San-jyuu

Otanjyobi Omedetou! Yes, Happy Birthday to my huz-b of exactly two years and nine months, Martin. For his big 30th birthday on July 8, in late June we headed into Vancouver to celebrate his graduation into the next decade of life.

Trying to be the good wife that I am, for months I had planned out what we were going to do. Our first stop in was our loverly hotel, the Granville Island Hotel. I had chosen this particular place as I have stayed here previously and requested the room I had when I blogged about my last stay in THIS post.


The birthday man (no longer boy) holding his card; clearly excited.

Since we were now situated on Granville Island for the next 20 hours or so, we decided to hike along the path I’ve blogged about so many times, the walk from Granville Island to Vanier Park.











After hitting up the usual shops and checking out the market, we headed back to our room to primp and prepare for dinner at the Dockside Restaurant.







After enjoying the scenery and our artfully-presented steaks, we (I) decided we should have some birthday cake to celebrate. Thus, we busted out the new GPS I bought for Marty for his birthday and headed down to True Confections off Dunbar.


Seriously, why aren’t you smiling? Oh wait, this is your “moody emo Facebook shot”. Right.




Dericious.

Now fully stuffed, we headed back to the Island to lounge about and stare out at the views before heading for a late-evening stroll.




Taking pictures of myself again; trying to be an arty bird.








Under the Granville bridge, hanging out with the trippy theatre folk.



The next day we woke up and headed down to the markets for brunch. The next stop on the wild birthday weekend of fun was my surprise tickets to Cirque du Soleil! We truddled on down to Concord Pacific Place in the blistering heat and smushed ourselves under the big top with thousands of others for the greatest show on earth…


Can’t you just feel the heat crackling off the cement? I almost get phantom sunburn.





There were no pictures allowed, naturally, so I snuck this one with my palm pilot. The set up was a round stage in the middle with catwalks leading off either side. You can see the draped mesh curtain in the middle with candelabras and painted circus characters. The show was fantastic. I had never been to a Cirque du Soleil show before and was not disappointed. The show was called Corteo and the premise was a clown’s funeral. I don’t really know how most of the acrobatics and whatnot fit in with that, but they tried to tie it in. Lots of chicks twirling around chandeliers, bed trampoline-ing, tightrope walking, trapeze artists, flying angels, a midget attached to balloons floating around the bigtop, and see-sawing. Highly recommended if you get a chance to see it.

Marty successfully ended his 20’s on a high note with a Delissio pizza on July 8th. RIP 20-something year-old Marty.