Come to Vancouver – we have the best weather!

               Ahh, summer in Vancouver.   Perfect days with a rare cloud punctuating the pure blue sky, a gentle breeze coming in off the ocean, the majestic mountains surrounding us in a comforting hug, and the sun glinting off the glass skyscrapers of the downtown core.  Damn, right it’s the best place on earth.  And you should all drop what you’re doing and come now.  Immediately.  Vancouver wants you.  We have perfect weather, so take advantage of it before stock runs out! 

                Summer finally arrived at the end of June, after the longest winter on record.  Well, technically winter was exactly the same length as every year, but this year it felt like we skipped spring entirely.  But once summer dawned, it hasn’t let up one bit.  We’ve now had nearly a month straight of “coat?  I don’t even need socks in this weather” weather, and I’m loving every second of it.  Life should operate at this temperature every day.  I guess it does in LA, but here we don’t need to deal with nearly as much traffic, garbage, smog, noise…  you get the point.  As much as I appreciate (and boy do I appreciate) the chance to finally thaw, this weather also shows off Vancouver at its best, and everyone needs to take full advantage of it. 

               Right now we’re in the midst of the Symphony of Fire fireworks competition for four consecutive Wednesday and Saturday nights, which floods the shores of false creek with thousands of “ooooh”ers and “aaaah”ers.  Soon we’ll have the Dragon Boat festival, too.  We actually don’t have a deep pool of festivals and events, but the attractions we have year-round are pretty damn spectacular, and when you see them in this fantabulous weather, they’re even better.  You can immerse yourself in the native culture of the pacific coast at the UBC Museum of Anthropology and then get your nekked on at Wreck Beach; shop Robson Street’s trendiness and then finish off the day at a waterfront cafe on False Creek; bike Stanley Park’s seawall, feed the squirrels and enormous raccoons, then visit one of the best Aquariums around to splash with the belugas and dolphins.  A few weeks ago I did the bike thing for the first time since I was like 6 and it was great.  It’s a really smooth, relaxing ride, and a 2 hour bike rental from Spokes on Denman only cost CAD$10.00!    And regardless of what you do, remember to snag a funky twist on lunch at the world-famous Japadog gourmet Japanese hot dog cart.  Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

          But honestly, I’m here in the best place on earth, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that you should be too.  What are you waiting for, people?  We have sun!!!!

Tags: aquarium, best, bikes, BlogSherpa, Canada, fantastic, fireworks, fun, Japadog, Stanley Park, sun, vancouver, weather

ATVs are the new black – Costa Rica, days 8 & 9 – the finale.

So, I’ve discovered I like going fast and I drive like a madwoman.   Plus, I’m capable of doing them both at the same time.  On roads that are little more than goat paths and have ever expanding water features as the rivers roll over them.  All the while giggling like a mental patient and hoping my thighs don’t stick to the seat.  I’m totally okay with all of the above.

Got up bright and early and were picked up by Chino, our super sweet guide (who tried to broker a deal to have me as his fourth wife.  I passed, but I did promise to hang out with him next time I’m in Quepos, although something tells me I’m going to “forget” this) and driven out to London, Costa Rica, population, like, 80.  It was tiny, but cute, with chickens and dogs wandering the street more than people.  We pulled into someone’s driveway (this seemed a little weird until we saw the fifteen ATVs parked there) and, after a quick training course in the fine art of not killing yourself on an ATV, we were off.

It was fantastic.  The path was steep and rocky and wet in places, but that just let you really enjoy what an ATV could do.  This was supposed to be off-roading, and it satisfied. I thought it had been purpose-built for the psycho tourists like us, but after the fact we learned that this actually was the public road in the area.  Fourteen families had no other way in or out of their little isolated village.  Wow.  We had also brought a change of clothes in case we got muddy and messy as the website had warned, but I discovered quickly that if you went faster (and cheered, that was an important part) then teh water sprayed outwards and kept me all dry.

Midway through we stopped and had an hour walk through a beautiful forest and across a suspension bridge that was nothing more than a bunch of metal ladders trussed together a hundred feet up in the air to a waterfall.  This is a perfect place to play and swim, but as it was just the two of us, we opted to just take lots of pictures and dip our feet instead of making the poor guide stand around awkwardly as we splashed in the falls.  Then it was back onto the ATVs and retracing our route back to the start.  On the way back he knew we were capable drivers, so the speeds were much higher, topping out about 50mph.  Sweet.  Only once, when I was trying to avoid some horseback tourists, did I confuse the break and the gas and nearly go shooting off into the jungle.  Leave it to me to only make a mistake when there’s a crowd of people to see it!

Did not want to give that ATV back.  I tried to just drive off, but it just would have taken me too long to drive it all the way back home, and it’s hard to find a good parking space for your ATV in downtown Vancouver, so I left it.

Spent the rest of the day hanging out at the hotel to escape the heat and avoid the torrential downpour that left me epically soaked even under my umbrella when I walked down to the local bodega for supplies.  After that, we deserved a nice dinner, so we cabbed it to El Avion and we got to watch the lightning illuminate the sky from our table under  a plane.

The last full day in Quepos started early, as we had a 6am pickup for our mangrove tour.  They have to start super early to hit the tides at the right times.  Luckily, since the sun rises and sets at 5:00 here, your body clock gets you up early anyway to greet the sun and puts you to sleep early, so that wake up call was not too bad.  The tour group was us and a French family that spoke almost no English, and on our two and a half hour boat tour we saw a few monkeys, some vultures and a couple of skinny raccoons, but that was pretty much it.  Three years ago I had taken the same tour and seen so many animals it was incredible, but today everyone was playing hide and seek from us and they won.  It honestly felt like a colossal waste of time.  And it finished at 9am, so we still had the whole day to fill.

Like every woman, we went shopping.  We got a great deal on a taxi and headed right down to Playa Manuel Antonio, the beach paradise.  I’m far too pale to be a beach bunny, and the sun here fries skin in the blink of an eye (half the people walking around are a painful red colour, and that had already happened to me once this trip, so there was no way I was going through that again), but there’s a few cute souvenir shops and a street market where you can get some good tacky tourist shit (I love this stuff!) as long as you barter for it.  We got a great carved vase for half the price we would have paid in the stores in Quepos.  Of course, today had to be the day it decided not to rain in the afternoon and we tried not to melt as we shopped, took the incredibly cheap public bus back to Quepos, shopped more, and then got all packed up and ready to depart the next morning.

The drive to San Jose was kind of anticlimactic compared to all our other Interbus transfers, as the roads were, well, actual roads the whole way, including an extended stint on a brand new highway.    Our driver took advantage of this by driving super fast, which actually didn’t scare me as much as it should have, I loved the speed.  Clearly the ATV ride has broken my common sense when it came to speeding in this country.  Soon we were back at the Casa Conde, where we discovered our pickup time the next morning for our 10am flight was 515am.  Great.  So we dropped our bags, had some dinner, watched a tiny bit of TV and went to bed early to prep for our 430am wake up call.

Our airport transfer the next day was even early.  He showed up at 5.  Luckily, we were ready anyway, but that got us to the airport at 545.   Cranky and tired and hungry we checked in for our flight, cleared security and hit the food court for a giant cinnabon breakfast.  Normally I wouldn’t  eat 1500 calories of sugary goodness for breakfast, but it just seemed to be a fitting send off for our time in Costa Rica.  It had been a hot, sweet and sticky(with both sweat and rain) trip, and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Pura Vida!

Tags: ATV, beach, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, crazy speed, hot, mangrove tour, Manuel Antonio, Quepos, sunny

The land of the weed-whacker: Costa Rica Days 3, 4, 5

Because of the terrain here being so vertical and rocky, conventional lawn mowers aren’t even sold in stores.  But everywhere you turn there’s a guy with a giant weed-whacker showing all that rapid-growing grass who’s boss.  With that little hand mower, if you will, the Ticos will tackle any area, no matter how big.  We were 2km from pretty much anything on the way to La Fortuna and there were two guys on the side of the road just weed-whacking away.  They were doing the entire shoulder of the whole road by hand.  Damn, that’s a long job.

So today we ziplined.  One of my favorite things to do, the incredible feeling of flying without the fear of falling, as your harness really holds you securely up there.  Costa Rica is probably the best place on the planet to do this, and the company I recommend more than any other I’ve experienced is Sky Adventures.  Conveniently they have a great setup in La Fortuna,  with incredible views of the (still clear and erupting) Arenal  Volcano and Arenal Lake.  We were picked up early and driven up into the hills at the base of the Volcano, where they harnessed us up (there is nothing more glamourous than a climbing harness and a helmet, really) and loaded us onto the Sky Tram.  They have such a beautiful set up here, so clean, so professional and the platforms, guides and equipment are all top notch.  You never feel like you’re in danger or could fall off the flimsy platforms like some other operators, so if anyone’s at all nervous, this is a good place to start.

The tram takes you 20 minutes up above the dense forests (monkey-eye level) and deposits you at the first platform.  There’s always a great rush of adrenaline looking out at that first line, 200ft up in the air, and from the platform all you can see is the cable going off into infinity.  All the while you’re thinking, “I’m going there?!!!”  Love it.  There are eight lines total here, with the longest being 3/4 of a mile long, and they are high.  I don’t particularly like heights (I know, I know, but I love ziplining, get over it) so I focused on looking out over the unparalleled views of Costa Rica and Arenal more than looking down as I flew past at a top speed of  75kph.  There were a handful of very scared people in our group, with one girl getting off one line in tears, but once you cross that first line, there actually is no other way back to the entrance except to keep zipping.  The guides were really good with them, crossing with them if they needed the support, but we all tried not to get too over-excited to freak them out more.

Back at the hotel after the zipping we discovered I was sun burned.  Like, crispy critter burned.  I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen because all the platforms are completely in the shade, so the only time you’re exposed to the sun is while you’re zipping across, for a grand total of about 4 minutes in the whole 2 hours, but it was all it took.  I don’t get it, I go to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore where it’s equally (if not more) hot and humid, never were sunscreen once and I don’t even get a tan.  But here, all it takes is 4 minutes and I’m stick-a-fork-in-me-done.  Couldn’t wear my purse on my shoulder for the next three days. All boils down to the positioning of the sun I guess.  Needless to say, I didn’t step out of the shade without a thick coating for the rest of the trip.

After a relaxing afternoon and night in La Fortuna, Interbus came the next morning and collected us to head up to Santa Elena and the Monteverde cloud forest.  This is where you really notice the biodiversity of Costa Rica, as you leave the tropical, semi-arid farming plains to enter the dense, steamy and dramatically cooler jungle.  The roads to get up here are mainly paved for the first half, and, despite being incredibly winding, don’t have you gripping the edge of your seat.  This changes after the mandatory bathroom and souvenirs break in Tillaran.  From there you’re essentially on what we would here call cattle paths, insanely bumpy, unpaved dirt tracks scaling nearly vertical hills with blind turns that leave you practically hanging over 400-foot cliffs.  They call it a Costa Rican massage, going over the bumps like that for two hours.  By the time you get out you’re vibrating.  And thankful you’re not dead.

Santa Elena is dramatically larger than last time I was here three years ago.  The downtown (if you can call it that) is still the same size, with like ten shops, restaurants, a grocery store, a church, a giant cement armadillo and a good ice cream parlour, but this time it’s paved, which was a pleasant surprise.  The biggest difference though is the number of hotels, which has at least tripled.  For such a small, remote place, Monteverde has a wealth of activities, from hiking, rappelling, sky bridges, butterfly gardens, bat forests, bird watching, to ATVs, horseback riding and whitewater rafting.  Our hotel was one of the new ones, the El Sapo Dorado (Golden Toad), and each room was it’s own private cabin set back amongst it’s own personal patch of garden that glows with thousands of fireflies at night.  I had never seen real fireflies before, only the fake ones in Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, so that was super cool.  The rooms are really nice, though they don’t have a lot of the amenities you normally expect from a hotel, like any electronic devices and heat.  Yep, I said heat.  You get a fireplace and a box full of wood and the rest is up to you.

We spent the day exploring Santa Elena (we saw it all and had to go back to some places twice to fill the time) and had a cool dinner in the treehouse restaurant, which, as the name implies, has a giant tree growing through it.  You eat on the second level amongst the branches, and your tables and chairs are all random-shaped logs fashioned into dining furniture. I’m a sucker for cheesy ambiance, so naturally I loved this.  Took lots of pictures.

About now I was freezing.  I’m a really cold person on a regular day, and it rains every afternoon here, so after the tropics of La Fortuna, my system was not liking this.  You can see the weather coming in here, it moves in fast and just takes over, the clouds literally rolling down the main streets and in minutes you’re lost in the fog.  On the upside, I love fireplaces, though, and can sit and poke at one for hours, so you can guess how I spent my evening.  Had a slight problem with the smoke and kinda filled the room – my clothes are going to smell like fireplace for the rest of the trip – but the warmth was totally worth it.  Actually, all night it wasn’t as cold as I expected it to be and I woke up with warm toes.

Day 5 brought us more ziplining.  Skytrek has a course that I missed out on doing last time I was here, and, as the lines are supposed to be some of the highest out there, straddling the continental divide, it was actually the whole reason for trekking up here at all.  The setup is even more impressive then La Fortuna’s, and although the tram system is much the same, the view is dramatically different up here.  You’re very exposed, up on the spine of the mountain that, on a clear day, would allow us to see both the Caribbean and Pacific oceans at the same time.  We weren’t so lucky, as the grey clouds blocked out the water, but stayed high enough for us to still have an insane view of the jungle as we flew over it.  This was the only time I felt the altitude, as there were a lot of tall towers to climb to reach the ziplines, and by the time I reached the top my heart was hammering in my chest.  The zipping itself was great, although because of really high winds we had to go across in tandem for all the longer cables, just to have enough combined weight to make it to the other side.  This was a new experience for me, but it did allow me to get some pretty sweet video as my co-zipper did the breaking while I played videographer.

We could see the ominous clouds bearing down on us as we finished up, but miraculously we made it back into the van before the skies opened up.  And did they ever.  As soon as the rain started, it became pretty obvious that this was not a small passing shower and that our plans to visit a local orchid garden were going down the drain.  So instead we picked up dinner fixings at the supermercado and tucked into our cabin for the day, where we could at least stay dry.  Normally spending nine hours in a small room with no TV and radio in the middle of nowhere would be my definition of hell, but here it isn’t so bad.  I’m enjoying a couple of Spanish magazines, and have discovered that poking at a fireplace really can keep me occupied for hours on end.

Tomorrow it’s onwards to the sea again, and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot!

Tags: adrenaline, altitude, Arenal, BlogSherpa, Costa Rica, fireplace, Interbus, La Fortuna, rain, Sky Trek

Finding Pura Vida in Costa Rica – Days 1&2

I’m here!  The land of verdant forests, howler-monkey wake up calls and one sweet active volcano in my back yard.  Costa Rica is such a great destination, about the same price as a quick beach vacation in Hawaii, but the diversity of climates, wildlife and crazy adventure activities is so much better.  All you have to do is deal with the eight hour flight time from Vancouver, but it’ s so worth it.

Flew into the Rich Coast with a three hour connection in Dallas on the way.  The Dallas airport is really nice, super modern and clean with some nice artwork (nothing compares to Vancouver international, BTW, but this was pleasant). You can find a hundred different things to eat, but there is pitiful shopping.  Only a small hand full of stores, and they’re mainly convenience stores, so I had to make do with only an armadillo floaty pen and a cow-wearing-a-stetson fridge magnet.  Total shopping fail.

By the time we arrived in San Jose it was late, and we crashed at the Casa Conde Aparthotel and Suites just long enough to wash the flight off, begin adjusting to the crazy humidity and watch some food network subtitled in Spanish.  This property really impressed me, it’s a beautiful Spanish hacienda with attractive stained glass and murals and the condos were fully equipped – I had my own bedroom!  The only downside was that it’s in the middle of nowhere.  You couldn’t just walk down the road, you’d find nothing but small houses, and it wasn’t  particularly the best part of town, either.

For us, it didn’t matter, though, as we were picked up by the ever-prompt and comfortable Interbus for our four-hour transfer to La Fortuna.  This is the only way to travel in Costa Rica, as everything is approximately four hours from the next major center, the roads are hilly, winding, sometimes unpaved, sometimes balanced delicately on the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff and sometimes completely washed out and consisting of nothing but a couple planks of wood and some caution tape.  I’ve been here twice now and wouldn’t drive here if you paid me.  Interbus is cheap, easy, professional and the person behind the wheel actually knows what they’re doing at all times.  You just have to put up with the sales-targeted souvenir and bathroom break halfway through.  Oh, and the speeds.  Costa Rica does fast.  Carsickness-inducing, swinging from one side to the other fast.  It was awesome.

Later we were deposited at the Volcano Lodge, our haven for the next two nights. Love this property.  Each room is in it’s own little three-room casita, and all have a private veranda with two adorable rocking chairs that looks out to the impressive gardens and the active Arenal volcano.  I can’t get past the irony of my life being total hell at work for the past week with all the canceled flights due to the Iceland volcanic eruption, and here I come on personal vacation to another active volcano.  But it’s worth it, as the clouds have lifted, revealing it’s perfect smoking top, something that happens only like 9 days every year.   We lucked out.  And consequently took ten thousand photos of it to prove it.

The town of La Fortuna is small, cute, and has really good souvenir shopping.  It’s also incredibly hot here.  After the clouds and coats of Vancouver, this 99% humidity and 30-degree sunshine is a real shock to the system.  It really zaps your energy and gives you that wonderful red, damp and glowing complexion all the time.  I’m having to be super careful already, as I’m arctic white and can burn in minutes out here, but really hate the feel of sunscreen on when I’m already sweating my ass off.

So far we’ve essentially been on the road for two days straight, so it’ll be nice to be able to actually rest a bit tomorrow.  That is, after the freaking awesome ziplining!!!!!

Tags: Arenal, BlogSherpa, car sickness, Casa Conde, Costa Rica, Dallas, Interbus, San Jose, shopping, Volcano Lodge

The Amazing Race – Travel Lovers’ Porn

        Yep, I said porn.  Because that’s essentially what the Amazing Race is – Travel Porn.  It’s exciting.   It temporarily allows you to live vicariously through someone else, doing things so out there you might not have even fantasized about them.  It teaches you new tricks to try in real life.  And it satisfies that travel craving, while leaving you wanting more.  The best part is that, instead of having to go back into the special part of the video store, you can get it for free Sunday nights on CBS.

          For you uninitiated (shame on you), the premise is simple: race around the world with no advance knowledge of where you’re going next and very limited funds, completing various tasks as fast as possible, and if you finish first you get a cool million dollars.  If you finish last at certain checkpoints (called pit stops) you’re eliminated.  That’s it.  This is proof positive that the journey is the attraction more than the final destination, as the ending is usually one of the most  anticlimactic parts of the whole race.   But on the way you got to see just how cool the world is.

            I’m insanely jealous of the challenges they’ve gotten to do over the years.  I won’t lie, I would totally blow off my job/friends/whatever to be able to do what the racers get to do.  After seeing it on the race, I tried ziplining and, as you’ve probably noticed from my past posts, I’m hooked.  Now I just want to push my boundaries farther.  Over the years they have rappelled down Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janiero, climbed the Eiffel Tower in Paris, navigated the chaotic train system in Mumbai, herded llamas in Peru, made noodles in  Macau  and shopped at street markets in South Africa.   According to the previews, next week they’re climbing the Singapore Flyer giant ferris wheel in Singapore.  It’s nuts.  The general public may  not  have access to all of the incredible things that the racers get to  do, but for the most part the places are acessable, and with a little bit of research  you too can  enact  your own Amazing Race.  They show some off the beaten path  locations/attractions that you might have missed otherwise  and  I  have to admit that occasionally at work when someone will ask  me what there  is to see in Coober Pedy, Australia (amongst other random destinations that I  don’t know anything about and have definately  never been to) I draw on what I’ve  seen on TAR and  answer that there are opal mines and houses built underground to escape the heat.   It’s helped me finalize more than one sale, let me tell you. 

             Despite the fact that it’s essentially a game show on a global stage, The Amazing Race is at it’s heart a travelogue, and, just like Globe Trekker or Rick Steve’s Europe, it gives you a glimpse at the conditions, attractions, and people of places all over the world.  India is always a good example, as so many of the racers go there expecting nothing but  poverty and crowds, but leave surprised at the resilliance of the people and the beauty of the countryside. Through their eyes we see it, too, and gain a greater appreciation.  I had never heard of Wat Po, the temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok until I saw it on Season 1, but it blew my mind and that one episode gave birth to a fascination with Thailand that I still have to this day.    You can bet your ass I made sure to go to that temple and take craploads of pictures when I finally made it  to Bangkok.   

            The  racers might be doing everything at warp speed, they’re still traveling and facing the same trials and tribulations that we all do on our vacations.  They have to fight with the same flight cancellations and lost cabbies we all do, and watching them deal with these we can learn  – both from their mistakes and  their successes.  Case in point: never be rude to an airport ticket agent. They have  your vacation in their hands, and with one  little keystroke they can  sentence you to a fifteen hour flight in the middle seat in the back that doesn’t  recline and is right beside the squirming kid.  In season 2 when everyone was jockeying for flights from Iguassu Falls, Brazil to Cape Town, South Africa, team after  irate team was told there was no space on the  earliest and most convenient  one-connection flight via Frankfurt.  That is, until Danny and Oswald, the fabulous, suave and super polite guys from Miami asked.  Suddenly seats miraculously appeared and they cruised to a happy first place, all because they were the lone rational team.

     Finding a local guide is another great tip that teams commonly use.  Granted, on the race teams, particularly Mirna and Charla, will do everything short of kidnapping locals to get their insider information.  Please don’t do this.  Ask nicely.  Leave a tip.  But this is still an awesome idea.   Locals know more about the destination than anyone, and they’re usually just as excited to learn about your hometown as you are to learn the ins and outs of theirs.  This can get you from point A to point B much faster and tip you off to new, out of the way places that you would not have otherwise ever known about. 

      During all of this, the teams are navigating all these stressful challenges with their friend/partner/relative.  I always say the test of any relationship is a vacation, because your communication skills tend to shut down when you’re stressed and fatigued.  The “villans” in each season are not usually the teams that are horrible to other teams, but the teams that are horrible to one another.  The classic example is Jonathan and Victoria in season 5, where he not only screamed at her the whole way, but actually physically shoved her in anger.   Just watching the way these teams melt down serves as a reminder  not to act  like that to your friend/family member/anyone, no matter how jetlagged you might be. 

         And my personal favorite tip the I’ve learned from TAR: “Rapido” does not mean fast in every language.  It’s not that teams haven’t tried, but when you’re in Windhoek, Namibia, the cabbies are just going to give you a “stupid tourist” laugh and continue moving along at whatever speed they want to.  That being said, it’s always a good idea to learn a few words in the local language.  I’m not suggesting taking the Berlitz course or anything, God knows the teams usually can only learn what they get from the other passengers on their inbound flight and they get around pretty well, but a simple ”yes”, “no”, “thank you”, “how much?” and “where’s the bathroom?” can get you a long way.  Particularly the bathroom one.

          I could go on, but really, you just have to watch it yourself.  Even if you don’t glean anything more from the show than some pretty destinations and a whole lot of fun, it’s worth it.

Tags: 108 coin ritual, Bangkok, fun, interesting, Jet lag, The Amazing Race, Tips, travel, travel porn, Wat Po

The Ins and Outs of the Honeymoon Registry

                I’ve got weddings on the brain again.  First, let me qualify this.  I am currently sitting on my couch watching W (the Women Watching Will be Whimpering and Weeping network) as Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz find vacation love in the Holiday, and tomorrow I’m going to buy my first-ever Bridesmaid dress.  Plus, I have a destination wedding group and a handful of honeymoon price enquiries on my desk at work.  Put it all together and you can see where my head is at.   Anyway, it’s got me thinking about the intricacies of registering for your honeymoon, or, as I like to call it the “either be ready to kick your family’s butts into gear or give up on the whole idea” registry. 

             I don’t want to sound cynical, because I’m not.  It’s just not easy watching the crestfallen Bride and Groom’s faces when they come to book their dream honeymoon with the money contributed by their family and friends only to find that instead of Bali they can only afford to go camping for a week.   This has happened with all but one of the honeymoon registries I’ve ever seen, and the reason behind it is simple: to get the best price on a vacation you have to book early, but the vast majority of wedding guests don’t even think about a gift until the night before the wedding.   People are lazy.  And cheap.  Another drawback of the wedding registry is that it gives your guests the added pressure of giving a gift with the price tag still attached – they can’t give too little or they seem cheap, but with the economy being what it is, no one has that much extra lying around anymore, so unless you’re that special they’re not going to break the bank to pay for your vacation.  Consequently, most wedding registries get one, maybe two hundred dollars in them by the time the happy couple has to book their trip.  All the rest of the contributors will try calling the night before/morning of the wedding only to have me tell them to just give the Bride and Groom the cash at the wedding, because there’s no honeymoon left that needs paying for. 

         For all you Brides and Grooms out there, this paragraph is for you.  The honeymoon registry can be an awesome thing, but you have to be prepared to ride your guests like quarterhorses to get them to pay.  The biggest tip I’ve got is to plan ahead.  If you’re throwing your wedding together last minute, do not even bother to register for your honeymoon, because you have to book your honeymoon immediately.  But if, like most engaged couples, you have a year of planning and save-the-dates and details, then you’re golden.  Send out notices and the travel agency’s card with your invitations, and don’t forget to include a contribution deadline.  Two months prior to the wedding is a good time frame – not too last minute, but still a reasonable amount of time for you to book a trip at a decent price.   The week before this deadline, start sending out reminders.  Your agent will help you with this, but just send out a quick email blast, post a notification on your Facebook, and make sure your guests remember that if they miss this date, they should start shopping for an actual physical gift instead.   To go along with this, the Bride and Groom have to keep their expectations realistic.  When caught up in the throwes of wedding fever, it can be so easy to imagine spending your most important vacation ever on an idyllic south pacific island in an overwater bungalow (and it’s always an overwater bungalow in these fantasies) , ignoring the CAD$1000.00 per night price tag because you assume your family will pay for it.  Please, please have a backup, cheaper but still fantastic, plan, just in case you actually have to foot the bill yourself.  You don’t need the last minute panic of re-planning your honeymoon combined with the last minute scrambling for the cash and all the other last minute details you have to sort through. 

        Registering for your honeymoon is a great thing, but it’s not as easy as pointing the little bepper gun at the latest set of butter knives at the Bay.  It takes a bit of coordingation on the part of the the couple, the guests and the agent, as well as a realistic outlook.  If you’ve got all this, your honeymoon is going to be awesome. 

Tags: bride, groom, honeymoon, planning, registry, wedding

Vancouver – Olympic Detox

       OMG, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics are over.  They were AWESOME, but they’re done now.  Finished.  Kaput.  Put to bed.  We’ve been prepping for this for the past 10 years,survived the gut-wrenching bid process, the constant traffic disruptions that came with building the new venues and Canada Line skytrain, the protests, the adjusting to the Logo that no one initially liked, the crowds, the incredible excitement, the overwhelming patriotism, the nine-hour line ups for the maple leaf mittens, the best hockey game ever, and the raging hangover from the post-Olympics-and-hockey-game celebrations.  Phew.  Now all us Vancouver (and surrounding area) -ites are left tingling, walking around in a daze and thinking, what’s next?

        First thing Monday morning, assuming you were not one of the 40,000 people trying to fly home from YVR,  the most noticeable change was that there is now nothing on TV again.  That’s one of the fantastic things about the Olympics in general: the 24/7  TV coverage.  You can get up at 6 and catch up on all the short track speed skating and doubles luge action that aired the night before while you were watching the moguls skiing and biathalon.  And here in the lower mainland we had this on not one but four English Channels, as well as French, and occasionally Punjabi ones. Multiply this by 2 if you have HD cable.  Author’s note - If you’ve never watched short track speed skating with an over-excited French commentator, you’re missing out, it’s hysterically funny.  Particularly if you don’t speak French.  But anyway, now we have to watch the same boring crap as always, and it bites.

        And then there’s downtown.  The streets are still busy, but you have to walk down the (gasp!) sidewalkon Robson St. because it’s no longer pedestrian only.  The street performers are gone, too, and we miss the guy in the green skivvies on the giant unicycle already.  Thankfully many of the pavilions, art installations and the wait-in-line-for-two-days zipline are still open thanks to the Paralympics starting on March 12th, so it’s easing us back into regular life slowly, not a sudden  rip-off-the-BandAid jolt.  The biggest difference is that the people walking around are no longer all wearing giant maple leafs on their heads (backs/arms/dogs/children), just a few holdouts still are, and the rest are back in their business formal attire.  Oh, and the line for your Japadog is only half an hour again.

        We’re all kind of numb.  It’s over.  It’s OOOOOOVVVVVVEEEERRRRR!!!!  But it was incredible to have it here, we now have state of the art facilities that will help foster the new crop of Olympians, we have a new appreciation of Curling, and we have the most incredible memories.  We are, now and forever, an Olympic City.  We showed the world how beautiful our scenery and our people are, and, most importantly, showed them how much National pride flows through our veins.  Sorry guys, but Canada isn’t just going to sit by quietly anymore, we’re going to scream our heads off, wear red and white mittens everywhere, and apologize for beating you afterwards.  For that, we thank the Olympics.  They brought us together as a Nation, the home-soil advantage brought us out of our shells, and nobody was more surprised by it than we were.  We always knew our country is the best (I’m more than a little bit biased), but we never really laid it all out there to be seen before. 

Vancouver 2010 Olympics, we miss you.  And we promise to remeber you fondly.

But in the meantime, can you help me find something good on TV again?

Tags: BlogSherpa, Canada, excitement, mittens, Olympics, pride, TV, vancouver, zipline

Vancouver – Olympic Life in the Olympic City

        So we’re more than a week into the 2010 Vancouver Olympic games, or, to use a sports metaphor, wll into the home stretch.  Our muscles and wallets are sore, but it’s so, so, so worth it!   The city just feels energized, and it’s freaking fantastic.

        The pavilions, shows and events set up all over the downtown core gives the whole place a theme-park like feel (you line up for a long time, go on a short ride/see a short show, then walk to the next attraction, past souvenir and snack carts and street performers).  And speaking of line ups, at this point I think people are lining up for the sake of lining up.  The wait times at pretty much everything are multiple hours long.  Even just to get into the Granville st. Bay to buy your official team Canada tee (completely disregarding that we have tons of other Bay stores in Metro Vancouver, just a short skytrain away) is like three hours, and that doesn’t come with any guarantee that they’ll still have what you want in your size.  The longest line by far is the zipline, where, according to Radio Canada, a couple recently set the record for waiting more than 9 hours.  The ride is only ten seconds long!!!!  Think about it people, you’re turning waiting in line into an experience in itself, because you’re not doing anything else all day!  I made it into LiveCity Yaletown with only a 40-minute wait, and I was there right at opening.  God knows what it was like by 6!  Even the fabulousness that is the unique Japadog gourmet hot dog cart has a massive wait for your street meat.  By the time you get to the front, you’re ready for dinner, while you’d lined up at lunch.

          But the coolest thing is the overwhelming “We are Canada, we’re loud, proud and we ROCK!”  vibe that permeates everyday life here.  Just sitting at work I see tons of people each day wearing their Canada tees, stupid (or stupid awesome) Moose toques, and flag capes.  Vancouver has become Disneyland all of a sudden, a place where you can wear all sorts of stupid, furry things on your head, your cape has become regular office attire and the world will cease to exist when the puck drops tonight on the Canada versus Germany showdown.  Even the random stranger that approached us yesterday asking for a light said “Go Canada Go!”  by way of a thank you, and those were probably the only English words he knew.

            We’ve definately upped our international reputation, which was pretty good to begin with.  Unless you ask the British, of course, they’re really hammering us, but I think they’re just trying to call our games a failure (yes, they are really using terms that harsh) to make London 2012 look better.  They’re also forgetting that this is a Winter Games and they’re hosting the Summer, hardly an equal comparison, but whatever.  I’m Canadian, I know our games are fantastic, and at least my country has never been bombed, so the Brits can suck it.

          Even Though we still have days to go before the closing ceremonies and the start of the Paralympics, I already know I’m going to miss the Olympics once they pass.  More than anything, in the past week, people have been happy.  All the time.  It’s just a permanent smiling-at-strangers good mood that I don’t want to let slide once the torch has been snuffed.  It’s a pleasure to be in Vancouver.  Even more than usual.  And that’s saying a lot.

Tags: cape, flag, fun, Games, good mood, hockey, line up, livecity Yaletown, Olympics, toque, vancouver, zipline

Vancouver – Living amongst the flame

       The opening ceremonies last night were incredible.  Watching them at home I was just as blown away with the spectacle that is the Olympics as I always am, but then I take a moment and realize – that’s here.  Here here. Like “if I lean far enough out my balcony I can see that”here.   Going home on the skytrain yesterday the whole car just burst into the national anthem, a whole bunch of strangers heading to the suburbs and celebrating the true north strong and free.

Now that’s cool.

        Vancouver’s ceremony definitely did not disappoint.  It’s weird, I think we all have this slight Canadian inferiority complex that expects everything we do to be good, but always has the feeling that someone could have done it better.  I know, it’s stupid, but the show last night reminded us all to snap out of it, that we really are awesome and we’re going to prove it to the world.  Repeatedly.  While wearing a toque.  Preferably one shaped like a maple leaf.   My favorite moments were the projected whales breaching across the floor of BC Place stadium (oh, and just let me add while I remember, BC Place looked incredible, I kept having to remind myself it has a roof  – the first in Olympic history – and that the snow was fake.  The parkas worn by all the athletes were definitely not needed as it was probably 25 degrees in there, although Bermuda’s shorts were right on), and the beat poet’s declaration that Canada was here to kick some ass and take names.  It reminded me of the Molson Canadian ads from years ago that ended up printed on t-shirts and can most likely still be at least partially recited by 70% of the population.  Come on, you know it: “…the beaver is truly a proud and noble animal.  A toque is a hat, a chesterfield is a couch, and it is pronounced ‘zed’!”

       As a city we were all pretty hyped up for the games before, especially getting behind the torch relay, but after the opening last night, we’re now officially Olympic mad.  I work in a mall, and both the Bay and Zellers – the official Olympic apparel suppliers – are packed.  I mean hold-on-to-your-children packed.  It’s crazier than the last minute Christmas rush to get your Canada mittens and tees, and there was actually a fight over the last scarf when I was in Zellers.    It’s like we were all laid back “yeah, I’ll get some of that stuff eventually”, but last night has spurred us and our wallets into action.   Personally, I’m one of the true north strong and cheap, so I’m waiting for them to go on sale after the games.  But as soon as those markdowns come, you can bet I’m going to look fabulous.

          And this is only day one.  Tomorrow we get the super fantastic combination of Chinese New Year, with it’s giant parade and great food, and the Olympics, so the roof is going to be blown off this town, that’s for sure!

Tags: BlogSherpa, Canada, Canadian, excitement, Olympics, opening ceremonies, party, pride, shopping, skytrain, the Bay, torch, vancouver

Vancouver – Olympic countdown: 0 days !!!!

            It’s finally here.  Vancouver is suddenly in the midst of a giant Christmas-morning buzz, with people walking around with stupidgrins on their faces and talking in that higher-pitched, excited tone usually reserved for large groups of women at a sample sale.  Even water cooler talk has gone from “can you believe what happened on Survivor last night?” to “Who’s going to officially light the Olympic cauldron tonight?”  In six hours we’ll finally know for sure when the 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremonies get underway.  And from the scuttlebutt, it’s going to be huge, with Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Nelly Furtado and the Canadian Tenors, amongst others who’ve managed to elude the media thus far, and all the pomp and pageantry and showmanship we know and love.

          Woke up this morning in time to see Arnold Swartzenegger (that well-known Canadian) wade through the masses of people on the Stanley Park Seawall on his leg of the torch relay.  That torch has already done incredible things to unite us as a city and a country, with much larger crowds than expected turning out both to see it run past and also for the concerts and parties surrounding it every night.  Yesterday it was really cool as it was running just blocks from my home and, later, just blocks from my work.  One of my co workers hopped on the Canada Line Skytrain on her coffee break, saw the torch run past, and got back to work in time. Sweet.

         The city already has an electricity that I’ve never felt before, and I think downtown Vancouver buzzes on a normal day.  On Tuesday night, before anything had actually started, I was blown away at the vibe the city was giving off already.  It felt like Christmas, with more Christmas lights out than there had been in December (I guess a lot of downtown businesses are lighting up to show their support, too) and the city just sparkled.  Okay, so I’m a little biased, but I think we have one of the world’s prettiest cities anyway, but combine that with the festivities and it’s incredible.  One of the exits of Pacific Center Mall has become a giant Igloo, complete with polar bear statues, and Robson Square is lit up like a rock concert with lighting and pyrotechnics highlighting it’s new ice skating rink and zipline.  Man, I would love to do that zipline right through the heart of the city.  I don’t think I’ll be able to, the lineups are supposed to be epic, but that would be so cool.

       So cool.  That pretty much sums it up.  As of today, we’re officially an Olympic city forever, and the huge-ass party to end all huge-ass parties kicks off.  I can’t wait.  We all can’t.

GO CANADA!

Tags: excitement, Olympics, party, torch, vancouver, zipline