Our hotel was happy to keep our luggage so we dumped it and headed to see some more museums. The museum of Vancouver this is. It was a nice, sunny day for change and we walked. Of course in the anticipation of this being one of those long two days melting together as one… Well, that was probably not the brightest idea on earth.

Museum of Vancouver turned out to have two exhibitions. The main one and something called the ‘Taxidermy’ which means stuffing animals. They were almost apologizing for it, they said they are not against it or for it, but since they have it, they show it. Fair enough. This of course meant some heads on the wall, snakes in jars and the usual. There was a full size moose and even a cute little platypus, my new favorite animal. Even a rhino head… Apparently now a days taxidermy has fallen off fashion and I can see why. People are more environmentally cautions and don’t want to be looking at stuffed animals. They would much rather see the replicas, I’m sure. I don’t object… Whatever way the world goes with it, I am sure it’s alright.

Museum of Vancouver was rich and ‘interactive’ as the girl behind the desk told us enthusiastically. It certainly wasn’t the best exhibition that I’ve seen on this trip, but fair enough, there was interesting videos. One was a real piece filmed from a tram going around the centre with people hopping away from in front of it. Another one was an advert for ‘re-doing’ your house. It was targeting the bored house wives whose biggest problem was that their fridge doors opened to the wrong direction. I had no idea that the 60’s homes had started to have dish washers… Somehow I am very interested in the totally electrical homes, it’s just that now a days you think more like ‘how to make it all wireless’ or how to have the iPod stereo go around the apartment.

We then walked our way to town via the rainbow village of the city which was preparing for Halloween by costumes and decorations. I’ve got news for Finns: We have no idea how to do it! Now in North America… Well, they take the pumpkins really seriously and it’s an adult carnival that vappu(1^st of May) has no comparison to. It’s the time to dress up to the sexy nurse costumes, or the short skirt maid as I discovered in the sky train. My favorite was still the Drag-Marge with tits serving tables.

Unfortunately the only Halloween party I was going for was a flight to New York. The airport was pretty deserted as no one wants to travel on Halloween. My husband and I decided to have martinis in the empty bar, where we were accompanied by one of those ‘I-know-him-from-television-stars-but-cant-quite-remember-who-it-is’. It took me all flight to realize that he was Scott Wolfe, flying on economy with his wife… He as well as us, was surprised of the flight being postponed for an hour because of the time turning back for an hour here… It turned out that this was good for us because the JFK opens its customs at 6 sharp and we would have had to have wait 1,5 hours instead of half in the plane at the other end…

Last city to go, trip almost over. Let’s go to the place where the boys are pretty, New York City!

This place sounded like a katiland-mustdo, a suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere, in a rain forest, with a treetop walk. We got the sea bus from the Waterfront and the 238 bus in North Vancouver to get to Capilano. It’s a 30dollar admission, way well worth it to me. The scene is fabulously beautiful – and it is Halloween time, so they had hundreds of carved pumpkins around the area. Very beautiful indeed. Makes me think that Finland is loosing out on the pumpkin fun, but I suppose that’s due to it always being too cold outside at this time of the year.

I took some photographs from the observation deck and we then passed the bridge to the other side to do the forest walks. I’ve never been to a rain forest before, let alone a Northern rain forest. It feels like the trees are weeping and there is huge amount of moisture in the air. It wasn’t raining while we were there, but it was pretty wet anyways. I am sure it’s like that all the time there. The Autumn colors are perhaps at their best currently, going on red, yellow and brown. I have seriously taken so many pictures of leaves on this trip that I might need to do a leaf show when I get home.

The trees in the Capilano rain forest are seriously old, but the oldest is Grandmother Capilano, — years old. They had had an accident of one of the huge trees falling on the bridge in a storm… Somehow the cables held its weight though, the bridge was unharmed. We walked on top of that tree, which seriously had been one of the big ones. It made you really trust the bridge not to fall down though. I am not scared of heights anyways, but I think my husband was having jitters.

It was also the day to help the breast cancer victims, which meant that they had decided to decorate the bridge with ropes of bras all over it. This told to us by the cash register woman: “Don’t be intimidated by the bras all over the bridge. ”

In the forest, there is a pedestal walk among the treetops, just like the villages you see in ‘Return of the Jedi’. And as I am a serious Star Wars fan, what better way to spend your day than to visit the Ewok way of living? It went very well with my theme visit of the film world, even if it wasn’t filmed here. However, it was filmed in Northern Vancouver, so there you go.

Last but not least we shopped with the incredibly tempting Haida art again, getting some more Christmas presents to the family. There was a soup and sandwich stand to enjoy before getting the bus, sea bus and sky train back to the Broadway. I was also determined to visit the local branch to do some Shorinji Kempo and learn about it in Northern Europe.

I made a call to the branch master Hajimoto sensei, who concurred that it was okay to visit. This branch had their spirits high and we trained together for almost two hours and then went for a pint and a pizza. It was Friday night, after all. I can recommend training in Vancouver: Excellent teaching and many high level sempais to practice with. Most of them were Japanese – But that can be expected as Vancouver is very popular destination for Japanese and Chinese immigrants. Of course to me, this seems like home. I wonder if I am going to feel weird about not being around Asians all the time…

This was the last full day in Vancouver, well spent again if I may say so myself.

Day 53

Welcome to Cylon-occupied Caprica city!

I am a slave of television. I am not shamed to admit it. If you currently ask me, what’s the best thing on television, ever – the answer is simple and bears three letters, two words: BSG – Battlestar Galactica. And of course I am talking about the new series, not the seventees flop. Battlestar was filmed in Vancouver and many of its shots are shot in downtown or the two university campus areas around here. It’s perfectly fair to say: This is Caprica city. Of course as a good fan, I did some of my own BSG tourism and visited some of the locations of my favorite show. There is a whole society of the BSG fans here in Vancouver, who have spotted many locations making this a very easy trip for me. Thanks a lot, the 13^th tribe. Also I found great help from the comparative location shots here. There was also an article in the Wire.com about Battlestar Galactica Tourism, which was my purpose of life today.

It was a very rainy day, but since the locations are mainly from Cylon-occupied Caprica after the holocaust – the rain was exactly the right weather. I wanted to make it relatively easy for me, so I mainly poked around downtown. The Opera house where Caprica Six and Balthar kidnap Hera is the interior of the Orpheum theatre. I was not expecting to get anything out of the Orpheum, mainly because there was nothing on and there is tours only on summertime. Never the less I walked past it and realized that there was couple of men cleaning it, so I could sneak the lobby picture. However, I didn’t get to the place where the actual shots were filmed – but close enough. The interior of the hall would have been the temple of the five cylons, but I didn’t want to push my luck, these men were kind enough to let me in for a minute.

The next stop is the Vancouver city library, which serves one of the locations that Sharon and Helo pass while they are running away from the cylons. There is two different views of that one. The building itself is very impressive, built like a Roman colosseum.

My Battlestar tourism continued by checking out the alleyway next to Pub 340, which Helo passes through. This happens when Helo is on his own in Litmus, being watched from above by Sharon, Six and Doral and he goes down a fire escape into a graffiti covered alleyway. There was so many homeless people on this area that I didn’t feel myself safe at all. Horrible place.

The roof that you see behind the cylons following Helo is one of the downtown buildings as well and I passed that one.

Near the harbor, there is The ramp where Six and Doral talk in ‘Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down.’ This ramp is unfortunately closed for walkers so I didn’t risk my life and only took the shot from above.

Quite by accident, we visited the rose garden of the University of British Columbia, because it’s close to the museum of Anthropology. I took a shot of it completely unaware that it was the same garden where the press is talking about the Vice President issue in ‘Colonial Day’.

Finally the Final scene of Galactica has been filmed in the corner of Hornby and Hastings – the one where Angels, Six and Balthar discuss the faith of the mankind. That was a good place to conclude the tour as it was.

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.

Day 48/63

We reluctantly left the save haven that is our friend’s place in San Francisco and got a taxi to the airport. San Francisco has been much better than could be expected and certainly a place where we’ll return one day.

Today’s flight was the only one that we couldn’t do with One World tickets, so we got United Airlines cheap flight. This meant that we got surprised with another 40dollars to check in our bags. I have to say that the Around the world ticket is a pretty good deal: You don’t have to pay for everything else in the side… You get luggage for free and you also normally get served food and alcohol. Not with American Airlines though, so don’t be surprised. If they say they are selling ‘entrees’ on a 5 hour flight, what they mean is: Do buy food if you are hungry.

In any case, San Francisco airport had little shopping to do, so I continued to bury myself into the Twilight saga, which I am reading now, so that I don’t have to waste my time back home. It’s very addictive, even if it’s not all that good. I suppose Best Sellers are like that.

As we arrived to British Columbia, it was immediately like coming back home. It’s about as cold, I can imagine, and there seems to be plenty of water. The immigration’s decorations were filled with aboriginal cloths and poles, they made me feel like I will have a good time in this city. We got another taxi to our hotel, the Park Inn, right outside Downtown Vancouver.

The selection of restaurants around the hotel are various and promising. Three metres to a liquor shop and seven eleven, three Japanese restaurants in the same block and so on. We also have wireless internet in the room as well as my husband’s number one fantasy: A Coin Laundry inside the hotel as well. Oh, and did I mention the Post office five metres away? We clearly have picked the best position so far to be in.

We had a lovely Indian buffet for dinner, while watching the city lights. Our friend from Dallas is joining us for a few days, so we decided to leave sightseeing for tomorrow and the seven days we are spending here. It didn’t take me long to realize that this is the most promising city yet. Sure, it’s freezing outside, but that’s just like home: Just need to go shopping for some tights!

In the airport I realized that I will never move to the Southern Athmosphere, it’s just not my thing. I am a Northern girl.