Dog Days of Summer

Summer for me was pretty uneventful this year…because I spent all available funds on my traveling for fall. It’s okay now though, because I as write this, I am on my cruise to Alaska and am in the library staring out at the water and feeling slightly nauseous.



I still need to find my sea legs. I won’t post this blog until I return as I don’t feel like paying $0.75 USD per minute…it’s basically highway robbery. Anyways, moving on to my post of my last few days of summer sun…

So on the Labour Day Friday, my newest old friend Rachel and I headed to Vancouver to indulge ourselves in the greatest pleasure of stuffing ourselves with chocolate. With high hopes and long traffic waits to get in, we arrived in two pieces (total), and proceeded the rich undertaking.







Rachel managed to kick my butt and was on her third plate as I started lagging behind on plate two.







The food defeated me. I was actually kind of amazed since I can eat most people out of house and home. I was also slightly annoyed at myself due to the fact that the buffet is $25.





Afterwards, we did some shopping, complaining, laughing, and eventually, driving towards home.

Last weekend, I met up with my delightful friend Jill who, in a brief lapse of judgement, decided to move to Edmonton and leave me behind. Boo!





I will miss you friend. Sniff sniff.

The next day, I headed into Vancouver again to meet up with my oldest and dearest, Yin.







We went for lunch to Granville Island and ate at the Dockside Restaurant.





We ambled around the island and eventually headed on to my favorite spot, Vanier Park.









Later we decided to indulge in our Asian heritage and headed into Richmond to shop, eat, and sing.



First up was Aberdeen Centre which has three of my favorite things:




Yes, a Maserati is my dream car. I drooled…and then almost choked on that drool. Best.



I rove okonomiyaki! We chatted and enjoyed the savory delights of Chinese people making Japanese food.



We headed out to the grocery store and found out they were have shows outside.



And then I saw this:





Um….WHAT? I almost wanted to snatch it out of the garbage can and take it home (since it is technically a Louis Vuitton bag), but Jen made the very good point that there could be a severed hand inside. So those picture will suffice.



After we were done all of our shopping and exploring for the day (including an extended stay at the 100 yen shop), we decided that we’d cap off our good times in Richmond as the Asian do – karaoke.







Um…BOO! Icon Karaoke sucks. First off, poor song selection. There is only so many times you can sing “The Sign” by Ace of Base until you wonder if your life has really come to this. Second, WHO on earth charges $2 for a cup of water and don’t tell you that they will? Also, no timer, no clock, no notification when your time is up. Being that in Japan they call you to let you know when your time is up and in Abbotsford they just shut off your machine when your time is up, we’d assume there would be a similar procedure in place. Um, no. Thanks for charging us an extra 15 minutes when you knew that we wanted an hour. What a b. Anyways, we paid and I went out and bought some candy to drown my tears in. At least it was a good time had by both me and Yin.

Today is Thursday and we are on day two of our cruise. So far, we’ve been keeping busy, but I’ll get to that in my cruise blog. It’s lunch in 8 minutes, so I’m going to leave this blog at this. Tomorrow we are in Juneau and going whale watching. I hope it will be good. :D