Ella's First

Today, 30 May, was a signal day in Mountain View. Ella turned one year old!

We had a photo shoot to record the event formally, a birthday cake - known in these parts as a smash cake, a present opening session, and a birthday dinner in that order.

Here's one of the formal photos, where Ella is sitting on a pink rug in Emily and Greg's garden. Her favourite teddy bear is behind with a large helium balloon tethered to it in the shape of the number one.

Then came the opening of quite a lot of presents, though there will no doubt be a lot more on Saturday when she entertains her little friends for a kids' party. The first picture shows Ella trying on Uncle Phillip's hat. The second shows her inspecting the offerings.

Then came the smash cake, apparently a US invention where kids are presented with a cake designed for destruction. We saw Emily make the cake a day or so and a lot of effort went into for what promised to be a messy end. The flowers on it were made from little pieces of marshmallow with an M & M at the centre, and the edifice was topped by a large number one.

Well, Ella, who was suitably attired for a likely messy event on a hot day, disappointed us considerably. She ate the flowers with great decorum, one petal at the time. So Greg had to intervene and smash the cake with his fist, after which Ella tried some of the cake and its icing.

After we tidied up the mess and dressed more formally - me in a designer T-shirt and white shorts - we headed off for a celebration meal in a San Jose restaurant. If you recall an earlier post, Max's 6th birthday was in a Sushi Bar he selected. This time Ella was hardly in a position to select a restaurant, so we did that for her. It was an Ethiopian restaurant and the choice was entirely appropriate. It did not supply cutlery and the food was eaten with our hands and wrapped in a thin pancake before entering our mouths. Ella seemed quite at home with this strategy, though much Ethiopian food is hot and Ella appropriately made a face on some occasions. Here are pictures of the food and our guest of honour:

AS

A trip to Sausalito

Yesterday, Dot and I took refuge from the crowds along San Francisco's who'd come into town for Memorial day by taking the ferry across the bay to Sausalito. The trip there was lovely, with our little craft swaying in the pacific swell coming under the Golden gate bridge and passing Alcatraz, the subject of earlier post this year.

The town is attractively located on the north shore of the bay and is effectively an up-market commuter suburb + lifestyle hang-out for artists and creative people. It was also crowded with cyclists who head there across the Golden Gate and take the ferry back to the Embarcadero. And then there are the tourists like us who want to stroll among the art galleries, sip coffee at one of the innumerable and fortunately privately owned coffee houses, and admire the Mediterranean-style environment and atmosphere. As someone told us in Vancouver, "this city has over 100 Starbucks establishments, which is 95 too many!" The photos show what I mean.

By the way, the harbour was crammed with expensive yachts, a virtual forest of masts floating among some of the largest jelly-fish I've seen in the wild.

And here's Tiburon on the opposite side of the cove - a very similar place in lifestyle, though much more off the tourist circuit.

Notice for once the absence of SF's notorious fog! Although it looks warm and inviting, the northerly breeze was stiff and I doubt if the temperature got much above 17C.

AS

Fun in Stanley Park

Like all the world's great cities, Vancouver is proud of its magnificent open spaces. It has one of the largest public parks close to the city centre - Stanley Park, named after a 19th century governor of that name who help bring it to fruition. This dude stands proudly on his plinth at the entrance:

The park covers a thousand acres alongside the Burrard inlet on which Vancouver stands, and is close to down-town. Some is laid out in formal gardens as the following pictures show. There is for example a rose garden and areas dedicated to azaleas or other flowering plants and shrubs set among carefully cultivated lawns. Another part is host to a group of totem poles recording native heritage.

Yet other exhibits include this gun emplacement which fires a round every day at 9pm to sound the curfew, a tradition dating from the 19th century. And, like Copenhagen, a young lady sits perched on a rock - this time to mark high tide.

The grounds abound with forests of Douglas Fit, Hemlock, Spruce and other native species and these provide a home for lots of wildlife ... of which I was only able to spot the attached picture of a squirrel diving into a hedge.

But the biggest attraction so far was the aquarium, home to lots of species of fish and invertebrates along with various kinds of birds and mammals. The displays were well done and the facility was bursting at the seams with people the day we were there, which was a public holiday. The pictures show some lovely jellyfish, a rare Beluga Whale, some blue Macaws, and a group of highly endangered penguins from South Africa.

The park provided a lovely day out and also had spectacular views of the city and its surrounds.

AS

Around Vancouver

This post has a large number of photos and a few comments! They show aspects of the city's large, diverse, and well situated commercial centre. The first item is one of only 4 steam clocks in the world, which is located in historic Gastown.

The city has a large number of warriors - often not in terracotta materials - replicating those unearthed in central China. I don't know where the idea came from to scatter them around the business district.

The waterfront has ample berths for itinerant cruise liners like this one.

Here is the Lions Gate bridge connecting the city centre on the south side with North Vancouver and the road northwards to Squamish and Whistler which I have travelled on a couple of occasions.

The Convention Centre was the control hub of the 2010 Winter Olympics and has, unusually, a grass roof. One bus driver told us, probably incorrectly, that goats are periodically air-lifted on to the roof to keep the grass under control!

The city centre has gorgeous views north to Grouse Mountain and other peaks.

At some of the town beaches deck chairs have been replaced by logs. We were told that these are more difficult to steal!

And here's a group of happy people laughing their way through the day.

This was the Olympic cauldron, now a work of art in the CBD - accompanied by the Lego-like Orca below.

And this is the interior of the Anglican cathedral. Its roof is particularly interesting have been constructed by ship-builders to a design the resembles the up-turned hull of a sailing vessel!

Finally, we return to a Chinese theme - the large Chinatown which contains a beautiful traditional Chinese garden named Dr Sun Yat-Sen. Here is his statue behind which lies the garden shown in the last photo.

AS

Capilano Suspension Bridge

Just on the northern border of Vancouver, and on the slopes of Grouse Mountain, is a wonderful tourist attraction known as the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Capilano is a corruption of the name of a leader of one of the local first-nations peoples who was involved in the facility's development. Basically, the site has a narrow, pedestrian-only, suspension bridge across a deep gorge amidst luxuriant vegetation provided by Douglas Fir, Hemlock, and other native species. This is pretty in its own right, but the operators have subsequently provided fish-breeding ponds containing trout, a lovely walk-way suspended up in the tops of trees, native artifacts including totem poles which record the tribe's history, and a spectacular - but safe - walk around cliff face! The attached pictures show some of these features. First we have views of the bridge, which incidentally sways sharply from side to side as one crosses it, and the river which flows far beneath it.

Next I show the lush forest cover and the walk-way suspended high up among the trees.

The following two pictures show the cliff-face walk attached to the rock wall. Some people present were reluctant to take it and I can understand why, but Dot and I had no trouble.

Finally I show some of the native totem poles - pretty and well-explained - a nice day out even if the weather was cold and threatening rain.

AS