Vancouver

Is very pretty.

It is awesome seeing Liz and Alex after two weeks of only talking to complete strangers or incredibly new convention friends. I may be ranting and blabbering a bit much at them.

Liz and Alex. In Canada showing me cool places.

Wandering around the Vancouver Convention Centre looking at all the cosplay and anime kids (impressive costumes, even if some girls seemed a little young for what they were wearing*) and accidentally running into Tearles while going across a pedestrian crossing. I believe this is called Perthing.

I am in awe of the Vancouver river foreshore. Makes Perth's "plans" even more embarrassing. My pictures seem to have disappeared though, which is irritating.

We ended up hanging out for the afternoon together (he is staying with Alex and Liz too, I just didn't think I'd see him till this evening) checking out a little interactive 1812 battle museum and also the Vancouver Art Museum.

Liz and Alex have shown me around Stanley park, we've gone to the most amazing book and comic store (a lot of second hand stock and just wow) and then a more boring usual chain store Chapters, whih is basically like a borders and underwhelming in comparison to the overstocked and overflowing and fun of the other store. We had a drive alongside the river so I could geek out at the logging industry here. To get the logs from whereever the forests are to the woodchip mill, they literally tie them up and use tug boats to pull and steer them down the river! It looks amazing! It is also the reason why there are so many old logs just sitting on all the beaches (pulled up in lines to make nice seats not just left half rotting though).

You can see old logs on the edge of the river. The seem to be delibrately left there, maybe to dry?
We weren't sure

We also had lunch in Davis Road Village (I think it's called). Basically a long strip of road that has developed into a queer neighbourhood. Pride flags are everywhere, the bins are painted pink and it seemed a pretty active community. Like community, not just the usual random gathering of people that 'local' city places often are. It was very cool.

The prescription drug ads everywhere in N. America take getting used to.

Tomorrow we are apparently going to an all vegetarian Dim Sum restaurant. I am stupidly exciting about this.


* Yeah. I'm officially old. I wanted to go up and demand to know if their mother knew they were out of the house in that outfit.