We had a lot of fabulous food while we were there, starting with a place right down the street called the Oakwood that did a menu with small plates to share. The food was amazing! The poutine with glazed brisket – drool! We waddled out of there and then took a nice long walk to Safeway for some snacks.

Can’t go to Vancouver without visiting the Aquarium. Lots of cool displays.

After the Aquarium we headed to English Bay Beach, and I found a restaurant with a view on Google, so that’s where we were headed. The XF Season 11 trailer had just come out the week before, and it showed a scene of Mulder next to some crazy laughing statues.

Found ’em!

Saturday night was the concert. We drove by ahead of time to check it out and it looked super sketchy. Lots of homeless people around. The parking looked iffy – since we have the Flex with the giant kayak rack on top, it couldn’t go in a parking garage. Dave found street parking a few blocks away. He dropped us off since there was already a line forming, and Michele and I got a place in line while he parked the beast.

We had to stand in line for a bit, but the other folks in line were friendly and chatty, and everyone was pretty chill. Folks kept walking by with dogs, and since I missed our dogs, we kept pointing them out. At one point Dave pointed out someone had a little corgi-esque dog with a fluffy tail, but I was short and couldn’t see it from where I was. Eventually they opened the doors and we all went in.

The venue didn’t have seats, just big open areas for standing, dancing, and a few tables around the edges which were pretty much taken. I wanted to stand up by the stage, so I staked out a spot and made like a rock – nothing would move me from my spot – close to the stage, and the exit door – just in case. I’m not fond of crowds, but I had Michele next to me and Dave behind me, and the rest of the floor just filled in until they were packed like sardines. I have never been in a concert like that! Michele proved to be a master at chatting up people, and ended up talking to some folks next to her about the wildfires in Santa Rosa (where she is from), because they were from the Bay Area too – small world!

Finally the show started about a half hour late. DD seemed tired, not nearly as energetic as the last concert. Seemed like he hit a lot of sour notes too, maybe his voice wasn’t up to it, or he just wasn’t feeling it. After a while he started to loosen up and it got better. I liked the songs he sang off the new album. And he played guitar this time, which was cool.

There was a group of girls behind us who were absolutely plastered by the time it started and were super obnoxious, falling over, dropping their bottles, squeeling randomly, waving a lighter around (for god’s sake, use a phone like everyone else before you set someone on fire!), shouting stuff out. Finally a stage hand came over and asked them to chill. At the end of the show our friend Michelle went over to thank him for doing that, and he said no problem, and said ‘oh, here, you might like this’ and handed her the setlist off the keyboard station. So she gave me that, and when we got home I hung it on the wall next to Mulder 🙂

It was a fun concert, and I wish I could have brought my camera because the pics would have been so much better, we were way closer than the cell phone pictures make it look.

The next morning we were talking about the concert, and I pulled up Twitter to show Michele a picture of Duchovny’s dog, Brick, and Dave says ‘Hey, that’s the corgi-esque dog I saw while we were in line!’ What?! You got to see Brick and I didn’t?!

The next day we went up to the Bloedel Conservatory, which is full of exotic birds and plants. Very cool.

All the beautiful birds! I can’t wait to make art out of some of these.

But Dave got tired of chasing birds and looking at plants. Poor Dave.

Then I think we took a long, meandering trip over to the north shore of Vancouver and drove until we got hungry, driving through little touristy towns that were hopping on Sunday afternoon. We had lunch at a random spot in a strip mall next to a grocery store, and the food was amazing! I don’t know how we got so lucky every stop.

We continued back, doing a loop around what used to be the XF studio, not sure if they are still filming there, and then back over the bridge and around Stanley park, stopping to take pictures of the city at sunset.

You’ll just have to trust me that this pic looks amazing blown up. The blog just can’t handle it.

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