It really isn't easy to take care of 3 kids, stay healthy, and keep up with work. So much to juggle, hence it’s already July and I’m only my 2nd post of the year. 

F is already 9 months, and we celebrated with a long weekend trip to Salt Spring Island. 

I was excited to go back after all these years (read more about my 2017 trip at this link). Not much has changed, other than the addition of more food trucks (gentrification???).

Oh and the addition of my 3 kids, of course. 

Before the trip, I was a bit worried about what they would eat. It's always difficult to feed each of them, because they have their own preferences, likes and dislikes, which also depend on their level of fatigue. I only let myself think about it for a few minutes, because there weren’t enough neurons in my very full and tired brain to even remember to think about it (if that makes sense…). 

For dinner on the 1st day, we went to Cassette. Spoiler - we all loved it, 10/10 food and service for a group of 9 with a total of 5 kids. 

Entree for 2, with the salmon option, for me, baby F, and H: 

PERFECT fish, crispy skin, no bones. Comes with a salad that I only managed to get one bite of, because the rest of the family devoured it. Can you see the little golden edible flowers garnishing the salad? 

Fried chicken burger for S: 

Also perfectly cooked chicken!!! H is usually pretty picky with fish and chicken, but he was extremely quiet during this meal, too busy eating. 

Cassette smash burger for P: 

He left 3/4 of the burger, mostly because he didn’t nap despite waking up at 6AM to make it for the 8:50AM ferry. More of this delicious burger for me… 

Piles of fries, as you can see from the photos. None of the fried food was overly greasy. The staff remembered to keep salt levels low. I wish we had time to have dessert. Actually, I wish I had the foresight to use formula, so that I could have an alcoholic beverage at the breweries and the cider place that we visited back in 2017. 

For most of this trip, I was with the baby, either nursing or napping him, and not doing a whole lot. We did finally make it to the infamous Salt Spring Island Saturday farmers’ market and made a quick loop around before heading to the nearby playground. Honest opinion of the market is that it was a bit of a bust though, so crowded and overpriced, with a mediocre quality of goods. Who am I to judge though? Some people might like driftwood bird houses, still fresh with bird doo doo. :) 

While F napped, the other kids went for short hikes, beach time, blackberry picking, going to the goat cheese place, bakeries. Because I was mostly with the baby, I think P must have felt neglected. I forget sometimes that he’s not as independent as his older sister, who was having a blast with her cousins and making up games… Anyways, hoping the next trip will be better for him. At the end, he bonded with my cousin’s huge dog and we ended up leaving on a very high note. Guess we’ll come back again… 

Went to the Sunshine Coast this past weekend for some R&R with H and his coworkers. They’re all fairly Type A (and they know it). Are they good at their jobs because they’ve been molded by the nature of their occupation, or is it because of their existing personalities? Chicken and egg questions. I’m not laid back, but compared to them, I’m a total sloth. We went kayaking with Pedals and Paddles, hiked (walked) to Burnett Falls Park, and did a bit of offroading:



Found a hidden lake in the middle of nowhere:



And the final touch of the weekend, great coffee at the Basted Baker:



I was satisfied with just a flat white (bottom) and H had the cappuccino. I’ll have to come back for the food. It looked amazing, the poached eggs were so jiggly.



I feel like I traveled with both A and B personalities this month, so I must be balanced now.

This was a once in a lifetime trip to the Grand Cayman Islands, with about 20 of my friends to attend VinJu’s Grand Celebration of Marriage (GCM haha). Ju had 20 of her family members there too, so to make all of our lives easier, they rented out 5 beach front houses on the north side of the island at a property called Ocean Paradise. Beautiful, isn’t it? 

Right after getting off the plane and after getting used to the fact that we’d be drenched in sweat for the entire trip in the humid climate of the island, we decided to get a quick lunch. The groomsmen had arrived a day earlier, so they knew a great spot for chicken, called Chicken!Chicken!:

It’s not hot inside the cramped restaurant, despite the open oven roasting all the chickens, probably because the AC was blaring.

We had the lunch menu. Left side contained the 1/2 chicken with rice, and on the right side, you can see the vegetable side option with a bit of the cornbread. The chicken was absolutely melt off the bone perfect, but I didn’t find the sides all that spectacular.

Off to 7 Mile Beach to chill:

Everybody was exploring the clear green water, and sinking into the sand. After half an hour more of sun, I was exhausted, and just wanted to head back to the house. Some people just have more energy in them for this type of frolicking by the water.

I’m not one of those people.

This was just the start of the jerk chicken tour at GCM.

H and I woke up early on Day 2 to get to our next destination – Niagara Falls! We had booked Greyhound tickets for around 11AM, and the ticket recommended being there an hour before departure. Since we wanted to prevent H from getting hangry and scaring innocent pedestrians on the road, we had to get breakfast. We first stopped at Quantum for coffee (more on this in the next post), recommended by T, then walked over to Eggspectation for a full breakfast,


It was a very wholesome, North American breakfast of protein and carbs. I had French toast and H had the omelette that was filled with cheese and toped with salsa  and avocados. My plate also came with some fruit, but I couldn’t get them in the picture (I’m still learning!).

Overall, servers were friendly enough, and even though they never refilled our waters, I was a satisfied customer. It did give off a typical Western breakfast style restaurant, similar to White Spot, so as a tourist looking for exciting new food spots, this is not a place I’d recommend visiting.




After breakfast, we wandered around Eaton Centre and explored Uniqlo, since Vancouver does not have one yet and our branch wouldn’t be opening until later this summer. Toronto has some well dressed fashion types, more so than Vancouver, and travelling light does not allow one to be the most fashionably dressed. For this 9 day trip to 2 different climates (after Toronto, I was headed for the Grand Cayman Island), I had a carry on suitcase with the wheels and a Patagonia Black Hole 32L backpack. I think I could have travelled even lighter, had I known that towels could be provided and that we could do laundry.

Note to self, remember to check whether accommodations have towels and laundry facilities.

Side note, being lazy, like I am, also does not contribute to being fashionably dressed.

As the 45th US president was being sworn in, some Canadians were watching closely. Others, like me, decided to hit the slopes at Whistler. There was quite a crowd, even though the snow wasn’t the freshest and the sky wasn’t the clearest. A mountain day is always a good day… 

We drove up to Whistler on Friday night, right after work (9-5 office life for all 4 of us in my car), stopping by Squamish to grab a late dinner at Mag’s 99:

 

Top: Fried chicken, fries. Bottom: Chimichanga

This must’ve been the best chimichanga I’ve ever had. It was packed with rice, and the pool of mysterious orange sauce it was sitting in really complimented the flavors of the rice and meat inside. I’m hungry just thinking about it. This was enough to put all of us into a food coma.

It was not easy to finish it off, because LOOK AT ALL THE RICE, from just a quarter of the chimichanga!

The chicken was OK, slightly dry. I’d give this a 3/5 for the chicken and 4/5 for the chimichanga. 

We got to the hotel, started playing Machi koro, and didn’t get to bed till 1:30AM… Staying up late and struggling to wake up the next morning seems to bring us together.

Cannon Beach, one of my favourite places in the world. The first views of Haystack Rock from the road are simply breathtaking – H and I paused in mid sentence, then… “woah”. This is only my 2nd time here, and clearly it still had the same effect as the 1st.

 

So cold and windy I wore 4 layers... 

We still had coffee from Seaside, but Sleepy Monk, which is found here, is where the beans were roasted. Cute little coffee shop that I’m sure we’ll visit again some other time though. I still want to catch a sunrise on this beach, maybe explore the woods in the area, and visit the brewery there.

Fast forward to arriving in Portland, after visiting the Beaverton Trader Joe’s, H bought a few things from the local Scout shop and we were just in time to see the Portland Farmer’s Market close for the day at 2PM. We were starving by then. Good thing food carts were just a few streets away!

Lamb donair.

Meat lunch special with na’an, chicken curry, and zucchini (I think?) curry.

I’m a horrible blogger – I didn’t get the names of the carts. They were just OK, and hunger certainly helped us polish these off quickly.

The next day...

CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO DAY 1

Here’s where you can read about the rest of the trip

Day 1 and Day 1.2

Day 2 and Day 2.2

Day 2.3 and 3

Day 4, 5, 6, 7

It’s only been a month since we came back, but it feels like years. It’s a whole new world over there and still so much to explore. I only briefly touched on our glacier tour, so I wanted to bring us back to the good old days when I was in Iceland…

We went on our glacier tour, booked through Trip.IS at their office for about $220CAD per person. They provide a guided tour of Solheimajokull, all the equipment (crampons and pickaxes), and a bus to take us there. Also included a quick ice climbing session (no pictures, because I was too busy being spiderwoman). There are some tours for a much better price, but we were pretty last minute so we didn’t bother searching too much.

The snow is black because of the ash from recent volcanic eruptions (2010? is that still recent). The ash actually helps to protect the ice and insulate it. There were random cracks and  holes, so it would’ve been a pretty treacherous hike if we did it on our own.

I really can't wait to go back, but with Europe the way it is now (France... Turkey... less recently Brussels), I can't help but be afraid to visit. I think I've decided on a few places I want to see, so look forward to more #luwesatravels posts.