This morning I woke up and I knew that I was going to get ill. It was one of those tingles in the throat when it’s evident. But no worries, it was the very last morning, so I thanked my luck for being ill on zero of the days in my holiday, what a blessing. Swine flu, bring it on.

Our flight to Heathrow wasn’t until six a clock, so we had a good while morning to bounce around New York left. It was sunny as well, what a great set of weathers have we stumbled on. We generally had very little rain on this trip, only a couple of days when it was pissing down, and even then, it was entertaining.

First things first, our mission was to visit the Chinatown post office and get the very last package on its way to Finland. 26 packages total have we sent from this trip, most of them not on the smaller side if you see what I mean. The post office was an experience on its own. In there you really understand all the safety rituals, all the reasons to be alert of all times. This was like going to a prison to talk to an inmate. All the office workers were behind thick, bullet proof glass, with signs on them that said: Attacking a Postal Worker or robbing a post office is a crime punishable by 10-15 years in prison. There was a bullet proof glass cage which you put the package into, which the officer then opens only after you closed it from the other side. Later on the day we walked past another post office downtown. The security in that one was nothing like this. It really gives you a perspective on how dodgy the neighborhood where we were staying was. I didn’t see any guns, but I could feel them all around me, in the bags, under the counters.

After checking out and leaving our luggage to the hotel reception, we took bus number 15 to Battery Park again and went to visit the museum of American Indians. This was a huge, gorgeous Art Deco building which they seemed to have gained recently to the purpose of putting out this exhibit. However, it was one of the poorest experiences that I’ve seen, an excuse for a museum. It didn’t help that we stumbled onto a security guard, who was pretending to be a curator, who knew absolutely nothing about the pieces on show and then decided that he would interpret my husband’s shit which was Haida art moon that we bought from Vancouver: “See this, it’s a Killer Whale”, was the last straw. They had some costumes of the aboriginals on show (some inluded series of Moose teeth sewn on top!), which of course were interesting, but they had been placed out in the huge building by an eight year old… The museum seriously needs to pay a visit to the Asian Art Museum on San Francisco. As the aboriginals let us down, I felt no obligation or need to buy their tat, even though they had Haida art there as well.

We decided to take the metro back to the Chinatown to have lunch around there. We also tried to check out the museum of Chinese in New York, but it was –if possible- even a bigger disappointment than museum number one previously today. This one didn’t even have an entrance to it. There was a corridor, a sign, but no entrance. But not to worry, there was still plenty of post cards to write back home. I estimate that I have written around 200 post cards, at least 12 from each city (30 from some) and we were in around 12 cities on our way…

No more to do except to get a taxi to the airport. JFK terminal 8 was kind of a disappointment as well… Nothing more that I would have wanted to buy, series or burger kings and Kentucky fried chickens lurking. We spent our last hours abroad watching quality American television – the one thing that the Americans do well. I never had a huge urge to go to America, like some… And now as I’ve been there, I can say that yes, there is original culture there, hiding underneath it all… But I have no huge desire to be back soon… Back in San Francisco one day would be nice, maybe we’ll take the Transsiperian to Vladivostok like we always talked about.

Just when leaving, I stumbled onto the evil King Fu Panda Noodles shop… Forget everything I said about it being bland in here… Only in America…

We must have done something right when it was sunny two days in a row in Vancouver. Our quest of the day was to see the museum of Anthropology in the campus of the University of British Columbia. Luckily we got a straight bus there, which only left us with a short walk to the museum. This meant that we saw the rose garden and its beautiful view over the mountains. Little did I know that it was used as ‘Cloud Nine’ ship outdoors area in the first season of my favourite show Battlestar Galactica. Luckily, I take a lot of pictures so we didn’t need to do another trip.

The museum of Anthropology is still on its way and not completed, but it had a very impressive collection to show as it was. We saw a start of an exhibition thousands of hand-made baskets and cloths, which had been sent from all over the country to be kept in the museum. However, some of them had some ritual meaning to some tribes, so they had also come up with a room where you can go and perform your ritual with your item from time to time. This is the modern days of respect, British museum be ware!

We admired the totem poles and the canoes and of course the great, gigantic Bill Reid piece, Raven and the first men, which is just an astonishing piece of art. Unfortunately there was no small replicas of it on sale, I am guessing because of copyright issues… I would have bought this one for sure… It was made by Bill Reid to this museum particularly, so that they could keep the room that used to be an fortress.

After lunching at the cafeteria and shopping our credit cards to debt, we decided to catch a taxi and therefore buy more time in Stanley Park, as the afternoon was still looking gorgeously sunny. The taxi took us to the totem poles and we had a nice two hours until sunset which we spent rambling in the park. There is a ‘woman in a wetsuit’ statue, which looks remarkably like a replica of the little mermaid… There was also a seagull sitting on her head who would seriously not move whatever kind of noise I made.

Stanley Park is one of the most gorgeous ones that I have been to.  There was a sunset avenue of maples and of course tons and tons of leaves which had already fallen. I suppose you can imagine that as far as camera day goes, this one was a pretty good success.

We ended up to the harbor and ferry terminal by our walk and got the skytrain home. Our hotel’s street the West Broadway really has a good selection of restaurants, but as it was KG’s last night with us, we had a special treat of Malaysian cuisine of ‘Banana Leaf’. If you are ever in Vancouver, I recommend that it’s a great place to eat.

Once again, an excellent day in Vancouver. It’s truly a miraculously beautiful city. I see what the fuzz over it is all about. Very Finn-friendly:)

Day

After a full day of Piss down rain, we weren’t expecting much from Tuesday. It so happens that the Vancouver weather doesn’t exactly follow the forecasts, so we ended up having a sunny bright day of wonders. There is nothing like a miserable day to make you appreciate the joys of a great sunny day, that’s for sure.

We headed to the waterfront with the skytrain to sneak some pictures of the harbor. Since Vancouver is going to be the olympic city fairly soon, also the harbor was showing its very best side. The old area next to the harbor is called ‘Gas Town’, because it was the first to get gas on the area, to be lightened up by series of lightpoles. There is also the famous gastown clock, which is breathing smoke… It’s a great old piece, but hardly keeping the time now a days. Gastown is where you can find Vancouver’s most efficient (and cheap) tat shops.

We did our fair share of shopping and staring at art pieces out of our price range. The aboriginal art of this area seems to us perhaps even more appealing than the Asian art, and that’s saying a lot. So if we weren’t in debt yet, we sure are now… Canadian stuff is really cool. That’s the truth.

After wandering around the shops we stopped for an indian for lunch and then doodled towards the Chinatown. It too, had loads of shops. And if I hadn’t yet been to China and around three other Chinatowns, I would have probably been tempted by their cheap gowns and jackets. (None of which were as classy as the one I got from San Francisco Chinatown though…) We also observed that Chinatown is just around that area which has the least appeal in Vancouver. Lots of homeless people with their shopping trolleys.

We found a full on Chinese Garden on its Autumn blossom, accompanied by a lesbian wedding. We sneaked some pictures and I visited the 10dollars-visitor section, while my J and KG waited outside. No point in wasting money on what we already saw on the other side of the fence. The museum was of course closed – it was Monday.

On our walk back to the city central, we run into a road of white trucks. This means something was being filmed right there. The TV/Film fan of me decided to find out if I can telephoto some pictures and find out what the series was. Luckily my husband has the best memory in the world so he recognised it as the TV-series ‘Fringe’… We didn’t really last long after the pilot on that, so I had no clue who the Blond lead was. Vancouver being the major film city though, this is very normal.

We treated ourselves to a Chinese meal at the end of a good day of picture hunting and shopping. Sun makes all the difference when you are judging whether you like a city or not… Vancouver is looking pretty good to me.

One of the best parts of travelling around the world is that you get to meet the friends around the world that you never seriously meet. One of those people are our dear friend KG. She flew all the way from Houston to see us in Vancouver and told my husband straight off that if she ever were in Spain, she’d expect us to do the same. I am sure we would as well, because she’s all kinds of ace.

We reached KG reading on her Kimble, the electronic book, where you download the books you read and no longer do you need to feel the burden of carrying tons of books with you. As this is clearly the future of things, I agree… But there is something so poetic, harmonic, feel of goodness and back to nature, when one steps into a bookshop or even opens one to leaf through the pages. I don’t think I am ready to give up books just yet, perhaps ever. Not the least because I married an author which means that my house is generally wall-papered with books. I certainly don’t mind. They mere feeling of them around gives me a sense of my past, all those weeks at the summer cottage with my grandfather in the corner reading. Or sleeping in my Grandma’s library room. Books are my way.

For catching up the gossips and each others lives, we decided to walk downtown via the Grandville bridge. I think we were about half way over the bridge when it started to rain and the day turned into all kinds of Vancouver misery. Suddenly I was glad that I bought matching Star Trek fleeces with my friend Tero in San Francisco.

The Grandville street takes you all the way downtown, through plenty of shopping opportunities. We visited a couple of department stores and finally stumbled into the Gallery of Bill Reid, a man who has made a significant part of the aboriginal art in this area. His perhaps the most famous piece is the ‘Raven and the First Men’, which is a huge piece of a yellow cedar sculpture, which he made to the museum of Anthropology here in Vancouver. There was series of earlier versions of this piece in display in this gallery.

All three of us were very touched with the art of the native Americans. On this area the art focuses on masks, sculptures, clothes, capes, canoes, jewelry and of course the totem poles. I think my husband in particular was very impressed as he started to decorate our imaginary future house with stuff that he could have bought (with also imaginary funds). I thought the most impressive parts were the red and blue capes that were worn in the rituals of the area. Even if I fell asleep just a little during the 50-minute film about canoe art… The ravens, the bears, the foxes, the seals… This is all animals that I recognize, because they feel like the same animals back home. This is my kind of art, definitely. Makes me wonder why the Finnish natives didn’t come up with Totem poles.

The weather took a turn to much more cold as we left the Gallery and had a small lunch in town. Vancouver sure is an end to the Autumn. If it’s like this tomorrow, we’ll stay indoors. People always think that it’s wrong for Finns to be cold. What they don’t realize is that when Finns are cold, it’s not just a small drift of cold air. It means you might have only a few hours to live before you die of being too cold. So we have warming in the house. We have secured clothing that might make us look like pixies or Michelin men, but at least we are warm. There is no cold weather, there is only unefficient wardrobes.

In any case, we checked out the cinema of Vancouver, which would have provided entertainment, but only after an hour and a half wait, so we decided to get the skytrain back to West Broadway, where our hotel, the Park Inn is located. The Olympics are kicking in in Vancouver in February, which means that they’ve just completed a series of very impressive building processes in this city. One of those is the Canada line which connects the airport with the waterfront of downtown. Luckily our hotel is only 4 blocks away from one of the stops, so we had a really cheap way getting home.