A weekend in Seattle

Pike Market Place, downtown Seattle

We have never visited Seattle before. We stopped over briefly for a coffee break on our road trip to Oregon but that was it. It is kind of crazy because we have lived in the Vancouver area for 9 years now and Seattle is only a 2 hour drive away.

I'm reporting our trip late since it was a week ago that it happened. I'll write more in an upcoming post to explain why I have taken so long to blog about it.

I had a bunch of stores I wanted to visit and a list of restaurants for use to try close to our hotel. The main thing I wanted to check out downtown was the Pike Market Place. We went there and hung around for 2 1/2 hours. I couldn't believe how expensive the parking was! We parked at the City Target and the parking was $18. I made myself spend $20 at Target so that they would reimburse us for the first hour of parking. At least! Oh my gosh.

Original Starbucks, Seattle

Pike Market Place was cool. The flowers (fresh or dried) were the best buy I think. If I lived there, I would totally buy some. Everything else was kind of expensive. There were lots of cool stuff though.  We saw the original Starbucks but there was a HUGE lineup so we didn't bother.

We stayed at a hotel in the University district, which was just a 10 minute drive from downtown. Apparently, it was a hip neighborhood with lots of vegan cafes and restaurants. I knew Jean-Louis would be happy :) We had some hotel problems, having booked through Hotwire for the first time but in the end it worked out for us. We were within walking distance to the University Village, which was totally awesome. I loved that place! So many of my favorite stores were there and right next to each other too. The layout was fabulous because when you enter, you can see the stores right there, without looking up a directory.

After shopping, we dined at VeggieGrill, also nearby in the University Village. It was all vegan and we ate until we couldn't walk anymore. You could tell it was not real meat but the quality was so much better than what you could buy at the grocery store. Plus, it was so cheap! We stuffed ourselves silly for just $35. Tristan got the best deal of all for being a kid. For just $5.99, he got a main dish (Mac & Cheese), a side (sweet potato fries), a dessert (chocolate pudding), and a drink (soy milk). The service was excellent too. Once we ordered, paid for our food and sat down, I barely had time to go wash my hands and Tristan's hands before all the food arrived. They messed up brought us an extra order of buffalo wings and said we could just eat it anyway. Yay! Now these were vegan chicken strips so they were actually really filling. Big, no bones, all "meat," if you know what I mean :) It was all good. I read good things about the place but I was still a bit skeptic. Next time we are back in Seattle, we will definitely stop by again!

The main reason we wanted to go to Seattle was to visit the Museum of Flight. Jean-Louis is a plane geek and Tristan is a little boy so he would definitely love seeing planes and other flying vehicles. I wasn't that interested but if I didn't have to pay to go, then I wouldn't have mind tagging along. We got to use our Entertainment book coupon from Vancouver for the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Cool, right? I think it's the first time they included a few Seattle coupons in the Vancouver book. It was a 2 for 1 deal so I was basically free :)

The Museum of Flight was really cool actually. We got to go in several planes, including an Air Force One for the President of the USA. That's some serious perk for a President! The Museum was really big and although we spent around 3 or 4 hours there, we couldn't do much since we had to chase Tristan around. Two hours would have been plenty for our first visit but since we stayed so long, we all got a bit cranky near the end :( That weekend we went it was very crowded too since they had a Halloween event. We got Tristan to dress up in costume to join in on the fun. There were so many kids in costumes there, some ridiculously great costumes too. Surprisingly, Tristan was the only Darth Vader. There were lots of crafts and games but he wasn't too interested. Boo :( Tristan didn't sleep enough the night before and he totally crashed when we left the place. Instead of stopping for lunch, we decided to just drive straight to Bellingham for a Trader Joe's stop and then home to Vancouver. The border wait at Blaine was around 10-15 minutes, which was great. On top of that, we had a super easy customs guy. I don't think we have ever encountered such a nice and easy guy. We had a bad experience in the past where we were booted out of our car and sent inside to pay duties for things we bought. We're still sort of new at this so every time we cross the border by car I get super nervous.

We sure picked the right weekend to go over. I had a feeling a lot of people wanted to stay put the weekend before Halloween, which was why I chose to go then. Overall, it was a great trip and we got to do some serious power shopping. I got plenty of stuff for Tristan's upcoming birthday party too :) I can definitely see us going over again. Maybe when the weather improves.

Play date of the year

Last Thursday and Friday, Tristan had a play date with two boys, age 3.5 and 5.5. These two boys were my friend's children from Victoria. We have been friends since Junior High so that makes her "the friend I have been friends with the longest." We have been meaning to do this for awhile so when we finally picked a date this summer, it finally happened! Also, I haven't seen her in a year.

She took her two boys and came over to Vancouver as foot passengers on the ferry. After a bus and skytrain ride, she arrived Thursday in time for a lunch picnic I had organized for us. That morning I made us frosted soft sugar cookies for treats and vegan cassava tortillas for our picnic. We skytrained to Central Park, had our lunch picnic and the kids played at the playground while my friend and I talked. I got to socialize and Tristan had so much fun playing with his two little friends. He was so happy! He gets like that whenever he has little people to play with :)

After a couple of hours at the park, we walked to Metrotown where we rode the train in the mall. Then it was off to Sushi Garden to pickup sushi for dinner and skytrain back home. The kids love sushi as much as us. We all stuffed ourselves full! That night after the cleanup, the kids played together with Tristan's toys until 11PM. My friend and I looked at photos and talked about recent vacations.

On Friday, Tristan was up around 7AM, his usual time really. We were all awake around 8AM. I did a bit of planning while everyone was getting ready. We headed to Little Nest for brunch. I have never been to Little Nest during a week day before. It was still busy but much less chaotic compared to the weekend. We all liked our meals and my friend really liked the place :) It's one of our favorites too.

After brunch, we walked along Commercial Drive and checked out some kids stores. Then we crossed the street into a big playground where the kids ran and played for at least an hour. We ended up walking up and down Commercial a bit more before leaving for the day. My friend had never explored Commercial Drive. In fact, she doesn't come over to Vancouver often. When she does it's usually just for quick stops and she visits with people and doesn't really get to tour much. All the places I took her were new to her and she seemed to have enjoyed her stay. We weren't the only ones enjoying ourselves, the kids had a blast too! They got along so well and were all so well behaved :) It actually dawned on me that her kids were more obedient than Tristan. When it was time to say good-bye, her 5.5 year old was first to say bye to Tristan. He gave Tristan a hug and said "I love you." Haha. It was so cute though.

Tristan was sad to see them leave and they were sad to leave too. This was probably only about the fourth or fifth time Tristan has ever seen them. You wouldn't have guessed though since they played and interacted so well together. You would have thought they have been friends all their lives. Well all 3 1/2 years of their lives :)

Random photos of Toulon from our past trip

As you may be aware, we went to France and Italy a few weeks ago. Besides posting pictures of our farmhouse and the countryside of Tuscany, I haven't posted a thing from France or the rest of Tuscany. To be honest, I didn't know what to do next. I could probably easily do another six posts on our trip but so much time has passed now and I just want to share a bit more and then move on. There are so many other things going on and I'm falling very behind! :( To complete my documentation of our past vacation, I will do this post and one more after this. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so I think the best way to share our experience is through some of the pictures we took.

Omg. There are so many pictures! I am just overwhelmed. Over 1500 pictures were taken! This is part of the reason why I have been taking so long with these blog posts. Wouldn't you procrastinate too? How do I share just a few pictures when there are probably 1000 good ones? Omg.

We stayed in Toulon for a long time because Tristan's grandparents lived there, as well as his great grandpa. Our only plan in Toulon was to see relatives and hang out with them as much as possible. We had no plans to go anywhere or do anything in particular. When there was nobody left to see, we actually found ourselves bored silly. We spend countless hours playing with Tristan, going for walks, and watching television at his great grandpa's house. Jean-Louis even went out for runs while Tristan and I sat around home waiting for him.

Tristan got to see his family a lot but most of the time, it was just the three of us alone doing things like playing and walking into town. It actually made us notice even more how the South of France really isn't kid-friendly at all. It's better than Paris perhaps. Besides the beach and playground near the beach, there is nothing much else to do. As far as I know, there are only two public playgrounds. One is a 25 minute walk and the other is about a 1 hour walk. None of them have any shade. Most playgrounds are inside of schools, which are gated and locked. We went to the same playground over and over and I was getting so sick of it. Luckily, it was a nice playground. The lack of playgrounds is one thing and the lack of child-friendly restaurants is another. Tristan is a good eater and is well behaved when we dine out so it isn't ever really a big deal for us. When Tristan's little cousins came to visit though, we almost went to Ikea for a family lunch! It was the closest thing they could come up with that was kid-friendly and that wouldn't cost a fortune. In the end, we decided it was going to be too busy at Ikea so we settled for fast Chinese food in town. Oh, the horror. It was as yucky as I had expected. Seriously.

Tristan got to hang out and bond with his French family and that was the most important. As an added bonus, we also took some great photos of him with his grandparents, great grandpa, and his little cousins. He got along so well with his three girl cousins! It was so cute :) It was also great to see people our age with little kids too who we could hang out with.

What a kid's dish looks like in France

Tuna & pasta

Salmon & fries

What we did in the Portland area

We had such a blast in the one week we spent in the Portland area. The weather was very kind to us. It only rained maybe two days on and off and by the end of the week a heat wave hit. It went from 15C to 25C and it stayed there for a few days. It felt like summer and we were overdressed and sweating! We couldn't have been luckier though because we planned our shopping trips during most of the rain and all the things we did during the trip worked out great weather wise.

We drove A LOT. With all the driving that we did, some outings felt a bit like an European tour. We only got to spend maybe one hour tops at each place. I was particularly frantic while we shopped. There were so many great buys and so many great things that we just couldn't get in Vancouver. I would grab something and then have about 2 minutes to decide if I was going to buy it. Power shopping would even be an under statement. We were so productive though and I was sweating from shopping and carrying so much. No kidding! If we had more time, I would have definitely bought more so maybe it's a good thing I had a time limit :)

This trip was a preview of Portland and the surrounding area for us. We would definitely like to go back but next time we'll stay inside the city. After driving what seemed like forever to get there from Vancouver, we were so relieved to find that our resort by Mt. Hood was not covered in snow and that it was really nice! It was a one-bedroom villa with a full kitchen, washer/dryer in the unit, TV in the living room and TV in the bedroom, private patio with BBQ grill, and fireplace in the living room! The resort looked pretty new too so we were thrilled :) It's just too bad it was a 1 hour drive to Portland but we can't complain too much. We didn't use the amenities because we barely spent time at the resort itself but we did take full advantage of the kitchen. We only dined out for three full meals during the week. We shopped at Trader Joe's and made ourselves dinner and breakfast at home. I also prepped us some sandwiches for our road trip to the coast. The resort probably didn't think visitors would use the kitchen so much so we found ourselves complaining how ill equipped the kitchen was with supplies. We're hard to please, I know! No dish rack? We didn't want to use the dishwasher because it was too noisy and it took too long so we just hand washed everything and laid it loosely on the counter to dry. We ended up breaking one of the dishes as a result. Oops.

Grocery Shopping

There are so many local and organic choices for foods down in the Portland area. The Saturday farmer's market in Portland State University is now one of my favorite farmer's markets. There were so many organic stands and the local produce looked so amazing. If I lived there, I would have filled a shopping cart full of mixed lettuce leaves and greens like collards, kale of every kind etc. Of course I would use big reusable shopping bags because that's cooler and I would blend in well with the locals :) There was entertainment and music, food stands, bakery tables, wine, nuts etc. It was so lively down there and we went at such a perfect time. The weather was 25C that day and the morning was pleasantly cool when we got to the market. I bought plenty of local nuts, wine, bread, cookies, leeks, purple carrots, anise, and Jerusalem artichokes! It's so hard to find Jerusalem artichokes here in Vancouver and they are expensive. Here we call them sunchokes and I buy mine at Thrify Foods. They grow them in Portland and they looked so great and were cheap. I was literally doing the happy dance when I saw them:) They were everywhere too.

Jerusalem artichokes (aka sunchokes)

We visited Trader Joe's for the first time and then by the time we left the US to come home, we had visited Trader Joe's five times. I guess you could say we love the place :) In fact, I'm probably going to write a post just about Trader Joe's on my food blog later.

Touring

We did about 75% of the things I had planned for us to do. Of course we sort of lost about two days of vacation if you factor in all the driving around. The driving was somewhat hard on us all and we are all super sick of our car now. Lol. Tristan was pretty good but he lacked sleep all week so he acted up in the evenings during dinner time a few times. That wasn't so fun:( Instead of going to bed at 9PM, he slept at 11:30PM and got up at the usual 7:30AM. He normally napped in the car for maybe 30 minutes during the day as well but all of that does not add up. He was just sleep deprived. On top of that, he was sick coughing for the first 3 or 4 days. The weather improved and I fed him lots of soup so he got better quickly. Thank goodness. It was an adventure for him to come with us on such a long road trip and I sort of feel bad for him because we didn't get to play in playgrounds much and we didn't bike at all. We did go snowtubing on Mt. Hood, which he really enjoyed :)

We wanted to spend more time in the city so we only took one coastal trip. We drove to Long Beach and then headed south to Tillamook. We went through Astoria but didn't stop. We did stop by Seaside and Cannon Beach. All the beaches are about the same. They were all long, wide, and white sand beaches. Cannon Beach is particularly stunning because of all the rock formations nearby like the "haystack." Our final destination stop was Tillamook. We got to the cheese factory there just before they closed so we were able to quickly try some cheese, buy cheese, and get ice cream. I was told their ice cream was awesome so I had to try :) We hoarded so much cheese from there, you would think we were Wallace & Gromit. Cheeeeese!

Two days before we left, we took an excursion to the Columbia gorge and river. We drove along the scenic highway from Troutdale along the Columbia gorge and stopped by Vista House and Multnomah Falls. Then we continued on all the way to Dalles, just to see the landscape change into desert and dry land. It wasn't as drastic as I imagined but in Dalles it was 28C. Of course we were already experiencing a hotter than usual day of 25C inside Portland. When we drove back through Hood River and back to our resort, the temperature dropped to 18C. Within an hour we went from a hot desert to snow in the mountains. It is pretty cool when you think about it.

Shopping

Shopping on NW 23rd Avenue

We went shopping at Woodburn and also in around Portland on 23rd, the Pearl District, and Hawthorne. The biggest outlets are in Woodburn. It's mostly clothes and shoes though. There are tons of good buys and you can definitely break your bank if you are not careful. Consider yourself warned :) NW 23rd Avenue was our first shopping stop inside Portland and even though it rained that day, we really loved that street. The stores were on the ground level of what looked like Victorian style homes. The street actually reminded me a lot of my Fernwood community in Victoria. Williams-Sonoma is on that street, as well as the Kitchen Kaboodle, which I really liked. Two Tarts bakery is there and it's not far from St. Honoré Boulangerie, which was our very first stop inside Portland. The Pearl District is also a great shopping area. The flagship Powell's Books store is there, as well as Anthropologie, Sur la Table etc. Tons of stores that I love are there! Hawthorne is good for vintage clothes, especially "House of Vintage." It's so big so you will need time to sift through everything to find the cool stuff. It took me awhile and I only bought a couple of things. And of course, every neighborhood you go to, there are cafes and bakeries and so many things are organic, gluten-free, or vegan. I think all the coffee shops carry cow milk, almond milk, and soy milk. That was my impression anyway.

Meeting the Locals

On our last day there, we toured the Lan Su Gardens in Chinatown and then met up with one of Jean-Louis' tweeples, who was living in Portland. It's funny because we have only been there for a week and we have seen more places than him. He has been a local for over two years but has barely left the city center. Jean-Louis' friend is Vegan so he took us to a good restaurant called Vita Cafe that had lots of vegan and gluten-free food. It was on Alberta Street and it was his friend's favorite street in Portland. There were tons of great coffee shops, cool vintage type shops, colorful stores, eateries and art galleries. Vita Cafe was great. It was very family-friendly and we ordered a good variety of vegan dishes. Now we have ideas of what to make at home as well :) After lunch, we walked down the street to Barista. This is a popular coffee shop that serves local coffee. The main counter inside reminded me of a pub and bar. The cashier was dressed in a suit with a tie and had designer glasses on. The place just felt very hip. Jean-Louis' friend recommended I buy a bag of "heart" coffee since it's local and would be hard to find outside of Portland. I can't wait to try it! :)

Oh, another great thing we love about Portland is that it's the bike capital of the US and there are so many bikers and bike lanes there. The friends we met are bikers themselves and they were telling us that they practically biked from one end of the city to the other end without ever leaving a designated bike lane. That is awesome! Bike city and vegan paradise? Jean-Louis was happier than me! If you are a hippy, hipster, green type of person, or if you like vintage, Portland is your city, man.

Have you been to Portland, Oregon? Do you love it too? Vancouver, Canada will always be the best place to live for us but I certainly wouldn't mind moving to Portland for the short term :) I heard it could become like Silicon Valley one day so that means there would be great jobs for tech geeks like Jean-Louis and I. That would be something! :)

The 3 and under advantage

Before Tristan turned two years old, we took full advantage of traveling. We went absolutely no where until he was 18 months old though. At 18 months, we felt he was well behaved enough to take out more in general. We went to both France and Mexico and he was free for both trips. If your child is under 2, they fly for free. It's a sweet deal really :) Because he didn't eat much, the cost of food was almost nothing and every place we visited was also free for him. Train rides were free, bus rides were free, admission to the zoo was free, and any buffet we went to was free. Of course if Tristan wasn't with us, we wouldn't be going to the zoo to start with but you get the idea :)

Once a child turns 2, things change. Tristan is 2 1/2 and turning 3 in a couple of months so he is still free for most things. The big difference is air travel. There are rarely any child rates anymore so he pays the same price as an adult. That is huge! That is something like $1000 to fly for him! Not only that but a lot of vacation tour activities now require a child rate or adult rate for him to attend. Can you imagine paying an adult rate for a 2 year old dinner cruise or Mother's Day buffet? Crazy! So this is how we are going about choosing what to do with him. We look at all the activities we want to do and then we favor the ones where he can still go for free. Some times the child rate is only a few dollars less than the adult rate, which is ridiculous. We figure at this young age, he won't remember a lot of what he is experiencing anyway. For instance, we would rather pay $200 for a helicopter ride for him when he is 5 years old than pay for it now.

2 used to be our goal for doing a lot of things with him but now we're paying a lot of attention to 3. The fact is, besides air travel, 3 and under is a huge advantage. A lot of the tourist attractions such as the Vancouver Zoo do not require any admission fee for children 2 and under. The Vancouver Aquarium is free for children 3 and under. Tristan has already been to the aquarium but we are definitely going to go back a couple more times before he turns 4! The zoo will be new so we're aiming to hit that in the next month or so. Some activities are free for 3 and under but being under 3 allows you to go to most places for free. At Confederation Park, kids 2 and under ride the miniature train for free. Maybe 3 is free too. We just visited the Museum of Vancouver this past weekend and I noticed it was free for 4 and under. Children 4 and under also ride the skytrain and bus for free. Tristan is still free for a lot of meals at dinner cruises and buffets so we'll be hitting some of those too. Some cruises, dinner shows, and buffets actually give freebies to kids under 4 or 5. I mean how much can they eat, right? If your little kid is anything like our Tristan, eating off our plate is plenty!

Caribbean Days Festival in North Vancouver

A friend I met in grad school is from Barbados. When she learned that I was planning to go to Jamaica with Jean-Louis, she suggested I go to the Caribbean Festival in Vancouver. That was five years ago. We were interested but we just never got around to going. It's kind of like how we only went to the Greek festival this year.

Yesterday we finally went to the Caribbean Days Festival. It was held at Waterfront Park in North Vancouver. There was food, live music, vendors selling crafts and clothing, rides for kids and bouncy castles. The view of Vancouver was also spectacular. Unlike the Greek festival where there were lots of free kids activities, the Caribbean Festival was charging for everything. We put Tristan in the small bouncy castle so he could jump around a bit. He had a blast but it was $2 for only 3 minutes. There were only about 5 kids in there too and no one else around. Even the food was pricey. A chicken roti was $12 and a smoothie was $5. We ended up spending $28 and we weren't even full. In comparison, we spent maybe $12 at the Greek Festival and we were stuffed. It's not really fair to compare the two since the Greek Festival didn't make any money from their event. All profits went towards funding the Greek event, which I heard was billed at $150 000. Crazy. It was a huge success though.

We will most likely go back to the Greek Festival but probably not the Caribbean Festival. The food was good but too pricey at the Caribbean Festival and I didn't like that the kids activities were not complimentary. Jean-Louis thought the food wasn't good at all. The venue itself was too small and impractical. The walkway separating the food vendors from the crafts and entertainment was too narrow and crowded. Okay, I'm going to stop complaining. It was nice to finally experience it and the weather was beautiful. I even wore my Jamaican t-shirt for the occasion :)