Markus’ Blog

Yum! And yes, that’s tours as in “more than one”.

It’s great times when upcoming vacations are getting close enough to book cool stuff to do. We are already practiced winery visitors (see the Napa adventure, the Victoria adventure, as well as the Niagara adventure). It’s still fun doing it, though (one might think we are big lushes :-D), especially in Canada and even more so in BC, where we can bring home as much wine as we please (not a measly two bottles per person you get to bring with you from the US).

This time around, my parents will come along, too. It’ll be their first time in the Okanagan, which prompted this whole trip-idea to begin with. Since my parents and I come from a wine growing region back in Austria (the region is officially know as the Weinviertel — and we have tons of Heurigen there), they should get some good times out of these tours.

We’ll be doing the Signature Wine Tour by Discover Okanagan Tours and the Nothern Bench Winery Tour by Wildflower Trails & Wine Tours.

Happy September 4 and 5 to us!

Yep, a week from now, our condo on Fraser Street will be pretty empty. The movers are scheduled to come at 9am next Saturday. And they’ll take everything that’s still left (other than our clothes) and take it to our storage locker. We’ve already taken quite a bit of stuff ourselves, but we’ll have to get a bigger locker to fit our furniture. Hopefully they’ll have a 10×10 locker available in the same building that we are in now. It wouldn’t be too much fun having to lug everything across their driveway / yard into the other building. We shall see. In fact, we should find out today, if they do or not.

Looks like we’ll be having an unplanned brunch out, today, before lugging around more boxes. I worked hard to convince my dear wife to go to Crave for brunch. Gotta go places while we still live close to them. — Besides, it wasn’t that difficult at all to put my plan into action.

I am sitting at a table at my parent’s place writing this post (typing on a German keyboard no less — leads to many wrong characters ;-)).

Happy New Year everybody!

Today was another day meeting with family — and saying good bye already. It’s almost time to head towards London already. It was a fun afternoon that went on for way longer than originally thought. My Grandma had tons and tons and tons of food — as per normal. And the most asked question there is “Do you want something to eat? To drink, maybe?” And if it’s not my Grandma asking, it’s my Aunt.

Brigette’s most used phrase these days is “Nein danke.” LOL

Tomorrow will be a shopping day in Vienna, on Thursday we’ll visit some exhibits and we’ll see if we can find some other ways of experiencing Vienna on our last day. Friday morning we’ll leave for London.

It’s Christmas Eve, the day we traditionally give and open presents in Austria. We’ll be doing a sort of culturally merged Christmas this year: opening presents the evening of the 24th and doing our stockings the morning of the 25th. My parents have had stockings of their own for two years now (don’t think they have put them to use yet ;-)), after I sent them stockings as one of my Christmas gifts two years ago.

Tomorrow (on the 25th) is also the time for the “big” traditional family get-together at my Grandma’s place. My auntie Irene, uncle Leopold and my cousins Günter and Marion as well as ourselves will show up at my Grandma’s place for yummy, yummy lunch (roast pork with bread dumplings) — to die for and soooooooo unhealthy lololol.

There’ll be a few more presents to open there, as well.

My mom’s sister, Hermi, has also invited us over for a short visit. We’ll be going there some time in the afternoon.

It’ll be a long day, but it should be fun. And that’ll be it for Christmas 2007.

We didn’t have any major plans for this long weekend, certainly no travel plans of any kind. And I have to say it turned out really well.

Saturday

We went grocery shopping to Granville Island Market. While the number of cars trying to get on the island was stunning (well, just regular Saturday traffic, really), it turned out to be a nice experience. After buying our food, we moved the car from the one hour spot we had been able to secure to a three hour spot and wandered around a bit. We looked at artsy and crafty stuff — and I got lucky at Granville Island Brewing. They still had their Oktoberfest special beer, and I immediately bought three bottles. lol

Sunday

We went downtown to the Circle Craft Fair, one of the biggest if not the biggest pre-Christmas craft fair in the Vancouver area. It was busy, but we saw lots of nice stuff. After we’ve had enough, we went for coffee and hot chocolate to rest our tired feet, before heading for the bus stop.

As we were standing there, waiting for the bus, directly across from Steamworks, I said: “Mmmm. Burger and beer. I’d so like to go there for dinner.” It took about 10 seconds from that moment for us to decide to do just that: go there and have dinner.

Since we couldn’t order steak till 5pm, we ordered some yummy appies (tandoori chicken skewers and edamame) to tide us over the 30 minutes till Brigette’s steak would arrive. I decided to have one of their pizzas instead of a burger.

Needless to say food and beer were yummy and we went home satisfied and happy — and just over an hour later than we would have otherwise.

Monday

Not too much happened on Monday. Some cleaning, some studying (for Brigette), taking a little walk in the afternoon (for me). It was still a good end to a good long weekend.

Labour Day long weekend is around the corner. Well, it’s basically here already (Friday evening). Yay for long weekends and yay for road trips.

Victoria, here we come.

We’ll celebrate the beginning of the weekend with some nice Japanese food (this is just the beginning of a weekend full of good food, I am hoping). Late morning tomorrow, we’ll leave for the Tsawwassen ferry terminal and over to the Island we go.

We are planning on relaxing, having a good time, exploring the Greater Victoria area, have some fish & chips at Barb’s Place and, finally, see the Titanic exhibition and documentary. — Did I mention that we’ll have lots of good food? lol

Stay tuned, pictures will be forthcoming. There also might be posts from the Island if we come across an Internet cafe and take the time to sit down and post.

Yesterday’s dinner was indeed a very lovely, memorable experience. This is us before getting on the plane:

And here’s an aerial shot of our lovely city:

There are more pictures in my photo gallery.

I didn’t take a picture of the food, but it was quite yummy. I had a big bowl of clam chowder followed by BBQed ribs and chicken. I had a baked potato with sour cream, bacon and cheese and some yummy salad on the side. For dessert we were served my all-time favorite: cheese cake. Unfortunately, I was getting too full to finish it. — And that’s despite my 2^nd stomach that’s reserved just for desserts. lololol I found it all quite tasty.

Brigette had the same appetizer and the same dessert. However, she opted for salmon — prepared in the kitchen, as opposed to my meal from the out-door grill. We both found her salmon to be a little bland.

After the meal we enjoyed some nice conversation with two British couples who were doing the same float plane + dinner + ferry + limo package that we had signed up for. Apparently, both couples travel quite a bit.

The trip back on the ferry was short, and the limo ride a classy ending to a lovely evening.

Originally we had planned to go to The Fish House in Stanley Park for my birthday dinner tonight. However, my lovely wife thought of something way more special. She is going to take us — or rather have us taken — to Doc Morgan’s Seaside Restaurant on Bowen Island. And we’re not just going there by some “ordinary means” like a boat, no, we’re going to fly there by float plane. We’ll have a lovely dinner and then we’ll go back by ferry and limo.

How nice and lovely does that sound? Thanks so much, schveetie.

Roast chicken with potatoes, stuffing and brussel sprouts. White wine. Pumpkin pie for dessert. Yummies.

Our Thanksgiving dinner this year consisted of said bird, stuffed with onions, garlic, lemon, rosmary and thyme. It went into the oven at about 3pm this afternoon and made our new appartment smell all yummy. It tasted equally as yummy.

We also opened the first bottle of two German Rieslings that we got as a wedding gift. Very tasty. Thanks, Drew.

On top of everything else, we used our new dining room set for the first time. Having dinner at a real table, no hunching over to eat off of a coffee table, was a real “hey we’re grown ups now” experience.

PS: No, we don’t have Thanksgiving in Austria. Not like that, anyways. It’s a religious thing there. Austria (mostly Catholic) is a little different from Germany (mostly Protestant), but you get the idea when you read the article from the German embassy.