Hmm, should I have gotten the six-pack of 60 Minute, or the four-pack of 90 Minute? Either way, it’s 360 minutes.
Wallet →
Recommended by my old friend and former colleague Michael Wilson for secure password storage on Snow Leopard. Doesn’t do the automatic browser filling that 1Password did, but also doesn’t crash as much, and has a much simpler interface. And there’s also an iPhone app.
Day 8, Vancouver back to Seattle
By this morning, my feet were screaming out for relief, so we took a tour bus down to Granville Island for lunch and a little bit of market browsing. After that and a little rest, it was time to get the train back to Seattle. And, well, that’s about it for the vacation. Today we’re flying back to BWI and, for me at least, back to work. It’s been a great vacation overall. Jen and I don’t get a whole lot of time together in an average week, so spending this week and a half together has been really special. At the same time, it’ll be good to get back into routine, and to see Julia when she gets home in a few days.
Day 7, Vancouver
Started this morning off with a visit to the Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden, our third Asian garden visit on this trip. Jen was especially interested because some of her work involves reading Dr. Sun-Yat Sen, so she’ll have a fun story to tell her co-workers.
After that, we took the SeaBus ferry over to North Vancouver and then rode up to Grouse Mountain for the afternoon. The best way I can describe this place is if REI ran Disneyland - lots of gimmicky “outdoors” stuff like bears and a lumberjack show, with lots of people and long lines for lousy food. OK, this was the one thing we did all vacation that I didn’t really care for, so taking the Mulligan on the second-to-last day isn’t so bad. Jen did get to ride some ziplines, which sounded fun (I’m too big to do such things, unfortunately.)
Had some tasty curry at the Lonsdale Quay market, and then back to the hotel for another round of laundry and planning our last day tomorrow. We’ll be heading back to Seattle on the train around dinner time, staying over and flying back to BWI on Tuesday.
The Dr. Sun-Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver. (Sensing a theme here? We are coming back with some ideas on how to transform our mess of a back yard. Probably not this ornate, but at least considering some different trees, stone-scaping, etc.)
Day 6, Portland to Vancouver
Most of today was spent on the train from Portland to Vancouver - about eight hours total - but before we left we did get out to the Portland Saturday Market, which is full of all sorts of food and drink and handcrafts and music and whatnot. Fun to walk through, even if it did start raining while we were there.
Since we did spend so much time on it today, I’ll take this moment to talk about the Amtrak Cascades train, which runs between Eugene, OR and Vancouver, BC, with stops in Portland, Seattle, and smaller towns along the way. The seats are pretty comfy - with a little more legroom than your average airline coach seat - and some of the views along the way are incredible, especially the parts north and south of Seattle that run right along Puget Sound. Very nice, and affordable too. I really like traveling by train - it’s much more relaxing than flying, especially for someone with freakishly long legs like me.
Jen’s got some stuff figured out for tomorrow in Vancouver, so stay tuned for the update. It’ll probably come less frequently during the day, since two megabytes of mobile data here costs the same as an entire month of unlimited data back home, and we’re working solely off the hotel internet…
Hello, Vancouver! This is the view from the balcony of our hotel room.
Day 5, Portland
This was the day it was supposed to rain, but only a small sprinkling came late in the day. We spent the morning at the Japanese garden, which is really beautiful - it’s up on a hill that overlooks downtown Portland, with a spectacular view of the city. Very green, serene and peaceful.
There’s an Italian festival going on this weekend at Pioneer Courthouse Square, so we stopped there for lunch. Then we walked over to the world famous Powell’s bookstore for a while. Definitely worth a stop if you’re looking for almost any kind of book.
Just as the rain came we stopped at Old Town Pizza for dinner. Delicious!
Today we’re checking out the Saturday market, then getting in the train to Vancouver, BC. That’ll be a long ride, but at least the rain will be outside…
