places I've been lately, things I've been seeing

 

homecoming

Images from the Nova Scotia Archives.

seattle

Jeff and I spent the weekend in Seattle. We travelled light. I left my camera at home and relied on my phone alone to capture a few things along the way. We visited Bainbridge Island for the first time (an easy and cheap ferry ride from Pier 52). We ate some amazing food, especially the dinner we had at Revel, and we lamented Vancouver's lack of little neighbourhood bars (because in Seattle they are EVERYWHERE and dogs are allowed to hang out in them). It was a good weekend, marred only by horrible weather on Saturday and the fact that I absent-mindedly left one of my bags in the hotel. Perhaps in the next couple of days I'll share a few more photos from our trip here. I think the iPhone 4S does a pretty decent job on the fly.

I know posts have been few and far between here lately. Chalk it up to winter and my constant busy-ness. Full-time work...who knew it would take up so much TIME?!? I've been at my current job for just under a year now (since graduation last spring) and am just starting to get the hang of this whole work/life balance thing. How do you keep up with life outside of work? What do you do on your days off?

shelburne farms, vermont

In the light of day, the fire pit that you sit around at American Flatbread still looks pretty great. And the farm cats are cute, too. After we had breakfast at the Lareau Farm Inn (cottage cheese pancakes with lemon honey butter) we drove to Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vermont. From what I could tell, Shelburne Farms is famous for it's cheese (I loved the cheddar spread) and the huge property is laced with beautiful walking trails. Camilla tells me that this is and always was a hobby farm, which perhaps partly explains the amazing barn that is now home to a small cadre of pettin' animals: goats, donkeys, and fancy chickens, included. My personal favourite was this badger-faced goat. If you can swing a visit to this farm I highly recommend you go. It is ridiculously beautiful and the barn itself is so much bigger and grander than these pictures can convey. It made me realize that there is this whole part of this continent that I know very little about and that has a rich history and amazing architectural traditions. I definitely want to spend more time exploring New England soon!

I'm already looking forward to my next trip, which will likely be back home to Calgary for Christmas. Jeff and I have a busy month ahead of us because we're moving (again!) and so I'm glad we took this time to chill out with friends and goats between the craziness of getting married and the annoyance of moving. Our move will be worth it, though! Lots more space and even a fireplace to call our own! Do you have any fall or winter vacations planned?

vermont vacation

While we were out east, Jeff, Camilla, Marigold and I seized the opportunity to head to Vermont for an overnighter. I've been to Vermont twice before, once with my family when I was pretty young and once before with Camilla on an adventure of unmatched proportions in an early-millenium February snowstorm. I feel like since those visits both Vermont and I have changed.

First off, I thought that the Pacific Northwest was food crazy. Wow! Vermont shows that us West Coasters don't even know about food crazy. Or maybe it's another kind of crazy. How can fancy bakeries survive in small places where the town itself appears to be for sale? The word "local" is omnipresent and, to my mind, even has a bit of a sinister ring in Vermont. Like, local or else... Okay, okay, I'll eat the undeniably delicious local honey butter on my local cottage cheese pancakes with locally roasted coffee and locally preserved preserves in this room filled with, well, non-locals. We hit up Vergennes Laundry, a cider mill (where I ate three apple cider doughnuts!!!) and had dinner at American Flatbread in Waitsfield. While waiting for your table you can take your drinks outside and sit around a bonfire with other guests. Such a great idea for a rustic restaurant! And the pizza is much more than great. It is amazing. The one pictured above (featuring Camilla's "pizza claw" whizzing through the frame) is covered in sharp cheddar, apple cider glazed butternut squash, beets, and more. And yes, the toppings are all local.

Since Jeff and I won't be back in Vermont anytime soon we are so happy that we scheduled so many great stops. Thank you, Camilla, for organizing it all! We can't imagine a better place to spend time with friends over delicious food in the autumn. And for all my jokes about local, the focus on local production really did make this a special visit and I loved seeing the pride that Vermont's residents have in their beautiful part of the world. The effort they put into making the most delicious things I've eaten in a while is really impressive and I will be dreaming of some of these places for months to come, I'm sure. 

from montreal

A few pictures of some of my favourite parts of our Montreal visit: amazing coffee, great friends, good shoes, and Wu Tang Bixis bringing da ruckus! Oh, we did eat a million delicious things. Thanks to Marigold, Jesse and Camilla for showing us around the city! Pictures of our Vermont trip and a little DIY tutorial to come!

back from montreal

Hello hello! It's been a while. I'm back now from a super fun one week vacation in Montreal and an overnighter in Vermont! New England and the east of this country is kind of paradise this time of year and I have lots of great photos to share once I do some editing. The one above I took from my Bixi (the inexpensive, convenient bike share program in Montreal) in Parc Lafontaine. In the meantime, let's take a look at my autumn to-do list. It's coming along nicely:

1. Go camping on the coast DONE

2. Visit a pumpkin patch (and conquer a corn maze while I'm there)

3. Bake a pie from scratch

4. Go apple picking

5. Visit friends in a different city DONE

6. Have a Thanksgiving feast DONE x 2!

7. Revamp the blog for a new season DONE

8. Knit something (I'm thinking chunky yarn and big needles) DONE

9. Go for a forest hike on the North Shore

10. Take photos with a new camera

11. Clean up the garden one more time

12. Walk home from work (it's a pretty long walk)

13. Ride the Stanley Park Halloween Ghost Train (Ivy and Jamie, I'm going to miss you guys this year!) DONE with Laura, Jeff, and Mike

14. Check out the Parade of Lost Souls (Halloween seems to be Vancouver's favourite holiday) - October 28


What did you get up to this past week?


Here's one of the songs that was part of our soundtrack during this trip. Enjoy!

jill's rad summer: the canadian arctic

Remember a few weeks ago when we visited Africa with my friend Carrah? Well, this last of the Rad Summer guest posts is pretty much the exact opposite of that in every way. Except that it, too, is about a place that many of us dream of visiting and may not have the chance to visit any time soon. And there are some amazing animals hanging out in these photos, too. Oh, and both posts include incredible photos!

I’m excited to write about my rad summer, because it ranked up there in the top few raddest summers ever. In fact, it just might take the top spot, as it involved an adventure of the kind that I always wished for but never really thought I would get to actually embark on.

the Amundsen and icebergs, Pond Inlet

my favourite poster from the ship -- so retro!

I am a geography student in Calgary, interested in the frozen parts of earth and how they interact with/influence climate and climate change. I got the opportunity to go and work with a consortium of scientists studying different aspects of climate change in the Canadian Arctic on board a Canadian Coast Guard ship, the CCGS Amundsen.  For a month, I lived aboard the ship with 40 odd scientists and another 40-ish crewmembers while we travelled up the east coast of Canada from Quebec City, to ultimately journey through the southern route of the storied Northwest Passage.

coast guard hauling the Rosette on board so we can test water 

My job was to test seawater for carbon dioxide concentrations. This is the instrument that took water samples from different depths in the ocean, called a Rosette.

From Quebec City, we sailed up the St Lawrence Seaway and then hit the open ocean off the east coast of Labrador, where I both saw humpback whales and experienced my first (and only, thankfully) bought of seasickness (tip: don’t try to do anything in 6 meter seas. The only way to avoid throwing up is by lying face down in your bunk).  

stormy seas! 

Off the coast of Baffin Island, we crossed the Arctic Circle. It is a really big deal to cross the Arctic Circle by ship and it is customary to initiate those who cross (only going north to south counts) into Neptune’s circle. I am forbidden by the law of the sea to give any more details, but let’s just say at one point I was doing jumping jacks outside at 4 in the morning while being sprayed with a fire hose of seawater….as I said, very serious!. The sun never really properly set north of the Arctic Circle at that time of year, so it was very hard to get to sleep at a reasonable time. The scenery was so amazing: I saw huge valley glaciers tumbling into the sea, crazy icebergs and even a few pieces of the Petermann Ice Island, which broke off Greenland in 2010.

Petermann Ice island

In the middle of my time aboard the ship, there was to be a small conference on the ship, so 11 scientists (myself included) left the ship for 5 days to free up some bunk space. We were flown to Resolute Bay, a tiny, predominantly Inuit, community of about 240 people on Cornwallis Island, at 74°N latitude. We spent the next five days at a research station, exploring, reading, watching movies and watching out for polar bears. Many people in Resolute still depend on traditional foods to supplement the very expensive (and in the case of produce, very limp) food flown in to the community weekly, so we saw lots of evidence of seal and whale hunting. One day, we went to a local woman’s house to see the skins she had prepared from animals hunted by her husband, including Muskox and Caribou (so soft!).

Finally, in the first few days of August, back on the ship, we sailed into sea ice, which I was very very excited about. The Amundsen is an icebreaker, so it is built to be able to travel through sea ice; I spent many hours on the front deck watching sea ice break under the bow as we plowed along. Ice breaking makes an ungodly sound like mermaids screaming their heads off or something, so that was a big disconcerting at first, but I soon learned to sleep like a baby through all the noise.

I also saw my first polar bear, just wandering around sea ice, hunting for seals. It was amazing to see a polar bear in the wild. My hands were all shaky and I was so excited. The captain stopped the ship and everyone on board just watched the bear for about an hour (apparently, seeing polar bears really never gets old. Awesome.).

My trip to the north was an eye opener in terms of appreciating just how big Canada is and gaining more of a connection to the landscape, people and climate of the north. The north really got into my bones, I think, and I am both excited to hopefully return in the future, as well as a little sad to know that the arctic is changing and may not look the same when next I see it.

So, that was the raddest part of my rad summer. Thank you, Sarah, for inviting me to do this post! 

Not only did Jill put together this amazing post for my blog, she is also the brilliant friend who made all of the rosemary peach jam that we gave out as favours at our wedding. Now that's a best friend! Don't you all kinda feel like you went on an adventure just reading about how Jill spent some of her summer? Thank you, Jill!!! Now move to Vancouver already!

There you have it, the end of Rad Summer 2011. We've been to Portland, Oregon, Pittsburgh, Osoyoos, British Columbia, Vancouver Island, Vacation Island, California, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Seattle, Reykjavik, Iceland, El Paso, Texas, Calgary, Alberta, and now the Canadian Arctic. Rad, dudes. You go to some incredible places. Thanks for kind of taking me with you! I'll be doing this series again, so consider sharing your adventures here next year. Now, sorry, it's official. Summer is over.

our engagement

Jeff and I spent part of the summer of 2009 in Europe, first travelling with friends, and then I stayed longer in the Netherlands to do a five week urban design studio with the University of British Columbia. Was it the best school experience of my life? Yes, I would have to say so, but more on that some other time perhaps. Was it the best trip Jeff and I have ever been on? Definitely.

We began our trip in London, staying there for just a couple of days before heading to Barcelona with our friends Carrah and Jamie. We rented an apartment in Barcelona and had the most amazing five days in that city. From there, we briefly went our separate ways and Jeff and I headed to Paris.

Neither of us had ever been to Paris before and we stayed at two really cute, beyond-tiny hotels and visited all of the Paris tourist traps and places slightly more off the beaten track, like the cemetery that Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf are buried in (among the other famous people buried there). Above is the cat that lived on Edith Piaf's grave. It had gum stuck in its tail and it scratched me. I was worried I would get bubonic plague as a result of our encounter. We walked for millions of kilometres a day, looked at art until our eyes hurt, and ate Nutella until we couldn't anymore (didn't know that was possible until then...). Oh, we also tried to find vegetarian food in Paris, which is pretty tough, and ended up eating the best falafels ever and a lot of pizza. Perfect.

Then, one night back in our hotel, after being together for almost eight years, Jeff proposed to me with the most beautiful Karen Konzuk engagement ring. And I said yes. Below is the view we had that night. Any of you who know us know that a romantic Paris engagement doesn't sound much like a story that we'd have to tell, let alone one that we would tell if we did have that story in our back pocket. But that is our engagement story, and here I am telling it just a few days before our wedding. It should also be known Jeff just walked into the room and told me that we should learn to speak French fluently and move to Paris.

After we left Paris we spent a couple of days in a Dutch town on the North Sea coast. Our hotel room was gigantic by Parisian standards, with its own walk-out balcony and a view of the German tourists flocking into the town from the train station. We spent an evening on a freezing cold beach and then continued on to Amsterdam.

The church clocks in Zandvoort sounded like this. We felt like we were living in a music box full of vowels (have you ever seen a Dutch street sign) and Germans. It was awesome.




We listened to this song a lot and its recently come back on our summer playlist: