Day 2: Good Food and GREAT Entertainment!

First things first...the bed in this place is AMAZING! It really makes me miss the bed that I had in my apartment...sigh. This bed is like sleeping on a cloud, and the comforter just holds you tight and lulls you to sleep. To be honest, I can't wait to crawl back into bed tonight!!! But let's get on with what happened today!

I always say how lucky I truly am. I am leading a great life right now. Sure it has it's ups and downs, as does any marriage...or in my case corporation as defined by the state of Washington... ;-). But I digress. But because of my amazing husband I'm able to go places and see things that I was never able to before. So for that alone I am thankful for having him in my life. We've had such a wonderful, and much needed, trip to Vancouver, Japanada. Today we lounged in bed until around 8 AM and then got ready and headed out to get breakfast. We stopped at this little place on Burrard St that we thought was a little french cafe. WRONG! That place was a total fail. But I ate my blueberry muffin and Michael wolfed down his fruit tart as we headed down the road.

We made our way back to the Home Sense store because I really wanted to get a cookbook that I saw there yesterday, it's called "Bought, Borrowed & Stolen: Recipes & Knives From a Traveling Chef." I can't wait to dive into this book and see what recipes and stories are hidden amongst it's pages! These are the little finds that I just love to come across! :)

While we were sitting in our room before heading out for breakfast, Michael was thumbing through the Vancouver guide book and made the comment, "Too bad we won't be here on May 3rd! It's the closing night of Aida at the Vancouver Opera." I'd seen Aida once before, but watched it on the computer from the Metropolitan Opera's website. It's an amazing opera by Verdi that has stunning staging and is just a great story. I was a bit bummed that we wouldn't be here for it, but I was like, well we can watch it online. So we headed out for our day.

While walking to get lunch I noticed a city bus go by with the ad for Aida on it and it gave the dates. And a light bulb went off in my head! Um...maybe they have other performances! So we decided that we'd check when we got back to the room where we had access to wireless. But until then it was time for lunch so we headed to the corner of Burrard and West Hastings in downtown to find the Fresh, Local, Wild food truck that was also featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. We waited a few minutes for it to open and we placed our orders. I ordered the Beef Kabob Burger and Michael had the Local Seafood Chowder Putine. Putine is normally fries with gravy on top of it, but the chef of this food truck decided to make a seafood chowder and use that. Michael seemed to like it! It had chunks of salmon, cod, mussels and clams running throughout it. My burger was okay, but I honestly longed for another Porchetta sandwich from Meat & Bread! *sigh* At the food truck we got the only table, which happens to be at the back of the trailer and luckily it was enclosed and out of the wind. All in all, it was a good meal...but we both decided that we'd go back to Meat & Bread if we had the chance.

The view from our table :)

Fresh, Local, Wild Food Truck

After we had our lunch we headed back to the hotel so we could check out the dates for Aida. Much to our delight they had a performance tonight! So we went on the search for some tickets. After some drama with their website, we managed to score ourselves two tickets in the balcony. This is why I love vacationing with Michael, we just go with the flow and end up finding things to do like this that make our trips worth while! :)

After booking our tickets we set out to do some clothes shopping. Michael found some nice slacks and I had the jarring reminder that I'm not as skinny as I think I am! Damn clothes made for asians...but I digress. While we were walking around we decided to head back towards Meat & Bread... :) We decided that we'd get two sandwiches each, one to eat for dinner and one to have post opera. We walked in and ordered two of the Porchetta sandwiches and two of the Veal Breast sandwiches. Hands down, the Porchetta is the best sandwich they had on their menu the last two days! The pork with the herbs and the cracklin' was AMAZING! I almost wish that I'd have gotten two Porchettas today! :)

After we made the long walk back to our hotel we decided to take a little nap, and we settled back into our lovely little cloud and passed out for an hour and a half! I tell you what, this bed is a DREAM! I wasn't in that bed for more than a minute before I konked right out! :) This sleep has been on my to do list for a long time! :) I wish I could figure out how to sneak this mattress out!

Well, so here I am now, just finished my Veal Breast sandwich and a glass of wine. I'm sad that our little vacation is coming to an end...but I'm happy that we were able to get tickets to Aida. Michael said that it is one of his "top 3" operas...that's how much he loved it! :) All in all this short vacation was MUCH needed and really was a winner in my book! :) These short get aways are awesome, and I look forward to our upcoming trip to Montana at the end of this month, it'll be a nice drive and nice spending time with family! :) Oh one last thing...I was perusing the pictures from The Dog Spot's facebook page and found a picture of our boys...**sigh** I miss them but I'm so happy they love it there!

Cooper is just happy and Puck is probably just wanting food! :)