The music of Silence

the most beautiful sound on earth... absolute silence and yet, you hear music
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Saturday, September 16, 2023

Vancouver and Galiano island 2023

A little bit of Vancouver and more of Vancouver gulf island
Time to visit Bob and Meg in Galiano!
https://www.hellobc.com/places-to-go/gulf-islands/
Bob, Meg, Koa with us
Our morning coffee view from their house
unidentified location as they all look so pretty
As we have to transit via Vancouver to get to their place, we decide to do a day trip in Vancouver and took a food tour and visit the city. Vancouver is really pretty but the hotels are really pricy before October. I got Auberge hotel for a reasonable price and the room is quite nice
Auberge Hotel
We explored the city slightly when we got in at 10pm and got a late snack pizza. 
The next morning we got up and went to Breka and got a coffee
Breka Bakery
We took a stroll along the Seawall till we got to the Lost Lake in Stanley Park. 

The weather is nice and the city is quite pretty.
The lost lake in Stanley Park

Gastown is quite pretty in Vancouver even though the beginnings are not quite savoury. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastown#:~:text=Named%20after%20John%20Deighton%2C%20Gastown,open%20the%20area's%20first%20saloon.
The Gastown clock is quite entertaining and we managed to film the entire song. They add 1/4 to the song every 15 mins. And apparently the clock is not powered by the steam engine, only the sound pipes. and the clock is highly inaccurate =) 
The steam clock
Steam clock innards
At 11am, we made our way to Dominion building and met up with the food tour to go around Gastown
First stop is Meat and Bread. We tried their Porchetta sandwich. Overnight Slow cooked pork, home made bread, crackling on the top, salsa verde in the sandwich with homemade mustard  on the side. Easily one of the best sandwich I had in my life. I saw their roast beef and thinking the Reuben should be good too..next time! 

Meat and Bread 
2nd stop is Pure Bread bakery. We got their Ooey Gooey cake to go for dessert after the tour. Everything look so good that we came back and got 4 other pastries with us to visit Meg and Bob and enjoyed them for our breakfast over the next 2 days. This place easily beats hands down any bakery place in San Diego. 

Pure bread Bakery
3rd stop is a all-vegetarian place call Meet. We had soy chicken poutine and tempura cauliflower with chilli sauce. Both items are really good and they have a miso-gravy butter sauce that is really yummy. 

Meet

4th stop we visited the shoe maker John Fluevog. Apparently their design house is right there at Gastown. Not quite my style but i can see why it would be popular. 
John Fluvog Shoes
Next stop is PourHouse (famous for cocktail)where we had a scotch egg and tried the gimlet. It's a good cocktail with gin that I need to recreate. The scotch egg is very well executed with jammy yolk
The last stop for the tour is at Miku. The owner first introduced the torchedstyle sushi and it's quite tasty. We tried their special which has fresh salmon, special sauce and it's easily the best dish in the tour, even though it's so simple.  https://mikurestaurant.com/
Miku

After the food tour, we gathered up our stuff and head to the sea plane terminal SeaAir to Montague Harbour. It's the first time I took a plane that's smaller than a shed =p
It's funny that the safely instructions is how to use your personal flotation device and you are given some ear plugs before you fly as it's so loud. 
It's also highly entertaining/unnerving when the pilot jump out of the plane to tie the plane up at Montague as shown in the video (er, we lost the pilot while the plane is still moving????)
Seaplane with Seair
The views are magical in this part of Canada 
View from the plane

View of Galiano Island with a lone house

Arriving at Montague Harbour, this part of Canada is truly just beautiful. 
Did someone order boats and water?
Montague Harbour
we made it!

Galiano has 1500 year round residents and 3000 total people during tourist visits. So it's not a small place but not huge either. 

We went for a hike at the campground on the first day morning. 
 Galiano Provincial Marine Park


Followed by a short sail using the new spinnaker on Max their small dinghy

Bob and Meg's boat

Leisurely sail on Max (didn't go very far)
After all the exertion, we did a tapas style dinner with local shrimp and stuffed mushroom that's quite yummy. 
Tapas style dinner
The next day we took their boat to Wallace Island and did a picnic lunch followed by a short hike. 
Again, postcard views everywhere.. 
Tiny Marina at Wallace Island

Wallace Island

It turns out that Wallace Island was abandoned after initially being used as a holiday home by David Conoverhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Island_Marine_Provincial_Park
What's interesting is the little shed where everyone left a plaque for their boat name.
Cabins in Wallace Island


I'm here! and the water is cold even by just dipping my feet!
After getting back to Galiano, we had margarita at Crane and Robin which is the small deli on the harbour. The place is fairly pricy for what we got, but that's to be expected for any Marina restaurant
Crane and Robin

Dinner we went to Woodstone Manor that has a great restaurant. They serve  top notch quality ingredient where we split family style for a Cioppino, Ribeye from Aberta and a thick pork chop, followed by dessert. Again, Yum! 
Woodstone manor
Cioppino, Ribeye, Porkchop, Italian Montepulciano wine, cheese cake and choc cup

The next morning we went to a artist farmers market in Galiano before heading to the Hummingbird Pub for lunch. Got some really cool handmade stuff at the market and got my retail therapy =) 
And the fish and chip reminds me of good England fish and chips with fresh cod and light batter. 
Meg showed me a video of the school bus that they use to ferry folks from the harbour to the pub and it's hilarious. He plays percussion in the bus, everyone joins in.. quite the entertainment
https://globalnews.ca/video/4346478/your-canada-galiano-island-bus-driver-gives-vacationers-more-than-just-a-drive-to-the-pub
Hummingbird pub
After lunch, we gathered our stuff and start our journey home, with a ferry ride across the channel. The BC ferry is quite efficient. Living in Singapore, the whole concept of driving your car on a boat is foreign and it's really quite interesting to get off the ferry in front of 20 cars parked behind us. We did had a scare where the ferry had to restart everything due to a technical problem and almost doubled our ferry time from almost 1 hour to 1 hour 30 mins. The captain coming on the intercom going "folks, we had a slight issue and had to drift around the channel at a safe spot" was not very reassuring.  Was getting worried we might lose our flight and thankfully we didn't as the delay was not too bad. 
BC Ferry

Dinner at an airport lounge
Funny things seen in Canada

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