J L

I love their ice wine. You need to try their ice wine =)

Hmm… This is on the other side of downtown from where I work, but it’s do-able.

Cupcakes1116 Denman Street,
Vancouver, BC V6G 2M8
(604) 974-1302

I may not be able to get to Milan soon enough to see L’Europa Riconosciuta, but I can dream. And I’m sure that there will be something fantastic going on whenever I can make my way to Italy.

Antonio Salieri is a great composer in his own right and deserves to be known for more than just “Mozart’s jealous villain antagonist”... which he really wasn’t. -eyeroll-

I have the Puzz-3D and my parents have a framed photograph hanging over the upstairs fireplace just entitled “Castle in the Clouds”. =)

We went white water rafting… well, my friends went rafting, I got a massage at the REO Rafting Resort at Nahatlatch. =)

... is a small town about an hour south of Edmonton. I was there for the wedding of a pair of very good friends. They got married near her parents’ farm and where she grew up.

There are entire sovereign nations in Europe that are smaller than these farms. There’s just a little bit of elbow space here =) The countryside has a calm, quiet and simple life appeal. The people are very devoutly religious, but there’s a sweet, wholesomeness to them. I’m very much a City Mouse, so it was new and different (in a good way =) to me.

Before I left, my friend gave me this:

That’s her full mailing address at the farm. XD

I find rural Albertans veryvery friendly and veryvery explainie. If you ask for directions, they’ll tell you more or less what you need. Then they’ll give you three other alternative routes, eulogizing the pros/cons of each, the weather conditions, road conditions, times of the day, other conditions you should consider for each route. Then, they’ll tell you a story of their cow, aptly named PeanutButter-Chocolate, who had the sweetest pair of eyes. It is a well-known fact that cows have beautiful eyes.

They can be a little verbose, but they’re very sweet folks. =) If you ask about something, be ready to hunker down for a while. I can totally see where my friend gets it from. =)

I was born in Guangzhou. When I was a little girl, my father used to bring me to Sha-Mian every evening after dinner… we lived very closeby and could walk. It’s no more than a few minutes walk from the White Swan Hotel and the Victory Hotel.

There was a big cannon in the park that’s still there (at least, it was still there when I went back in 1998). It was once used to defend against the Alliance of Eight Nations that invaded China in the Opium War of 1839-1842. I used to ask to sit on top of the cannons every time and, every time, I’d get my hands all dirty holding on to it. =)

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

A very lovely quiet spot, away from it all and yet, still not too far.

Catch an Aquabus (False Creek Ferries) from Granville Island and go across to Yaletown. Lots of places to eat from cheapest to some of the most expensive in Vancouver and cool stores to see =)

I’ll try to keep a lid on my bias =D Things that I recommend visiting/seeing while you’re here:

• University of British Columbia (Nitobe Gardens or just wander around campus =)
• Dr. Sun Yat-sen Chinese Gardens
• Granville Island
• Yaletown, Vancouver
• Stanley Park seawall
• Denman Street/1st Beach area
• Gastown
• ... and there are tons of shopping malls if you need your mall fix too =)