I mentioned in the Day One post that I woke up at 3:30am and got my photo of the city across the harbour. I also took a few more, of normally bustling places that were dark and empty. It was equal parts eerie and fun, seeing places with no other humans around, when they’re normally very busy.

Esplanade Ave with literally no cars on it? Weird.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten shots like this - although to be fair, it’s usually due to jet lag rather than a washroom run in the middle of the night.

For example, the first time we went to Iceland, I was up at 2am or so, wandering around the streets of Reykjavik with my camera, even though it was raining. The wet streets glowed with the reflections of the street lamps.

The best one was Helsinki, Finland - being summer, the sun doesn’t set at all there and when I woke up at 2am, I thought it was 2pm. I eventually got my bearings and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use, so around 3am I hit the empty streets and got lots of photos of things with nobody in them. It almost felt like one of those post-apocalyptic movies. And yes, this next photo was taken around 3am!

…but I digress. I eventually got back to bed last night around 4:30 or so, but I was up at 6am and got some work done before Rob got up. Later, we headed over to Tims to get some brekkie, because we’re Canadian and that’s what you do. Yes, I know the coffee is mediocre at best and the donuts are mid-tier as well, but it’s home away from home, no matter where in the world you find one, at least to a Canadian.

Here’s a fun bit of trivia. Notice that Tim Hortons has no apostrophe-s at the end. Why wouldn’t it be Tim Horton’s?
The answer goes back to Bill 101 in 1977 that made it mandatory for all businesses to display French on the signs in Quebec. Adding an apostrophe-s to something to show possessive is strictly an English construct, so rather than have two versions of their branding, one in Quebec, and another everywhere else, the apostrophe was left off and it’s just “Tim Hortons” everywhere.
That’s a true story, but somehow McDonald’s gets away with the apostrophe-s, even in Quebec. Not sure how they pulled that off. Even Reese’s, of peanut butter cup fame, was just “Reese” here until very recently.

Sorry. Back to today. After brekkie, we walked around a bit, enjoying another beautiful, sunny day before heading back to the room. Not long after, we headed back to the Lonsdale Quay area to watch the noon SeaBus come in.

On that SeaBus were two dear friends who we knew from Calgary, but now have both moved to Vancouver. They even live in the same building! Linda and Nina shared a nice lunch with us and we all caught up on stuff. It was a good time.

Yeah, yeah, I know… “where are the food pictures?” I had calamari with cajun seasoning and grilled red peppers and jalapeños. It was tasty enough that I asked if they sold the seasoning mix (they don’t). Those were also some of the hottest jalapeños I’ve ever eaten. There was a tzatziki sauce for dipping, but I didn’t use it. I’m not sure how tzatziki goes with cajun, anyway.

Between lunch and dinner, I managed to knock a few more items off my to-do list, bringing it down to just twelve left. A few of those will take hours for each one, but it still looks more manageable than it did earlier this week. For dinner, sister-in-law Jeri stopped by and we walked over to a new-for-us restaurant at the Seaside Hotel, which is just in front of ours. Rob had a lobster roll, Jeri had seafood pasta, and I went rogue and got an Italian sandwich. No regrets whatsoever, it was delicious. They also had Cholula hot sauce to mix with the ketchup for dipping. Win-win!

We had a really good visit with Jeri and did a lot of catching-up with her, too. (Pardon the blurry photo, it was a quick shot)

Then it was back to the room to answer some emails, contact some people, and write this post. Doing these posts is a nice break from the work, and it lets me finish the day thinking about other things, so my mind isn’t racing while I’m trying to get to sleep.

Speaking of getting to sleep….

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