “First Day of Spring” by The Gandharvas, “Common People” by Pulp and “Connection” by Elastica. Surprising stuff for a pub that hosted by no less than 3 stagettes in the time it took us to eat dinner.

2. The men’s washrooms have Dyson Airblades. It seems funny to refer to a washroom hand dryer as cool…but it’s cool.

And now we wait to see what else our last full day in Vancouver — and on vacation — brings. Still waiting to see if we’ll meet up with Stanzi this afternoon, but other than that I think we may just rest, pack, do our web check-in and find a quiet place to eat dinner.

[tags]yaletown brewing company, euro 2008, dyson airblade[/tags]

I can has watterfrunt plz? Kthxbai.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

After a big breakfast downstairs at the hotel, Nellie and I went down to the marinaside and rented some bikes from Reckless. For $30 we got two bikes for 2 hours (though we only stayed out for about 75 minutes) and cruised around the waterfront. We went all the way down past English Bay (where I stayed during my first visit to the city) to the entrance of Stanley Park, all the way back around False Creek past BC Place and GM Place and Science World, then back to Yaletown to drop off the bikes.

There were tons of cyclists, roller bladers, walkers, strollers…everyone was out. It doesn’t hurt that it’s another beautiful day. David Miller should force every Toronto city councilor to come do this.

Just about to jump in the shower and head off to the pub to watch the Euro Cup final.

[tags]vancouver, yaletown, reckless bike stores, toronto waterfront, david miller[/tags]

From sky to sea

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It really is amazing how you can change your scenery out here in just a few hours. This morning at 10:00 we took the gondola up Whistler Mountain for a look around. The best parts: seeing a bear (a small brown) below the gondola about halfway up; taking lots of pictures of a marmot as he sunned himself at the top of the mountain; the open-air chairlift up to the peak of the mountain and the views from up there. It didn’t take long, but the views were as good (if less intimate) as anything we saw around Yoho.

We came back down the chairlift & gondola and jumped in the car. In spite of all the construction on the highway down to Vancouver we made pretty good time, and after a bit of complication (stupid Olympics construction) we found the car rental drop-off and walked the bags down to the hotel. We’re staying at the Opus, which is undeniably pretentious and poncy, but it’s also very comfortable and in an awesome neighbourhood. I’ve never spent time in Yaletown before (in fact, I just realized today that I haven’t been to Vancouver since 2001!) but it’s a cool neighbourhood. We found another brew pub right around the corner…same place, basically, as the place we frequented in Whistler. It happens to be right next to the chocolate place that I wanted to check out. We did a little shopping, ate a little gelato, walked down by the marina, explored our surroundings, showered & lounged in our room a bit…sweet. Hard to believe that 6 hours ago we were at 7,000 feet taking pictures of giant rodents.

Opus actually charges $15/day for internet access (apparently they’re taking lessons from Rogers) so I won’t bother posting this until tomorrow. Let’s just assume that we had a great night at the afore-mentioned brew pub.

[tags]whistler, vancouver, open hotel, yaletown[/tags]