Afterlife, Part III/B: The Bitter End

Don’t worry. The film industry and I, we have no tricks left up our sleeves. This will truly be the last post in the series. (Although I’m sure someone will, at some point, make the last part into its own trilogy. And then, a bit further down the road, any big trilogy will really be a trilogy of trilogies. Exciting times are ahead of us.) There won’t be many more after this one. Countdown! Four weeks until we’re back in Botnang! 

So, yeah. Where were we? On Vancouver Island still, but packing up and leaving our beautiful vacation home behind. We made a few more stops along the road, this time around, and even went for a short walk to see the Little Qualicum Falls. It’s true: they are little. But that air! We breathed it very consciously, knowing we’d be back between the Indian restaurant, Tim Hortons and the BBQ place far too soon.

Photo: Claudia

Photo: Claudia

We got home okay. But spending so much quality time in such a nice environment hasn’t made it easier to accept our apartments flaws. I mean, it’s nice to have an Indian restaurant around the corner, we got take-out food there three times already. But there’s a difference between ‘around the corner’ and ‘in your bedroom’. It shouldn’t be so bad, we basically have five flavors of air here: ‘clean’ and ‘laundry’ are our favorite ones. They are The Light Side of the Force, if you will. On The Dark Side, we have ‘deep fryer fat’, ‘burnt beef’ and ‘garlic in oil’. Unfortunately, the statistics are kinda messed up. There’s no way we have a two-in-five hit rate for The Light Side. No way. Maybe two-in-a-Month. If we’re lucky.

Photo: Claudia

We did some more touristy stuff. Small bike tours around Stanley Park, walks through downtown, along beaches, to playgrounds. Sunsets. You know. All that.

(Rollei)

Photo: Claudia

Photo: Claudia

As a slightly more interesting conclusion to my parents’ stay, we made a trip to the Grouse, basically Vancouver’s backyard mountain. It’s only 1200-odd meters high. Then again, that means it’s 1200-odd meters higher than we usually are. The views are fantastic, of course. The weather was incredible, we had 24° up there, blazing sunshine. It was brilliant. It was also packed with snow.

Albert’s first time. We were in Galtür with him when he was three-or-so months old, but that doesn’t count. This here does. Agnieszka quickly built a little snowman for him, but he didn’t really know what to make of it all. And he was pretty upset by the fact that he couldn’t really walk through the damn stuff.

Photo: Claudia

Nice view on our home, there. That small green patch is Stanley Park, and above and to the right of that is English Bay.

Photo: Claudia

Oh yeah. And then, there’s that.

Grizzly bears. Huge! You wouldn’t want to meet them, by yourself, on a mountain, in the snow. These two were pretty laid back, though. They were still drowsy, I guess, they’d just come out of hibernation a week before.

What? Yeah, nonono, no, of course. They were in a pen. Kinda takes the tension out of it all, I know. But then… at least I DO get to share the pictures with you. Otherwise, you’d have to wait for a ranger to find my camera, and hope that the memory card would have survived all the violence, and the snow. Didn’t you see ‘The Revenant’?

Photo: Reinhold

Photo: Claudia

It was a slow day (note to self: strollers aren’t any good in snow), but a good one. We ate lunch up there. Even got a picture, in which we all look especially dapper. Mh. Not.

Photo: unnamed waitress on the Grouse

Photo: Claudia

That swimming bus is… a swimming bus. Aptly named SeaBus, these go every couple of minutes between the North Shore and downtown Vancouver. If we ever come back, we might just find ourselves an apartment over there. VERY nice neighborhoods!

On my parents’ last day, we just went for walks together, and ate spectacular salmon. (Not spectacularly prepared, mind you, it was a rather simple dish, but the fish didn’t need much preparing, anyway.) Here, we’ve had way too few food pics around here.

Photo: Claudia

Photo: Claudia

Righty, enough of the fish. Final walk for the day, and two curiosities I just can’t keep to myself.

Photo: Claudia

Photo: Claudia

At Albert’s favorite beach, we made an attempt at a group selfie. We stuck a piece of thrift wood in the sand and put dad’s camera on it. Which was a rather flimsy contraption, and made Albert wonder just what would happen if he gave it a nudge. And that is the reason why you get to choose your favorite of two pictures, one where we all try to keep Albert from knocking the thing over, and one where we all squint into the sun while trying to keep Albert at our side.

Photo: Reinhold

Photo: Reinhold

Don’t we all just look great.

Okay, this is turning into the end of ‘Return of the King’, where you think “Thank God, it’s over” again and again, for 90 minutes, before it’s really, finally, thankfully over. So. My parents left Canada, and we’re all alone again. Sniff. As hinted at in Part I, we’re not going to drive to Banff. Instead, we’re going to fly there. Today. I’d like to say that will likely result in a bunch of nice photos, but the weather will probably be crap, so we’ll wait and see. 🙂

Thanks for staying with us until the bitter end. Let’s go out in style, then – with a sunset. (Yawn.)