October 2019 Favorites

A little late in summarizing a very busy traveling October.  In the beginning of the month, we traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia for vacation, with a one-day stop in Seattle.

We visited the Pike Place Public Market in Seattle.

And visited our friend Cassi in Bellingham, WA.

We visited the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, and went on a Forbidden Vancouver tour.

We biked around the seawall of Stanley Park.

Went on a Gastronomic Gastown Tour. 

Visited Granville Island Public Market and Queen Elizabeth Park. 

Vancouver was awesome and we would totally go again!

This is definitely NOT a fave, but on our last night on vacation in Vancouver, we got a text from our next door neighbor Fred, who is also our catsitter.  A driver in a Prius HIT OUR HOUSE.  We are still dealing with insurance and contractors to fix our house, with no end in sight yet.  Total bummer!  This is what I referred to in my previous blog post about being busy dealing with this sh*t!  I will write a whole blog post about dealing with this once it’s finally over, which I don’t expect until January 2020.

We watched Veronica Mars season 4 on a one week Hulu trial.  Then we did a 5-day trial of YouTube TV and decided to cut the cord and cancel Dish Network.  Saved us $75/month and a great decision so far.  No regrets! 

On Monday 10/21 I had lunch with my friend from my old job Patsy, at Pailin Thai.  I totally forgot to take a photo.  It was GREAT to catch up with Patsy!

Todd went on a bike ride by the ocean with some friends from the San Diego Triathlon Club.

On Sunday 10/13 we met up with Sally and her kids to walk around Miramar Lake and have lunch at Chile Peppers afterwards.

On Wednesday 10/16 I had lunch with my work friend Erecca at Ponce’s Mexican.  Always so fun to chat with Erecca.  We have made it a recurring monthly date to get together.

I am going to write a post about all the awesome new dishes we’ve cooked at home lately.  One of them is this homemade from scratch pizza!  It turned out so good!

We went to dinner with our friend Cecile at Sushi Fish Attack.  It was fun to catch up with Cecile and see what she’s been up to!

I deep cleaned my Keurig for the fall season (I only drink cold brew coffee during the summer).  Then I bought the “My K-Cup” (at the recommendation from my friend Jennifer) so I could use whatever coffee I want, and it’s reusable so it’s a lot less waste!  I’ve been enjoying extra-good coffee! 

We went to Ohio to visit Todd’s family at the end of October.  We did lots of fun things, including a special tour of the Goodyear Blimp.

Making a spooky Halloween dinner.

And enjoying the fall foliage.

Noodle was extra needy because of all our traveling.  And he’s more snuggly when the weather turns cooler.

Still loving his infinity bed.

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Ohio Trip | October 2019

We spent 11 days traveling in October to Vancouver and Ohio.  We planned a trip back to Ohio at the end of October to see our new nephew Pierce around 3 months old, and before Todd’s sister Amy went back to work from maternity leave.  We happened to be in Ohio in August when Pierce was born, so this time we can see him much bigger and more interactive! 

We left on Saturday 10/26.  Our flight was delayed by two hours in Nashville, so we didn’t get into Cleveland until 10:30 PM.  We watched Ohio State beat Wisconsin on YouTube TV on the iPad at the airport.

On Sunday 10/27 we just hung out, because it was rainy there.  We got to have lunch at CoreLife Eatery.  I helped Amy & Luke with some financial planning as far as budgeting, retirement, college funds, etc.  It was very productive for being a rainy day!

On Monday 10/28 we had a very full day.  In the morning we drove to the Goodyear Blimp hangar at Wingfoot Lake, Ohio.  My father-in-law Tim is contracting at Goodyear and arranged a special tour of the hangar and the Wingfoot One Blimp for us!  It was a guided tour with one of the pilots of the blimp. 

We got to learn the history of the Goodyear Blimps, including involvement in WWII and blimps as part of the submarine fleet in the Navy.  It was quite interesting. 

This is one of the blimps that you see at sporting events!

The aerial camera is mounted in the front of the gondola, below the nose.

There’s a whole rack of AV equipment for broadcasting the images to the networks for the events.

A view of the blimp cockpit.

After the tour, we drove to the Goodyear headquarters in Akron, where we got signed in as Tim’s visitors.  They are very secretive at Goodyear HQ.  We got signed in and they put stickers on our phones to cover both the front and back cameras so we couldn’t take photos while there.  Tim treated us to the really awesome cafeteria there for lunch, and we got to visit the offices where he works. 

In the afternoon we started cooking for our Very Ghoulish Halloween Dinner!  Before the trip, Todd’s sister Amy planned for us to cook an entire dinner made of ghoulish things to celebrate Halloween.  It was all hands on deck as we prepared the extravaganza! 

I made these Crescent Mummy Dogs!

Amy made these spider cookies.

Todd got up early before the blimp tour so he could make this brain strawberry cheesecake!

My mother-in-law Sylvia made this spaghetti head with “eyeballs”.  The noodles are made of black beans and actually very good!  The texture was just right.  Not too soggy, just chewy enough.

So the idea was to make an entire human body of food items.  My brother-in-law Luke made the yummy ribs by sous vide and then grilling.  Get it, ribs?  He also grilled up some sausages to look like intestines.

We had some chicken legs (as legs), and some mashed potatoes and green beans.

Some more views of this ghoulish dinner.

It turned out so fun and also Pinterest-worthy!  Amy got to check this off her Halloween bucket list, ha ha.  The family that eats together, stays together!

We were supposed to fly back on Tuesday 10/29, but Southwest had flight cancellations and delays out of Denver, and our plane couldn’t make it to Cleveland for our flight out.  The delay would cause us to miss our connecting flight in Phoenix, so we booked flights for Wednesday at 8am to Atlanta, then San Diego.  But it happens that Tuesday was Luke’s birthday, so we got to celebrate with him with dinner out at Kingfish! 

Some other things… Noodle’s cousin Morton is a 24 lb Maine Coon!  I could barely hold him, he’s so big, LOL.

And the fall foliage is just so pretty.  Something we don’t see in SoCal.

And… looks like Sylvia & Todd have their hands full with the kids, ha ha.

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Fall Trip | Vancouver Day 5 Granville Island & Queen Elizabeth Park

On Monday 10/7, we decided to check out Granville Island, which is located southwest of downtown Vancouver, across a bridge.  It was raining, so we decided to drive. 

We were hungry and cold when we arrived, so we went into the first coffee shop we saw, GI Gelato & Coffee House, and got a latte and banana bread to share. 

It really was underwhelming, to be quite honest.  But we got warmed up and were ready to check out Granville Island Public Market! 

I had heard about Lee’s Donuts already, so of course we had to check it out!  They don’t take cash at all, so we used our credit card for a pumpkin spiced donut, LOL.  (An int’l travel tip:  see if you have a credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees, use that card on your foreign trip.  We have one and we used that card throughout our trip to Vancouver.)

Right outside the public market, you can see downtown Vancouver across the water.  It was quite picturesque! 

And because of the rain, we got to wear our ponchos and rainboots we bought for this trip.  (See poncho above in photo at Lee’s Donuts.) 

Two days before the trip, this was what the forecast looked like.  So I got on Amazon and ordered rainboots and rain ponchos, LOL.  They arrived in time for our trip!

Thank goodness it did not end up raining every single day of our trip!

After the donut, we checked out many more vendors at the Granville Island Public Market.  We had soups at The Stock Market.

We bought some nuts and handmade treats at Bon Mano Bon to take home to gift to Fred, our neighbor and catsitter.  We got a huge “cinnamon record” pastry at Stuart’s Bakery.

They also have a HUGE selection of other baked goods.  Look at that macaron display!

We also got a proper latte at JJ Bean.

We checked out a few more artisan stores at the market, including a bead store called Beadworks.

And a paper/notebook/pen store called “Paper-Ya”. 

Granville Island was awesome and fun, and perfect for a rainy day versus all the other outdoor activities we had gone on, such as the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Stanley Park! 

Since we were on the south side of Vancouver already, we went to see Queen Elizabeth Park.  It was free!  The park was on a hill, so you could see pretty far from it.  You could see farther if it weren’t cloudy and raining, LOL.

We walked up and down the hilly trails for some awesome plants and botanical views.  It really was quite spectacular.  We can’t imagine the upkeep of this place.  We saw constant gardening workers coming and going.  And we were quite surprised that even in the fall, there was so much plants and flowers to see!

I think the park is a popular location for wedding photos.

I love this photo with all the colors of the plants, and the foggy background!

We got back to the hotel and took a little break in the afternoon.  Then we walked a few blocks to dinner at Banana Leaf, a Malaysian restaurant.  My friend Jennifer had recommended this place to me when I asked on Facebook about visiting Vancouver.  They have several locations in Vancouver.  We went to the one on Davie Street.

They had a Pride special of two special large plates for $17 CAD each.  One was the Vegetarian Mee Goreng with lettuce, cucumber, tofu goreng, pickled red cabbage, mee goreng, crush peanuts, vegetables, and egg.  We added chicken to the noodles for $3 CAD.

The other Pride special plate was Rendang Beef plate with roti canai, eggplant fries, krupuk, rendang beef, mixed vegetable curry, and a fried egg. 

Both plates were mega-delicious and we couldn’t have been happier with our dinner choice!

Thus ended our last full day in Vancouver BC!  The trip was so much fun and I really enjoyed the city.  It was very metropolitan, yet clean!  And they have a diverse multi-culture, multi-ethnic city, with a lot of nature, culture, and food to offer.  Visiting Vancouver has been on our to-do list for a long time.  We’re glad to finally do it on our year of anniversary celebrations.  Some places we want to see next time in Vancouver:  the Richmond area’s Asian malls & markets, and the Richmond Night Market.  And taking the ferry ride to Vancouver Island in Victoria to see Butchart Gardens. 

The next day, Tuesday 10/8, we drove south from Vancouver back to Seattle, WA to fly home.  Because we both have Global Entry, we were able to use the NEXUS lanes to get through the US customs at the border really fast.  There was one car in front of us, and it took us two minutes to cross the border into the US again.  We showed our Global Entry cards to the US customs agent at the booth, and it was fast sailing from there.  If you travel to other countries, or even just Canada and Mexico a lot, I would highly recommend getting Global Entry for fast entry back into the United States through customs.  It’s only $100 for 5 years and it includes TSA Precheck!

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