Summer Vacation

After a few failed attempts, we finally managed to fit in a vacation this summer. My in-laws arrived for a week for a visit and that was enough for me to take some much needed time off from the office. It was a lot of driving around and sight seeing, but really, we don't do that sort of thing enough as locals so a lot of the sights were still kind of new for us as well. Or at least, they were places we would want to go.

The important part for our visiting family was that they wanted to see where we were living now and get an appreciation for our neighborhood. So the first half of their trip was spent here in Vancouver, where we ate locally, took several walking tours and generally just woke up each day and figured out what to do. It was a little stressful at times figuring out what to do, but we managed to do it without any fistfights. That's good for family visits, isn't it?

I'm kidding of course - the vacation was a good one in part because the second half of the week was spent in Seattle, where all four of us were tourists. While we have made many trips to Sea-Tac airport to pick up or drop off folks, this was only my second time to see some of the sights in downtown Seattle. I had just as much fun this time as I did then. As an added bonus we also were able to take in a lot of Bellevue simply because that is where our hotel was. They had quite a lot there that we would never have found if not for the fact that we I had forgotten to print out the hotel address, forcing us to wander through downtown Bellevue asking for directions (futile, both times the locals had no idea where our hotel was) and searching for free wifi, which ultimately gave us the info we needed.

Overall it was a good vacation. My litmus test for such things is to consider how many times I thought about work while I'm away. This week, the only consideration I made was what little trinkets to get for my team back at the office. Oh, and the dragonfly was one that my wife spotted while we were out walking the dog and showing her parents the sea wall along English Bay.