A bit more catching up

Last time, I left you with a photo from a ferry. Our first ferry ride took us to Vancouver Island, where we visited Stephen's mom, had dinner with an old friend, went to a few beaches. 

This beach is in Sidney, close to the Victoria ferry terminal. Sidney is now quite a cute little place, catering, perhaps, to seniors who want a view of the ocean and an accessible, walkable place to hang out. 

It's cute now, but this spot has been the site of mills, canneries and other industry over the decades, so it is not difficult to find signs of human endeavour on the beach. So much clear seaglass; no greens or blues to be seen, though!

We went to a place called Spiral Beach, down a steep cliff. I was reminded of my photo theme for the month: hidden. 

It is called Spiral Beach because there is a big concrete tower, with a spiral staircase around it. The beach, being at the bottom of the cliffs, is a bit hidden away, too. 

This little house was hidden in the woods on the way up from the beach. Well, I suppose it wasn't hidden, really, since it was right there for me to see, but it was not on view for the masses. 

Our next stop was Mayne Island. We stayed in a lovely B&B, overlooking the water and the sunrise. Across the water was Mount Baker! I was awoken by the sunrise the first morning, took this picture, went back to sleep. 

We were lucky to be there when there were super low tides at convenient, post-breakfast times. The water was up quite high the evening we arrived, but the following morning the tide was way out, exposing rock pools and eroded sandstone and a place seals liked to hang out. 

The island in the centre background is not visible at higher tides. You can't see it here but there were seals on it at times. 

As we were clambering around on the rocks, we spied a London phone box next door!

We were mainly on Mayne Island to see our niece, but we did some exploring around. We were told to go down the road past the Private Property sign, follow the very well kept path, but don't go past the door with the fish on it.  

The owners of this land don't mind people walking around on most of it, but they keep their house private, behind the fish door. It was a lovely place, and generous of the owners to let us walk past their rocks, trees and water.

Next stop was Salt Spring: more relatives, rocks, trees and water. Back to Vancouver and another visit to the barge to see how things were going. It seems they put a big machine with a claw on the barge and it was just clawing those walls down. 

We only had a few days in Vancouver before we came back to Toronto. I wonder if the barge will be completely gone by the time we get back there. 

We are preparing to sell the house. It's a slog because we have lived here for so long, we have everything we thought was interesting over the past 30 years. And more. Our Vancouver place is basically furnished by now, so we are only really taking books and art and clothing and some kitchen stuff and all those boxes of miscellaneous..., and the books and art will have to fight it out for space on our walls. More on that discouraging subject later!

First catch-up post

Much has happened. 

We went to Vancouver for about three weeks. Stephen had a conference to go to so I went on ahead to Vancouver, and as I arrived, saw the Snowbirds pass over the West End. 

There were also fireworks that night, but I was too pooped to walk the few blocks to the beach; you can see it would have been worth the trouble, as I couldn't see much with the large buildings in the way. 

Of course, when in Vancouver one must check out the barge. I'd heard they had started demolishing it, but when I arrived, they had just removed a couple of panels off one end. 

A few days later my guy arrived, and we made our way to the beach for another night of fireworks. They hadn't done this during the pandemic but this year decided it would be fine for thousands of people to congregate at the beaches to watch something they call the Honda Celebration of Light. (It used to be presented by a cigarette company.)

We got there early, got a nice bench, waited for a couple of hours, enjoyed the sunset, and finally did see an amazing display of fireworks, impossible to properly photograph with a phone. 

The next day they took down the fences, the viewing stand for paying customers, the porta-potties... I liked these barricades. 

There is a spot on the beach where some group has planted quite the garden, and clearly they take good care of it. No flower pictures today, but you can see their artfully arranged watering cans. 

In there somewhere I remembered that I am supposed to be cooking from Ottolenghi's Plenty this month. I had to take the book out of the library and I did enjoy looking through it, but I haven't yet done a lot of cooking out of it. I made this dish of lentils and gorgonzola, which was stupendously good. I used a can of lentils, and jarred sundried tomatoes instead of roasting my own, easy peasy. Throw everything together, is what I did, and it was fine.

One reason there was not more cooking at home is that we spent about a week of our three weeks away travelling. More on that next time. Here are some beautiful blues from the ferry.