Opera meets Windows

Oh Canada! Our neighbors up north provided us with lovely weather during our stay in their country. It was gorgeous! Cold, but gorgeous. We arrived early but were able to check-in, park the car, and hit the streets. Or more specifically, Robson Street. We walked up, we walked down, and along the way we went into every shoe shop available. Anya was on a mission to find boots. A mission that, I'm sad to say, was not successful. We took the ferry to Granville Island, had some dirty and smoky martinis at The Cat's Meow (Rick drank a beer) and walked back to our hotel where we changed for dinner. We met my friend Jessica for dinner Friday night at CinCin, a restaurant that was taking part of Dine Out Vancouver. The food was solidly good but the restaurant was busy and our waiter was, well not great, but he was somewhat entertaining - knocking over glasses, bringing menus when we'd already ordered, those kinds of things. Then we returned to the hotel and played 500. I made one spectacularly bad move when I was holding the joker and both bowers that somehow cost us the game - damn it!- but we, meaning Rick, Anya, and I since Darr is already an experienced 500 player, are definitely improving. And hey, Rick and Anya both learned to shuffle (sort of), which did seem to weaken Rick's gravitational pull on the joker. Saturday we all slept in, left the hotel late, grabbed breakfast at La Bretagne, a fantastic creperie just off Robson, and then walked over to and around Stanley Park. It was a leisurely stroll on a cold, crisp day. Our off-trail portion of the walk led us to a rather rambunctious food-seeking black squirrel and a bird-feeding homeless man. We ate some ramen noodles and bought a gazillion cupcakes before continuing our window shopping along Robson. Anya wanted to hit the underground mall so we parted ways with our friends for a few hours in the early evening. Darr and I went swimming and hit the hot tub at the hotel.

Later that evening we took a very short cab ride, so short the driver didn't even start the meter, to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre to watch The Magic Flute. After watching three operas I can now state with confidence that when it comes to operas I'm a traditionalist. I am annoyed by weird interpretations that have Julius Caesar wearing a suit or Papageno speaking the language of the First Nations peoples. But the best part of the opera was the incident of technical difficulties that occurred about halfway through the show. Throughout the production various images were projected onto the backdrop of the stage - we're talking large transparent images of leaves and rain and trees and stuff like that - but for whatever reason the application they were using crashed and so the control room's computer desktop was projected onto the stage including that so-often-seen "Send Report""Don't Send Report" error message. The audience was forgiving, many in our area chuckled when one guy mumbled "That's why you use a Mac." (Hee hee.) Bless them, the folks on stage kept on running with the performance.

We were hungry after the performance but apparently folks in downtown Canada don't eat after 11 p.m. because lots of the restaurants along and near Robson had closed for the night. This meant, of course, that we forced to hit Red Robin for some burgers and bottomless fries (clucks and fries for me). We ate the food, sitting amongst the teen-aged crowd, and walked home through a foggy and bitter cold night. We met for another round of card playing, switching partners. Anya, I think still upset about my blunder during the previous night's game, wanted to play with Rick, who had some strange ability to always get the joker. Well, my friends, his power was weak Saturday night and Darr and I were on fire. FIRE! We won the first round and then we proceeded to beat the pants off of them the second round, the final score as follows:
Me and Darr 800
Anya and Rick -810

Pics of our Canadian adventure will be up soon.