Vancouver, overnight

I met Shane at his work with coffee and brownies, a great start for a great night.  We plodded along a busy highway, stopping with traffic as we jammed our way onto a too-small bridge.  It was 4:30 when we realized I forgot to pack Shane's tie, and 5:00 when we reached the hotel.  We checked into a pre-paid 19th floor ocean view room (score!) and cruised up the elevator with two of Shane's co-workers.  "It starts at 6?" They asked.  We thought it was 8.  We hustled.  

The room was beautiful, high above the city.  I snapped pictures as the sun set and the fog rolled in faster than I could run.  We hurried into our evening best and slapped on a little make-up.  Luckily we are the type of people to be ready for a fancy evening in fifteen minutes.  We met a few others and scampered through the cold damp air to the restaurant.  My bare legs were cold.  

The drinks were endless and so we drank.  I tired to keep names straight and we sat down at table 13.  The food was fine, the company questionable and the service spectacular.  It was a nice night, even though table 13 started eating their steak at 10pm, one hour after table 1 finished.  We didn't win an iPad as Shane lamented, very disappointed in his luck.  

At 11, it was time to go, the people were starting their bad habits.  We got our taxi and left.

Morning arose cold and bright.  We skipped from the hotel, a cool walk to breakfast.  We had a great time at Scoozi's, somewhere we'd never been and at 9am on a Sunday morning, the perfect place to be.  We lingered over coffee enjoying each other's company, sipping from glass mugs between sentences.  It's a beautiful thing to be along in a city, Sunday morning before the world wakes up.  The roads belong to you.  We dragged our feet all over the place until at last we settled on our destination.  

The hot chocolate at Mink was incredible!  For the oh-so-humble price of $6.50 for a small mug I got to drink dark chocolate-salted caramel-rosemary bliss!  It was very very good.  We looked at books in the book stores and spent $10.50 on potatoes at the market.  Lunch was dynamite burgers at refuel (our second favourite burger place.)  We made it back just in time to drop me off at work for my evening shift. Our 22 hours in Vancouver were an awesome bonus, the miniest-mini-vacation if you will.