May 21, 2007 to September 20, 2007 -- The Summer of Condo #2
Perhaps not the best of our seasons spent in Vancouver thusfar, but we did have some nice trips (days / weekends) out of town, some great meals (it would be hard not to), and other assorted "adventures" in B.C.
June went by slowly, it rained quite a bit and Kathy was tied up way beyond her time comittment, on a marketing paper she'd been writing for her previous colleagues. At least she kept dry and earned enough to fund our next fancy vacation.
We closed on the condo during the first week we were there, and somehow it sucked up a large portion of our time -- and money of course. Beds, furniture, installation of a door between the two units...
All this and more! in the highlights that follow.
Highlights
Wining: we brought 60+ empty wine bottles (a gift of friends from North Vancouver) over to Gotto Grapes where Dynamic Donna showed us how to wash, label and seal the two "vintages" we bought from her shop. BC has quite high "sin" taxes (hard liquor runs 3 x what we'd pay in New Hampshire; wine at least 80% more than south of the border) -- by by doing it yourself the cost is quite reasonable. Less so when you drink twice as much because it costs half. As we were leaving for NH, we went over and bottled a batch of premium red, which will age a full 10 months before anybody gets ahold of it.
Dining: We returned to West restaurant which remains excellent, and tried out the Parkside restaurant, also fantastic.
Sailing & Touring: The Wine Friends (also the gardening friends, the barbequing friends, aka "the friends we met in south India) took us out on their boat twice. One trip was over to Nanaimo, the other involved their sailing/motoring up to Lund while we took two ferries (100 miles total, about 7 hours driving + ferries) and joined them up there.