Girls' Trip to Vancouver Part III

We slept in until 9 am and woke up to a golden lit room with bright sunshine streaming through the window.  It was sunny with vacation-style blue sky.  I wanted to jump out the bed and get moving, but I was feeling the toll from the night of eating spree.  I felt sick.  I felt like throwing up.  In my 40 years of eating adventures, I have never woke up to this sort of discomfort.  Really??  We planned to eat awesome Dim Sims from a popular Chinese restaurant in town, but the thought of stuffing ourselves again only gave me nausea.  "What a shame", I thought since I was looking forward to eating the authentic Dim Sims everyone's talking about.  Jen comforted me by saying, "Gotta leave a reason to come back."  I agreed and dragged myself to shower.

We decided to go check out Granville Island's public market.  I read about it in numerous tourist books and wanted to see it myself.  We got lost a bit trying to land ourselves in the tiny island between downtown Vancouver and southern city of Richmond.  I was looking up the directions while Jen drove and that made me feel even sicker.  I am the type who can never read in a moving car.  I was just so hoping I won't throw up in Jen's car, three hours away from home.  That would be a hard one to forget, either a laughing stock or turning point in our friendship.  I was holding on to my will power and finally we arrived to the island.  There were a lot of people visiting the market since it was Sunday and gorgeous.  I forgot about feeling sick and hopped out to explore the quaint sights I was seeing.

I've been to markets in different cities, but this one was quite unique.  It was a cross between San Francisco's Pier 39, Carmel's artsy downtown, and Sydney's Paddy Market.  The main building housed produce stands, gourmet food vendors, and art vendors.  It stimulated my senses and I took many pictures of the interior.  We decided to grab a brunch there and Jen settled on gourmet sausage and I ordered smoked salmon bagel sandwich.   We went outside to eat and something shocking happened to Jen.  A big shadow swooped from behind her and her beautiful sausage was gone in an instance!   It happened so fast, we just stood there in dismay for a few seconds to make sense of the vanished sausage.  In a short distance, a seagull was dangling the prey aka Jen's sausage from its beak trying to fend off the other birds trying to steal it.  What a sneaky bugger!  We would have chased the bird off if there weren't hundreds of people around.

We walked around the cute shops and interesting art galleries and enjoyed the peaceful time window shopping at our will.  Once upon a time, Mike and I enjoyed lazy weekend like this visiting markets in Sydney and in the Bay Area.  Since we didn't pace ourselves again on the first day, we were pretty tired by mid afternoon.  The only place we needed to go before heading back to reality was buying some Canada only items at a grocery store.  We stopped at Safeway in Richmond and bought some Ketchup Chips.  Jen said they are strangely addictive and you cannot find them anywhere but Canada.  I got two bags and tried it immediately in the car.  It was tangy and sweet.  I didn't feel anything special about it the, however I am ashamed to say I ate those two bags by myself in three days.  I seriously need to get my act together!! 

We drove down to the cloudy sky of Puget Sound still chatting away like energizer bunny.  A trip with a good friend is the best remedy for stress.  Although we ate ourselves sick, we still had the best time being free from the family responsibility and exploring the beautiful city.  Thanks Jen for driving and putting up with my crazy and unrealistic proposal for eating five times in a half day.  We'll make sure next time that 1) we won't overdo on walking (again), and 2) we won't stuff ourselves till we feel sick.  We should be able to do that, shouldn't we!?