Our trip to Vancouver B.C. (Canada)

We headed out from home after work on Friday, starting toward Seattle, where we were going to stay the night with friends.

We headed out Saturday morning toward the Canadian border, and after a total trip time of around 6 hours (for both days), we reached Vancouver. It reminds us a lot of Hong Kong, many of the apartment buildings in the city are multi-story, and they are everywhere!

We have done a number of tourist things - although the weather has been a little cloudy on Sunday. Monday we hope to head over to Vancouver Island, and see more of Victoria.

Here are some pictures below of what we have been up to!

Lavender festival

Today Tara and myself headed across to Hood River, where they had a Lavender festival. The drive took just over one hour, through the Columbia River Gorge - which on a summers day is extremely scenic.

Below are some pictures we took when we were picking our Lavender, and then on the way back after we stopped in Cascade Locks.

Our first 4th of July (Independance day)

So, in the USA Independance Day is a significant celebration. We knew that it was full of fireworks, and a lot of the stores were closed - but we did not realize how many fireworks until late into the evening.

The day started normally enough, actually we headed to Washington Square (a large shopping centre here in Portland), where I had to try to return something at a store. We wandered around a little - noting that there were a lot less people in the shopping centre than normal. It probably had a lot to do with the weather being around 30C - many people had chosen to head out to the coast/beach, or similar.

After we finished there, we headed to Blockbuster to rent a DVD - TV during the summer here is quite bad - nothing much to watch except for trashy reality TV programs (I have no idea how many ways they can change "American Idol" - but there must be so many different versions of the same format of show it is silly.)

We watched the DVD after we got home, and waited until dark - as we had some fireworks of our own to let off. After watching the DVD we switched on and watched the New York fireworks, which are set to music - and were amazing to watch. Sydney at New Years and Chinese New Years in Hong Kong are small by comparison to what they let off in New York. There were three simultanious barges letting off fireworks to music. It was very spectatular - and well coreographed. ("I see trees of GREEN (BOOM Green fireworks), Red roses to (BOOM, the sky is filled with red)...)

Then - after that - the local fireworks started. We had heard little pops and whistles all night - but it got quite busy. Mind you it was around 10pm when the excitement started - as it is dark very late here in summer.

We headed out, and all we could hear were BANGs and WHISTLEs of fireworks going off. We let some off in the street also, but it was an amazing thing to be around. It was almost like every block of houses had around four or five people shooting up their packets of fireworks.

It was quite enjoyable, and sadly for us, something that Tara and I got to enjoy without the kids - who I am sure would have loved every minute of it.

Anyhow - that was our first 4th of July! (By the way - the photograph above is not one that I took!)

The house we are looking at buying...

So, now that we have been here almost a year, we are looking at purchasing a house. The last couple of months we have been thinking about it, and looking at houses. We have found one which we like a lot, and have put an offer in on - if all goes well, we should be set to move in around the end of August.

We thought we would share some pictures with you all.