Oh yeah, by the way, I went to Canada

Vancouver, specifically. It was a couple weeks before the Olympics were due to start and LET ME TELL YOU, I highly recommend visiting an Olympic city immediately before the Olympics. Everything is shiny and clean and pretty (though I suspect this is probably always true of Vancouver) and people are starting to get excited.

It also helps if you stay at the same hotel as the International Olympic Committee:



The city was definitely all ramped up and ready to go but our hotel was ESPECIALLY psyched up and it was OLYMPICS OLYMPICS RAH RAH RAH everywhere you looked:



(And yeah, sometimes my posing backfires and I just look stupid.)

The view from the hotel was gorgeous.

To the right:



To the left:



Those lights at the top-middle of the harbor photo were on a ski run and they stayed on all night long. They were plenty far away that they weren't a nuisance or anything but every time I saw them I thought that someone was up there on the mountain burying a body under the cover of night.

Under the cover of night with the entire metro area of Vancouver watching on, that is.

The creepy factor was amplified by the fog in the air and the steam coming off the pool below my window.

The funny thing about Canada is that if you give people this Monopoly money, they GIVE YOU THINGS in return! Crazy Candadians.



We arrived on a Friday night and neither of us planned on being without our phones to guide us in this strange and foreign land but as soon as we crossed the border we got WARNING WARNING WARNING DATA IS $15 A MEGABYTE IN THIS EXOTIC LOCALE texts and I had no idea if using my Yelp app would cost me $6 or $46 so we had to rely on the hotel staff to point us in the right direction for everything (WHICH I HATE).

So Friday night we asked for dinner recommendations and it ended up being kind of a rigamarole but we eventually ended up in Yaletown, which they say is where all the bars and restaurants are. It did turn out to be a strip of bars and restaurants but the problem was twofold:

1. 9PM on a Friday night and it was D-E-A-D. We ended up settling for the restaurant with the most people in it. It turned out to be a perfectly fine choice and our waiter was nice (DID YOU KNOW THEY CAN'T SERVE MORE THAN SIX OUNCES OF ALCOHOL TO ANY ONE PERSON??) but it did take some effort.

2. The people who *were* out and about were douchebags. I had to explain to my traveling companion that THIS is why I do not like relying on concierge suggestions. We were at the WESTIN. The Westin concierge was gonna send us to a particular flavor of establishment, but I knew in advance it wasn't gonna be the corrrrrrect flavor and I was ANTSY that I couldn't just Yelp us up something perfect.

Grrr.

The next morning my glamorous ass went down to the lobby to ask for bakery and coffee suggestions:



I'm not as picky about that kind of thing because in the case of coffee and baked goods, I *do* kinda want the douchebag recommendations.

The gentlemen I was talking to were very helpful so I figured I'd also ask them for dim sum recommendations for later. They had a few safe-sounding suggestions but I finally twisted their arms into telling me where THEY'D go for dim sum and not where they'd send guests at the freaking WESTIN.

We ended up taking their suggestion and this is what we had for lunch:



I don't know what it all was, but I do know this:

We accidentally ordered enough food for five people.

The dim sum I've had in California tends to be three or four pieces of bite-sized dumplings per order. I knew we ordered more than we could probably eat, but I had NO IDEA each order was going to come out with dumplings three times the size of the ones in CA.

My dining companion gave up early but the thought of all those delicious shrimp dumplings going to waste HURT MY SOUL so I did my best to pack in as much as possible but alas, it was not meant to be. We left with a doggie bag that DWARFED the other doggie bags I saw leaving the restaurant and ended up not eating any of it.

So if you happened to be at Pelican Seafood that day and saw two gluttonous Americans, we didn't mean it. It was an accident. We were plenty embarrassed.

My dining companion was very smart to quit while he was ahead though because we had like five or six hours to speedily digest and prepare our stomachs for Tojo's.

What is Tojo's?

It's allegedly one of the finest Japanese restaurants in North America, the finest cuts of fish arrive on your plate mere hours after being caught, blah blah blah. Plus, it's on the list of 1,000 Things to Do Before You Die AND YOU KNOW I LOVE ME A LIST.

BUT BEFORE THAT, we kicked around Vancouver for a bit:





And then I changed into my "finest Japanese cuisine in North America outfit" -- AKA the same thing you already saw me wear out in Austin a few weeks ago, and after another rigamarole (this one admittedly self-induced) where OOPS I forgot to get the address of the restaurant and it's not in the market the book implied it was in and WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP DRIVING AIMLESSLY WHILE I FIGURE OUT WHERE WE ARE AND WHERE WE'RE GOING??

But whew! We found it! And we found easy parking! And we were only two minutes late! And I had a chill-the-fuck-out cocktail.

We sat at the very chic bar and had the omakase menu, which is code for "let the chef pick for you and say WHEN when you think you're gonna bust your belt or your wallet."

We lasted for NINE courses, which isn't as gluttonous as it sounds because each course was only two or three bites. It was a really, really, really good meal and I think we had different #1 favorites but we definitely agreed that two of the courses SUCKED. My problem is that I'm not a big fan of smoked food AT ALL so when you smoke sea urchin and put it in front of me, I'll eat a bite to say I did, but then I'm over it.

Also, it's not a good sign when your dining companion says "Hmm. Hey, have you ever had Beanie Weenies?"

Here's the run down of all that, which is 99% for my own record:

1. Tojo Salad with tuna, wasabi, crushed sesame seeds and soy sauce

2. Shitake mushroom over snapper and tempura'd with daikon and in fish broth

3. Crab salad with Japanese mustard and sweet pickle

4. Sea urchin with smoked sablefish (pretty in the sea urchin shell and all, but AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!!!)

5. Smoked then steamed sablefish with mushrooms and broth (very pretty with it's wrapping paper and raffia bow and not as gross and salty and Beanie Weenie-ish as the sea urchin, but ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...PASS!)

6. Hand roll with tempura'd prawn, avocado and spicy sauce

7. Shrimp, scallop and something else wrapped in an egg wrapper and topped with fish roe

8. Marinated albacore nigiri with green onions

9. Green tea creme brulee and pineapple ginger sorbet

We won't discuss how much all that cost, but it was a once in a lifetime Iron Chefy experience and was worth every penny. (But if I win the lottery and we go back, I'd rather have more sushi and less sea urchin and sablefish.)

The next day we were slightly less gourmet:



Sunday morning view:




ROWERS!



How healthy of them! Myself, I preferred to order room service and watch the Canadian Food Network. (They have different shows! Better shows! And Gordon Ramsey has a show where he's not an irrational, raving lunatic! And some rustic French Canadian chef who cooked outside twisted a chicken's neck RIGHT THERE on TV like it aint no thang and we were both like "OMG PETA WOULD FLIP THE HELL OUT OVER THAT!"

(Here's where I admit it's 11PM and I'm TIRED and I want to go to bed so I'm gonna wrap this up very unceremoniously.)

And then we drove back to the good ol' US of A where I could check my email 1,000 times if I wanted to.



The end.

Yay Canada.