#135 - ahh, portland

travel is fun but it's always nice to come back home. i'm lucky and i have two such places, portland and hawaii. no matter how long i stay away for, hawaii still feels like home. i don't really want to live there anymore cause i love it on the mainland, but it is a special place. i am lucky to have family and friends there. i've been living in portland for 4 years now and oregon for a total of 8. i love the weather, people, places, greenery and attitudes.

my parents are here for two weeks so we went up to seattle and canada for one of them. after bumbershoot and spending time in seattle we drove up to canada. we have some far off relatives that live in vancouver, BC. we stayed with them for one night and they were nice people. i got to hear many stories about their past, many many stories of hardships they endured. it does get old eventually but they were pretty sweet and cute. we went to dim sum one day for brunch, it was the best i've had. the spring rolls with shrimp were amazing. the shrimp were HUGE and the outside so crispy and not greasy at all. roast duck (always a treat), choi sum, char siu bau and an assortment of other dim sum things. we also got a good spicy eggplant noodle dish. mmm...our relatives cooked dinner that night as well, baked salmon and tuna cakes. it was actually good, and i don't even like seafood. we visited grouse mountain, which is the highest peak in vancouver. they had a wildlife area with two grizzly bears and a program with birds of prey. it was pretty cool seeing the horned owl, ferruginous hawk, turkey vulture and bald eagle up close. they trained them to fly from post to post but some of them flew right over head. whooosh!

vancouver is where the olympics will be in 2010 so they are working hard on improving the city. it is costing them millions so i definitely plan on going and spending a few dollars up there. starting to save... my "aunty" (or however we are related) is not very happy about the money situation since they'll be in debt up to their heads and then have all these buildings afterwards. they had to build a curling building cause for olympics i guess it needs 8 lanes. the ones they had were only 4. so they built it on an old playground or something.

we took the ferry to victoria BC and went to the butterfly gardens and butchart gardens. i took many pics that i will upload soon. we spent lots of time and it was a lot of beautiful things with many colors. also in victoria we took a tour of the parliament building and visited the royal bc museum and saw two IMAX shows. it was fun!

all this was fun and i spent time with my parents but it was nice to finally come home to portland. it's comfortable here and i actually missed it while i was gone. seattle is too big and city-like, even though people like to think we're as big. we're not. being in canada was nice but we were mostly in touristy areas so that changes things a little. i'll be going back in 2 years and it'll be even more touristy. it's not a very big place yet thousands of people will be going for the olympics. i am giddy with excitement! stuff i want/need to see - snowboarding, ski jump, speed skating, figure skating (practice would be fine), hockey (any country). i am sure the events will all cost an arm and leg but i just want to be there.