Vancouver area fun with Family Oct 3 & 4

 I spent the first two days of my trip in Vancouver hanging with family and meeting up with my travel friend Judith to organize ourselves before takeoff.  

My sister Syl and partner Russ chauffeured me out to the ferry.  Syl is in charge of taking out perishable items from my fridge and finding a better home for them as opposed to me throwing them out or having them stay in my fridge until I return.  Over the years, she has been more than generous with giving me rides to and from the airport or ferry.  She’s a very awesome sister.  

Sylvia, Russ and I just before I board the ferry at Swartz Bay.

And on the other end of the ferry is another awesome sister, Patsy, who came to pick me up and lets me impose on her life several times each year on my many excursions into the interior, mostly to travel to and from the many music festivals I attend.  I am a big fan of getting a relaxed morning start to leaving the lower mainland area, and that works best when I stay overnight there instead of catching the first ferry (6:00 am).  Since many of the lower mainland cities have restrictions about overnight RV parking (to deal with full time RV dwellers) I can park my rig at my sister’s townhouse complex without worrying if I’ll get a ticket or towed.  

For dinner, Patsy and I drove to meet up with family for dinner at Sud Soi Restaurant on Commercial near East 1st.  It’s about an hour into Vancouver where she lives in South Surrey because it’s rush hour.  Google Maps (I know, I shouldn’t be using it…) finds us the quickest route and we make it there with loads of time to spare..  Joining us are my sister Cynthia and her partner Dave, and my kids Jennifer and Cameron.  After dinner we decide to head a few blocks to an ice cream shop to get some unnecessary dessert.  Coming out of the restaurant I hear someone call my name and there is Melissa with her cute 7 month son, Winston and her sister.  I know about a hundred people in the lower mainland so a chance meeting like this is a small world event.  

I visit with little Winston who seems to the the calmest and happiest baby I’ve met and then catch up to the rest of my family who are not delaying their walk to Elephant Garden Creamery for its Asian inspired ice cream.  It’s after 8:00pm and we walk the few blocks and I’m amazed at how many storefronts are open and all the people milling about at this time of the day.  Downtown Victoria where I live is a ghost town by 5:00pm.  I order ginger custard and others order other flavours including mango lassi or mango sticky rice.  It’s definitely a place I would go back to.  

Patsy, Jennifer, Dave, Cameron, Cynthia standing outside Elephant Creamery.  There was no room inside so we gathered on the sidewalk.

The next day I figure out a couple things I’ve forgotten to pack.  Patsy seems to have two of everything so I’m now taking some of her things with me.  That afternoon I take transit to visit Judith and our mutual friend Susan.  The trip takes about 90 minutes and involved a long bus ride with over 30 stops and skytrain trip into South Burnaby.  Susan makes a great dinner which can be consumed by Judith who is severely limited by things she can consume.  So many things disagree with her digestive system.  She won’t starve in Japan, but she won’t be able to enjoy 95% of what is on the menu.  

After dinner, on the way back to Patsy’s house in South Surrey, I discover the Skytrain Expo line has two distinct paths, one going into Surrey and the other looping northward through Coquitlam and Burnaby.  I take the wrong one because I didn’t know there were two Expo lines… Why these lines have the same name doesn’t make much sense to me.  It definitely tripped up an unsuspecting travelers like me and I had to backtrack when I discovered it wasn’t going in the right direction.

I meet up with Patsy and her partner Bernie at the end of the Skytrain line at King George Station as they volunteered to come pick me up that evening.  They’re not used to picking people up from the Skytrain so we scramble around looking for each other before we connect.  Back at home we sit around and socialize for a while (that usually involves Bernie complaining about taxes, perceived government overreach and staffing issues at his car dealerships.). But it also involved a moon cakes which are consumed around this time of the year to celebrate the mid-Autumn Festival.  They have a preserved egg yolk in the center which represents the Harvest moon and is always a time for family gatherings.  It seems to be an acquired taste, most of my friends aren’t thrilled enough to try it more than once.  

A Moon cake under consumption.   These are a traditional pastry to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.  This one had the traditional single egg yolk with lotus seed paste filling.

That night I have a restless sleep, likely because I’m a bit anxious about leaving in the morning to catch a jet plane to Tokyo.  But it will be fine because I’ll be able to catch up on lost sleep on the plane.