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.

Happy Halloween! Unfortunately this post is about a week late, so I won’t actually be writing about what we did on the Halloween night. This night we spent in the plane from Vancouver to New York.

Day 47.

By the crack of ten a clock, we met David and his car by the Asian Arts museum. He had very kindly promised to drive us around the bay area, which turned out to be an excellent idea. The day was particularly gorgeous – almost no clouds on the sky. We popped by to see a wall painting by Frida Kahlo’s husband, on our way to Lombart Street, the 45 degrees street which you can only drive down in zigzag.

David took us to see the telegraph hill with Coit tower, which now a days, it’s known for the wild Parrots that have taken residence in the trees of the hill… There is a statue of Columbus by the tower, looking at the sea. Of course Columbus never reached the West Coast, but who cares…

After a short trip to the harbor and a second-hand bookstore there, we popped into a Chinese Post Office. We somehow managed to spend an hour sending two boxes home, thanks to the fact that there had been a change of regulations, which meant that we needed a residential address in San Francisco to send out the package… And the woman needed to type everything up to her machine as well. The American post will change this regulation by Christmas or they’ll definitely just die in the holidays post.

David showed us the area of the Palace of Fine Arts which I had seen on Monday, but of course it was much more impressive now, when it wasn’t pouring down rain. We fed the ducks in the pond with some white bread, but didn’t see the swans again. David then drove us by the shore enough to sneak gorgeous pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, ending the tour to one of the three Chinatowns, behind the Golden Gate Park.

We had a whole Crab for lunch, from a local, Vietnamese restaurant. David said that when he was a boy (and crew up in the area), crabs could be fished by the bay area by children… he price of one was a dollar(!). Now a days the waters are too polluted, but you can get crabs outside the bay area apparently. This was a seriously good meal, all garlicy and wonderful. Certainly the best crab, I’ve ever eaten. Huge amounts of meat inside as well…

In the evening we had a date with our lovely hosts Fred and Fia, to see the Astroboy remake, which has just been out in the cinema. My husband is a Japanese Animation expert and so is Fred, so this was a must-see-film for the foursome of us. I haven’t actually seen the original one, I am shamed to admit – but that perhaps gave me the opportunity to look at this one objectively as a child of 2009. Of course I am 28 years old woman, which doesn’t exactly make me the target audience.

I thought that Astroboy was quite moving – specially the relationship with his father, who first makes him like Frankenstein, but then abandons him. However, I did think that for this piece being released this year – there has been a lot of competition in the animation lately… And Wall-E is not that different, but it is globally recognized as the cutest Anime that has been out lately… So the bar is high. Never the less, I was entertained – would I watch it again? Well, probably if I had kids who demanded it to be in the dvd player all the time. Certainly not voluntarily on my own.

After cinema, Fred and Fia took us to an amazing Chinese restaurant, which served the most incredible garlic beans as well as fried chicken that I have tasted. We were really lucky to get a table or to get served at all since they were just going to close the kitchen in the next two minutes. However, we were once again not home to mr. Cock-up and left happily with our stomachs filled with Chinese goodness. This was our last night in San Francisco as well, so we reluctantly said goodbyes to our wonderful friends. I will certainly be missing these two a lot.

Day 46

After hopping onto the tram from Carl Street to downtown, I decided it was a good idea to get coffee. We stopped at a takeaway shop in the tram tunnel of Embarcadero. This was probably the worst coffee experience I ever had. I ordered two regulars with milk, but never received them… After fifteen minutes of standing by, I went to ask for them and got a surprised woman, who had seen me stand there for fifteen minutes without the coffee which she happily had taken money from. The coffee tasted really awful and I spilled it when walking around the harbor. Not the best morning ever.

At Pier 33, I realized that our tickets were for Friday and not Thursday, which didn’t really improve my day. I was convinced that we couldn’t get on, since they seemed to be very strict that the next ferry free was the next day. However the woman at the counter was nice enough to change the tickets for a half-an-hour later than the one we should have taken, so we only missed a little time.

It was a great mist in the crispy California air that morning, even with a sun shining through it. Once we were on board the ferry, we couldn’t see infront of us… While we were on the ferry back, two hours later though, we had brilliant visibility. That’s San Francisco weather for you.

Alcatraz is an island that has a long history, but of course it’s most famous for the thirty or so years when it served as the maximum security prison. It was also the only one of its kind back then in the time of Gangsters – 30’s to 60’s. The prison was determined at 1963 for being too expensive.

Visiting the prison is a spooky, but great experience. They have come up with an award-winning audio tour, which includes inmates talking of the time they served in Alcatraz, and they demonstrate and visualize the places where the most famous events happened. They show you where the Battle of Alcatraz started – where the inmates killed the guards, where the marines came in with hand grandees (see the holes in the floors) and where the three inmates climbed through the ventilation pipes to freedom.

Of course you’ve seen bunch of the films about this place, and at least the Sean Connery one… It’s great to stand there and feel how it must have been for these men… Alcatraz clearly was no way the place where you wanted to be. It must have been constantly cold and damp, with wind blowing through the bars, without the possibility to ever be warm. The prison was also built in a way that the inmates could see the city from their outdoors area – perhaps even hear the voices of the city. It must have been so close, yet so far.

They believe that no one ever successfully escaped the Rock. 36 prisoners were involved in 14 attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, and three were lost at sea and never found. So technically, three of them might have survived, but the chances are minimal. It’s not only that the water around is so cold that it kills your body temperature in only five minutes, but there is also loads of sharks, so the chances were very small indeed. But who knows, if you are an optimist, you can always think they did escape.

After reaching San Francisco again, we took the historic tram to Embarcadero and then went back to the corner of Carl & Cole, to look for a post office. We’ve now posted out so many packages from this trip, that we’ve lost the count of them. Some are on airmail, some on sea mail, some on surface. It’ll be a treat to get them while the long winter evenings start flying by in Finland. Our quest of the mail lead us to the hippie movement area, in Height Ashbury, which even by San Francisco standards, is a free and flower power area even now. There is plenty of small shops to buy clothes (the most weirdest clothes you might ever want), books, dvds and whatnot.

Halloween is coming and in America they take that very seriously. There is at least one costume shop in every block. There are areas to carv pumpkins in. All the weird inflatable witches that you’ve seen in the tv-series… well, they are all true. Halloween is at least a two week event for Americans… We think we’ve inherited it in Finland, but it’s no way near as mad as in here. I mean, our houses are not covered in spider webs three weeks before the actual date on the 31^st of October. Luckily my husband and I will spend that night in a plane from Vancouver to New York, so there is no trick-or-treating threat… Or is there?

Day 26/63

It was pissing down rain on our last day in Shanghai, so as cheap as the possible tat around the corner would have been, we decided to spend our time in the hotel instead. We had some martinis and dumplings and headed for the airport in the afternoon. Goodbye Shanghai!

Overnight flight from Shanghai to Sydney was okay, 10 hours is still going to hurt, no matter how well you have managed the situation of inflatable pillows, flight socks, alcohol and entertainment. Of course your airline will contribute as well. We flew with Qantas this time, which probably hear me playing Balderdash with my husband before the flight… They totally ignored me on several occasions on service, including ‘forgetting us’ out of all the others while delivering dinner… I have now reached a point where I have seen many of the films on offer in the entertainment systems – I watch films a lot anyways, and this time the selection *in* the system was nothing like the one described in the little magazine they handed to us. However, I enjoyed State of Play and Young Victoria, finally some good airplane entertainment.

So do you know what QANTAS stands for? Because I should think: “Quick! Ask Nobbs to Attack Siperia” is a pretty good shot at it… Do I get your votes?