January, 2006

Happy New Years!

Cross Country Skiing

A couple of years ago at Jesse's suggestion we tried cross country skiing. This year Helen got an ALTs pass at Cypress and her and I did a lot more skiing. Gabi is leaving to go back to Australia so we decided to try and round all of that up and go for an afternoon.

As Canadians, you are kind of expected to have a natural affinity to winter sports. Turns out cross country isn't that hard to do - we were mostly newbies, but we made out OK. (Don't confuse OK with elegant). Even those of us who had been out a few times fell (it was icy - really!)

Overall, a nice day out, great company and fun had by all.

Chinese New Years Evening - Cloud 9
On Chinese New Years evening we went out for dinner. (It helped that this years Dining Out Vancouver covered Chinese New Years). We went to Cloud 9 - a revolving restaurant in downtown Vancouver. I'm a bit sheepish to admit, it was actually my first time in a revolving restaurant.

A revolving restaurant is either perfect or terrible for me. My "oooh shiny" attention span was always being drawn to the new view and my geographical brain was constantly trying to pick out landmarks. Overall, not a great place for a date (at least where you care about the partner) but if you plan on having a long boring dinner where other people are doing the talking and listening, revolving restaurants are perfect!

Chinese New Years Day - The Parade

Every event you learn a little bit more about your city. Todays lesson - Vancouver has terrible crowd manners. We decided to see the New Years parade. We picked a spot (Main and Pender), met up and waited for the parade. We had a great place - the edge of the curb near a corner. Shortly before the parade starts, a row of kids and kids parents forms in front of us. Once the parade started, an additional layer of amateur photographers deposits. Pretty soon the 4 lane road is choked to a single lane and the parade becomes invisible to our invested position.

I think the lesson is to choose your location better - some parts of the route were better managed - the area around the filming was well behaved. We actually seemed the worst part of the whole root - perhaps being at the top of the hill meant that people could see what was coming and get "out" to see it, or that the parade slowed in front of us leading to a thinner column.

There were the usual dogs and dragons, dignitaries and dancers.

But it's the people that really grab your attention.

We bowed out early and hit Floata - a huge (apparently the largest in Canada) Chinese (mostly Dim Sum) restaurant. With seating for 1000 people we weren't too worried about getting seating for 10, but it did become a zoo once the parade had ended.