2009 Thanksgiving in Canada

Charles and I decided to spend the holiday weekend in Canada. We packed up the poodles and drove across the border to Vancouver, BC for a relaxing weekend at the Pan Pacific Hotel. The idea was to take it easy, eat good food, and relax.

We spent most of Thursday driving. The traffic in the States was terrible. However I planned ahead and already had a massage booked at Spa Utopia.

I wasn't the only one getting spoiled though. Upon checking into the hotel, the poodles were presented with this gift basket including treats, a food dish, beds, mats, and other dog amenities.

Friday was gorgeous! We took the poodles for a long walk around the sea wall and had dinner at La Crocodile. I also checked out the Miraj Hammam on South Granville which was fabulous.

The weather on Saturday was miserable, but that didn't stop us from driving out to Richmond to visit a friend. I bet you're wondering why this post has a "dutch culture" tag. It's because there is a pannekoeken house in Richmond! The place is called De Dutch. Charles and I both agreed that it lived up to its name and appreciated some good pannekoeken!

We didn't take many pictures during our trip, but the set can be found here if you are interested.

It did not rain in Forks

This weekend I traveled to Forks, Washington for a Twilight-inspired Volksmarch with a few of my coworkers. For those who don't know, Forks is the home of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, which I read about a year ago because everyone else was doing it. In my humble opinion, the series not a great work of literature, but it has inspired a lot of tourism in Forks and it is sort of fun to jump on the fannish bandwagon.

We stayed in a Twilight-themed room in a motel that was pretty decent by small city motel standards. I was particularly dazzled by the sparkly curtains.

Seeing as how Stephanie Meyer drew her inspiration from Forks solely from the weather report, we were surprised to spend nearly an entire 24 hours there without rain! The walk itself was sufficient to make anyone feel well acquainted with Forks as it is a pretty small town. I concluded that it is made up pretty much entirely of Twilight stores like Dazzled by Twilight and drive through espresso stands (I counted at least 3).

On the drive home, we visited Bella Italia, which is the location of Bella and Edward's first date in the book. The wine list was great, the mushroom ravioli was decent, but the service was pretty bad. I did, however, enjoy the "Twilight sparkling syrah."

I took way too many pictures during the trip and spent way too much money on Twilight-inspired schwag. I was mostly just fascinated by how the town was taken over by the commercialization of the series. The entire set of pictures is located here. However, I think this shot pretty much sums it up...



Surprisingly Twilight merchandise is not visible in this picture.