Now that Pokin’s joined YPO, she’s making an effort to meet the members more. “The Couples retreat is one of the best ways to get to know the members,” Val (the chapter manager) told Pokin. So she signed up to go on the retreat, which happened to be at a place called Powder Mountain.
Last year this time, we went skiing at Snowbird which was pretty great, so I was excited. The place is called Powder Mountain because normally there is a lot of powder. Ski time! Hot cocoa time!
Except due to some freak weather phenomenon they actually had no new snow and everything was pretty icy…I guess we’ll just have to come back again next year to get proper skiing in.
Still, I do remember my bud taking advantage of the snow and going skiing. It was a work day, and while he was skiing the servers at work crashed. His employees messaged him saying “help, the servers are down”. He took out his phone at the top of the mountain, connected to the systems remotely, fixed the problem and then took this photo to show where he was and continued skiing. That’s productivity 101 right there.
I put on my Santa outfit and the generosity started. Not everyone can be a cool spirit bear like myself, so animal hats were probably the next best thing.
I got myself a little something too. That disgusting bag Nicholas insists on carrying me around in was getting a little worn down so I upgraded his flash sack. Let it be known the flash sack gift is in no way an endorsement of the sack as the preferred means by which I wish to be transported.
I also got a new outfit! Nick’s mom and Anna sewed me a new hoodie! It’s about time! Now I can be extra stealthy in really clean white snow!
The next morning, we just wandered. First down La Rambla and then onto Passeig de Colom. Nicholas wanted to find the street that he used to rollerblade on to a beach. Instead we found “Gambrinus,” a ridiculous looking statue of a lobster that Pokin loved for no good reason.
We didn’t have a lot of time, so before we could find that beach it was time to turn around. We went through Barri Gòtic. The streets were cool. Of course we found graffiti. And cool old buildings. And fat pigeons. Those fat pigeons just sat in the alcoves on the wall like bosses. I was almost tempted to fly up and smack them with my paws but they are way too dirty to go near.
And then we were onwards to Madrid. I bearly feel like I got experience Bearcelona. I guess I’ll just have to come back.
From Barcelona, it’s about a 3 h train ride on the AVE train to Madrid. We left from the Sants station. It wasn’t very busy, so I was able to snag my own seat.
Ride was smooth, and then we were in Madrid.
Where it was raining. It turned out to be a good thing because it meant the main tourist spots weren’t too crowded. So we went to Mercado San Miguel in Centro and walked our way to Plaza de Cibeles before heading to bed. Have to be well rested after all. Tomorrow it’s Rocket League Championships!!
Travel time! We’re back on the road and in Spain this week. First stop - Barcelona.
It’s only fitting because Barcelona is a lot like San Francisco both in approximate square footage and size, and we all know I’ve been spending too much time in San Francisco. Barcelona is a hilly costal city that’s actually fairly walkable. It’s the largest city in Catalonia, and the second largest city in Spain by population, but we walked around fine.
We stayed in Eixample, and for being a city from the Roman times, you wouldn’t have been able to tell in this neighbourhood. The streets were clean, the boulevards wide. It also turns out to be where a lot of the nicest restaurants are, which didn’t matter so much to me but did to others. Our hotel, the Alexandra Curio was a short walk from Passeig de Gràcia, one of the main passageways in the area.
Our room came with a European-sized bathroom, but an ample sized voyeur balcony and pillow kingdom. You bet I made myself comfortable in the proper spot.
One can only loiter for so long in the hotel before it was time to get out and about. So out we went. Compared to Las Vegas where it gets bright early, sunrise doesn’t happen till past 8am here. Since I’m a nocturnal bear it didn’t matter, but it did feel strange to see how ’early morning’ it felt even at 9am.
Barcelona is famous for being home to the architect Antoni Gaudí, known for his, what I call “pretty weird architecture.” Gaudí’s work is part of some Modernista movement that draws inspiration from Gothic and Oriental architecture. For me it just looked weird, and very organic and biological and structures felt like bones and muscles. Gaudí’s work is scattered all across the city, but his most famous work is the still-under-construction Sagrada Família, so that’s where we headed.
Like most large stone buildings, this basilica has taken a long time to build. Ground breaking happened in 1882 and construction is expected to complete by 2026, for the centenary of Gaudí’s death. This means it’ll have taken 144 years to build – which would still be less time than it took to build the Notre Dame Cathedral. Construction sure has sped up since.
La Sagrada Família is not a cathedral, but rather a basilica – something I only just learned. Cathedrals are reserved as the home of a bishop. Basilicas are any place of importance to the Pope. In contrast to the outside which is super ornate – especially the Nativity Facade (the only side Gaudí was alive to see), the inside was a lot more simplistic. I like that.
I learned that the pillars were inspired by tree trunks, and that the different columns were made of different stone to support different heights. The stained glass was also designed deliberately with a deliberate mood shift from warm glows to cool.
And this is the bronze door to the Passion facade. Over 8000 characters have been cast on these doors.
We didn’t get the right kinds of tickets that let us go up the stairs of the Basilica, so with that we were done. We did peek into the basement where we saw the 3D printing workshop where they test out sculptures before carving them out in stone. Definitely more efficient.
Next stop - the Hop on Hop off bus tour.
My impressions? Overrated. Most of the attractions were not viewable from the street. There was little narration. And it was cold. But it was a quick way to see Barcelona since we had limited time.
Tokyo has a cool art exhibit called teamLab. Pokin’s friend Chris was the one who heard about it. It had recently opened and it’s technology meets art in a pretty cool way. But it was a trek by train to get over there. This better be worth it!
It’s supposed to get busy there so we headed off early. Once we got in, I have to say the experience looked pretty cool.
Wait.. WAIT. Hold on. Outside this art place I noticed they had a GIANT GUNDAM ROBOT. Forget the art. I NEED ONE OF THESE. Nicholas!!
For some reason that shall never make any sense to me, Pokin really really wanted to see the Tuna Auction. The auction used to be at the Tsukiji Market, where you actually were able to walk right up amongst the Tuna. The place got too crowded, so they eventually moved it to a more modern larger facility at the Toyosu market. Instead of being right in the middle of the action, you now had to stand behind glass walls to see it, and entry required applying to a lotto.
Lots of things Pokin wants to do makes no sense. There was no way my bud wanted to go. Voluntarily get up early to go see smelly fish??? Ha!
So I took it for the team and went with her. Let me tell you, this was commitment. The auction happens really early in the morning, so we had to get up at like 3AM to get there. The auction officially starts around 5:30AM and is over within 20-30 minutes.
This is the biggest tuna auction in the world, and all the best and most expensive tuna gets brought here to be bid on, and hauled away.
Then, because we had been up for a while, I saw Pokin, Chris, and Laura work up an appetite so they went for some tuna themselves.
While I was underwhelmed by the technology level of Japan, I do have to say that alleys are pretty great.
Tiny little back alleys full of restaurants and bars, people grilling meat and serving drinks… The golden gai and piss alley areas were especially fun at night. Many restaurants had signs that said “no foreigners”, which seemed a bit rude as I’m a pretty cool bear. They shouldn’t judge like that. 😠
We spent some time exploring all the alleys, stopping into random restaurants for some skewers. The skewers were good, even if people were biased against bears and buds.
We saw some pretty weird stuff. That was also cool.
Nicholas and Pokin met up with their friends Laura and Chris and packed into one of those little bars for some food and fun.
This morning we got up for a quick flight to Tokyo. With the time zone difference it meant we got in around 5pm.
I had wanted to try out the famed Tokyo bullet trains, but instead we ended up on an Airport Limo, aka bus.
For the first part of our trip we went through a lot of countryside. It looked lush, I saw rice fields and simple houses, and a lot a lot of golf courses and pitch driving ranges. And thus I was reminded of golf being one of the national sports in Japan.
The shuttle can be as short as 1 hour but we lucked out to arrive during rush hour and it took closer to 100 minutes for our ride. It was interesting to see that the highway lanes were generally fairly narrow.
I expected Japan to be more modern, with tall packed skyscrapers everywhere. While the city looked very developed as far as my eye could see, the housing density was less than I expected. It also looked considerably less modern. Many trains did not have digital displays.
We arrived to our hotel, checked in, and with jet lag still in full force, passed right out.
The next day we were greeted with rain. A lot of rain. Today was the day I learned Tokyo gets 1,530 millimetres of precipitation a year. Vancouver, which qualifies as a rainforest only gets 1283 mm. So it was too wet for sightseeing. And we decided to stay in and work.
Before arriving to Tokyo, I had this expectation of a very high-tech metropolitan city. I knew that the country was very respectful of tradition, but I did not at all expect it to feel old. Compared to cities like Hong Kong, the metro station didn’t feel as modern. I suppose that’s what happens if you were early to adopt the tech. For instance, here is a photo of the Honk Kong skyline a few nights before, much more Neo-Tokyo than Tokyo.
Here’s the regular old metro in Tokyo. No holograms anywhere!
There are definitely a lot of vending machines everywhere though. Lots. For all sorts of things including tickets to buy ramen.
I also didn’t expect so much grafiti.
So far, Japan seems to be a very interesting juxtaposition of new and old.
My bud told me we were finally travelling again. I got excited. It’d been a while.
I even willingly went into the travel back pack – a tall ask –
Only to resurface in Hong Kong.
Wait a sec, I’d been here already. This isn’t exciting!
The only saving grace is that I was staying at the Conrad hotel, where apparently they knew I was a VIB because they gave me a room on the top floor. This, this I liked. 61st floor views are pretty sweet!
I chose to ignore the fact that the welcome back card wasn’t made out to me and that there was some mention about celebrating anniversaries.
What I liked a little less was that there were already other bears on premise. First there was one Conrad bear. Him I can handle. I can show him his place. But then more Conrad bears appeared. There are 3 bears too many in this picture.
Luckily Nicholas said that these bears didn’t have to come along for the rest of the trip. GOOD.
After we dropped off our stuff we stopped at the Collinson Crematorium to pay our respects to some ancestors.
Next, we went to mine and Nicholas’ least favourite kind of place. A wholesale fish market. It definitely smelled like fish. A lot of fish.
Pokin had it in her head that we were going to take everyone to the Aberdeen Wholesale Fish Market, specifically to a canteen. I cannot think of a place that more aptly fit the description of ‘hole in the wall." It really was a hole in the wall – I barely would have found the entrance if we weren’t given a photo of what to look for. Apparently this place used to be a local’s secret, but it got written up in places like the Lonely Planet so it’s not so secret anymore. Pokin met up with a person who knew a person, who had arranged to pick out some seafood for us that the restaurant then cooked. I saw some conversation between Pokin and some person, I saw some money change hands, and then we proceeded to sit down through way too many courses of seafood.
I mean, who wants to eat stuff that looks like this? Not I. Not my bud.
I think the only thing that made the trip worth it at all was to see that our chef / cook was some shirtless guy who definitely did not look like he should be cooking our food. It amused me. And Nicholas. Everyone else didn’t even pay attention as they were too busy eating a lot of seafood so the two of us amused ourselves.
Nicholas tells me we are going to Tokyo the next day. Now this I’m excited about!
