All the way from Arnhem Land...

Tonight we had dinner with one of my high school friends: Pam, and her husband Gregory! They work as teachers in Arnhem Land, right at the top of the Northern Territory in Australia, and are currently on a 6-week US trip with just a few days in Canada. It was so wonderful to see them... and as Pam said, "it's a long way from Dalby"!!

We took the Skytrain in and met them at Vancouver Pacific Central. Then we took them on the Skytrain to their choice of the restaurant options I had researched: Twisted Fork Bistro, a little French restaurant on Granville St. We all had their Mon-Thurs "Blue Fence" special: 3 courses for $25. Delicious!





I hadn't seen Pam since 2002 and had never met Gregory, so we didn't come close to running out of things to talk about. It was so nice to hear some real Aussie accents over here again, and catch up on their lives, travels, etc! In fact, we're planning on seeing them again tomorrow night. Who knows when we'll have such an opportunity again!

Our Christmas Day

Merry Christmas, readers! We hope you all had a wonderful day, wherever you are.

We spent the day at home by ourselves and enjoyed a nice relaxing start to our holidays. It was the first Christmas ever that we haven't been travelling and/or with family and friends, so we did miss that... but we'll just have to make up for it in future years. :)

Winter Solstice Lantern Festival

On December 21st, the longest night of the year, we stopped in at the Winter Solstice Lantern Festival at The Roundhouse in Yaletown (Vancouver). We didn't stay for very long as most of the interesting things (eg. a darkened room containing a labyrinth made from 700 beeswax candles) had long queues, and we didn't want to see anything that badly!


We caught a glimpse of a few homemade lanterns that people had carried to The Roundhouse in a procession led by drummers before we arrived, but unfortunately didn't get any photos of them. There were some fancy ones!

We also saw some Morris dancing (a traditional dance from England) by a group of middle-aged ladies called the Tiddley Cove Morris Dancers. I find some of the more unusual things people do for hobbies so fascinating!!

And this funky young violin troupe called Twisted String...

After leaving The Roundhouse, we wandered to a nearby Starbucks, sipped a gingerbread latte (I'm slowly working my way through their seasonal offerings menu!), read The Georgia Straight for an hour or so, and then took the Skytrain home again. And just as we do after every Skytrain trip downtown, we resolved to go more often because it really is so quick and easy... and there's always something new to see or do in Vancouver!

Gingerbread houses and Christmas carols

On Saturday, December 11th, we hosted an evening of decorating gingerbread houses and singing Christmas carols! It was a warm and cozy evening of:

Getting creative with icing and candy...

Yunju

Angharad

Conrad, Ben, Juanita

Ben

Juanita

Conrad and Ben

Me

Tyson

Yunju, Heidi, Angharad, Tyson, Nicole

Heidi

Admiring the finished products...




Drinking semi-homemade apple cider (we purchased non-alcoholic apple cider from Haggen, and Ben heated it on the stove and added cinnamon, dried cranberries and mandarin)...

Ben

Conrad

Hod

Chatting...

Andrew

Ken

Juanita, Angharad, Claire, Shonna

Enjoying a fabulous potluck spread...


And some rousing renditions of Christmas carols...

Andrew, Angharad, me, Ken

Shonna and Joel

Yunju, Conrad, Hod

It was a fun night!

Vancouver Christmas Market

On Monday, December 6th, we went to Vancouver's first German-style, open-air Christmas market. It wasn't very big, but it did quite a good job of replicating the feel of the Christmas markets in Europe... complete with little wooden huts, bratwurst, schnitzel, raclette, crepes, baked apples, spiced apple cider and glühwein!






The bandstand...



Kelly, Janae and Etta...




Terry, Kelly and Etta...


Janae, Gretchen and Donna...


A contraption for splitting rocks open...



Souvenir glühwein mugs...


And us!

It was fun to get a little taste of Europe in North America, but we do still miss the real thing! :)