Getting Closer to the Move Here

So here we are, back in what we hope will be our new home. This time Van­cou­ver is once again cov­ered with many dark clouds, but instead of con­stant rain, it’s far more like Seat­tle rain, which has usu­ally been light sprin­kles inter­persed with tan­ta­liz­ing patches of sunshine.

We landed and got through cus­toms by about 3:00 Van­cou­ver time, or 7 PM our body clock time. Pam had taken a slightly ear­lier plane than I did, so she picked up my bag and waited for me for about an hour and a quar­ter.
So, what do you do when you see a patch of blue in a week fore­casted to be another mon­soon? Get thee to the park, of course. We took a bus from more or less the cen­ter of town to Stan­ley Park, which was clearly wear­ing it’s spring out­fit. We took a short walk and vis­ited the edge of the aquar­ium, where Pam played with one of the seals, and we also saw some beau­ti­ful bel­uga whales, swim­ming like pale blue ghosts in their pond. We are going to spend a lot of time in that park. I can see mak­ing a park visit my weekly Sun­day after­noon, and look for­ward to the day when I can hang out there with other fam­ily (my brother, sister-in-law and niece, for a start).

Today it was also partly cloudy, so after some arrang­ments for an inter­view with a recruiter, we took the Sky­train in a large loop to the East (went as far as Sur­rey, the end of the line), and then back again. Pam got off at the water­front and I came back to our hotel.

I really like this hotel, the Sand­man Suites on Davie. It has nearly every­thing I need in a hotel, includ­ing the most impor­tant lux­ury: a kitchen, com­plete with stove, pots and pans, dish­washer, uten­sils and plates! It’s also in a ter­rific neigh­bor­hood, full of restau­rants, cof­fee shops and stores. So break­fast was home-cooked, and there was an organic gro­cer and 24-hour reg­u­lar gro­cer within a 2 block area. Two doors down was a Star­bucks for cof­fee grounds for our coffee-maker, and next store to that was a superb bak­ery. Pam chose a seed bread, which they sliced thing for us. It is won­der­ful. We also got organic salad, straw­ber­ries and plums. Today I picked up a truly mag­nif­i­cent papaya and some nice tan­ger­ines and tangelos.The hotel staff has also been extremely help­ful and pleas­ant. I can see return­ing here for our next trip.

Besides being thrifty and healthy, this kitchen and bed­room setup really feels like we are start­ing to ‘live’ here, rather than act as pure tourists. Toward that end, we treated our sky­train trip as a sort of Real Estate tour, tak­ing notes on what neigh­bor­hoods looked good, which high-rises were going up, where there self stor­age places are (and where the IKEA is). If I can just line up employ­ment, I think we can look for­ward to a really nice life here. After all, what’s more to life than a pretty pub­lic park, fresh cof­fee, good bread and a high-speed Inter­net con­nec­tion (albeit in the ‘busi­ness cen­tre’ near the front desk) and cheap mod­ern fur­ni­ture? Please, dear reader, don’t answer that.