Test Run
Today was our test run for the trip, meaning we went out in Vancouver with the scavenge list and notebooks and everything and pretended it was the real deal so we could practice for when we actually do scavenges. So first me and my dad went to a nearby coffee shop to strategize. Step 1: read all the scavenges. Step 2: locate and mark them on the paper map. Step 3: look at which ones are near each other and make a basic plan on the order of each. Step 4: be ready to wing a lot of stuff.
To start it off we went to Roots. The scavenge is to find the Canadia in the store. To get to the store we used the paper map where we marked everything. I was the navigator who had never done this before. The intelligent advice given to my by my dear old dad was "be the map!" Thanks Dad. When we got there we had no idea what "finding Canadia" meant so we guessed it meant the collection made in Canada and influenced by Vancouver. We went in, took a few selfies with a helper and the Canadia collection and left.
The next scavenge we decided to tackle was the Vancouver Art Gallery. This one is where you have to dine the Group of Seven painting. With my super experienced navigation, we got there to find it was closed, except it was the wrong building. Luckily when we found the right building the gallery was open. We quickly purchased tickets and asked about the Group of Seven painting. Turns out its not actually a painting but instead a group of seven artists who painted a bunch of landscape pieces. We found the paintings by one of the seven artists in no time and took a picture with them in no time.
After leaving the gallery and coming out to the cold and rain, we headed towards a shoe shop called, Fluenog's, not Fluvengogs (that is my bad memory and pronunciation combined). We had a little trouble finding that one, not because of my navigation skills (or lack of), but because we marked it wrong on the map so we ended up using google maps to find it. When we went inside we had to find the most expensive shoe. So from going shopping, unwillingly, with my sister and mom I gathered that clothes and shoes, especially womens are super expensive; so I expected the most expensive shoe to be maybe $500. Nope. The most expensive shoe was a gold and black, hand stitched boot that was $999. I know, so expensive! After we finally overcame our surprise and took a picture, we went to ask some customers who they think is the most famous Vancourverian for one of the scavenges. A couple said Micheal Bubble, Micheal J Fox, Seth Rogen and my favorite, Ryan Reynolds. Yay Deadpool!
Anyway after that we decided to take a snack break and go eat to at Japadog which was one of the scavenges. I learned a japadog is a japanese hotdog. Honestly that doesn't sound that bad to try, unlik beer which will be talked about later on. We found the resturant with a only a little bit of a problem; problem being we couldn't find it but we eventually did with the help of google maps. When we did finally order and get our food, I was ready to use my critical writing experience from school to professionally judge these japadogs. My eloquent and detailed judgement is that it is a hotdog and sushi roll combined to create the japadog.
Onto the next scavenge. This one is you have to go to a cannabis store. For those who are youths like me or just don't know what cannabis means, it means marijuana. When we found a marijuana store I obviously could not go in, so my dad brought an employee out to take a selfie with. Unfortuantly I could still smell the marijuana from outside, no bueno. Ah-ma, Ah-gong and Mother you will never have to worry about me doing drugs or whatever (its your other children you have to watch out for, but you didn't hear it from me).
That was a pretty short scavenge and soon enough we were off to our next. We had to walk to Chinatown for the next scavenges so I was doing some complicated navigating. Luckily by then I kind of got the hang of it. Also by then my dad had started calling me Dora and I had heard him say "be the map" too many times to count. When we arrived in Chinatown, we first took a selfie at the Millennium Gate which is the entrance to Chinatown. After that we went hunting for the narrowest
building in the world, which was also in Chinatown. Fortunately for us, the building was near the
entrance and easy to spot. We took some selfies, tried to read the signs in Manderin (emphasized on tried, sorry Mr. Zhou) and then went to our next scavenge in Chinatown; to visit San Yat-Sen Garden. Apparently San Yat-Sen is a very famous chinese politician, who according to my dad is the 'Martin Luther King of China". There we relaxed inside and drank the complimentary tea, whilst also doing another scavenge. Talk about pro multi taskers. Anyway the scavenge was to find out our chinese zodiac and write down our good and bad traits. Luckily for us, we already knew our zodiacs and most of our good and bad traits. Yay self awarness.
After that was done and documented, we walked to the Police Museum which was only a few blocks away. Once we arrived we had to find out why this museum was built in the location it was built. We ended up asking the front desk lady for the answer. I know so creative, but I mean it gets an exact answer. We learned it was because it was near the police station and it used to be the Coroners Court but was currently not being used when they decided to open up a police museum.
We finished that scevenge a lot faster than I expected and were out within 15 minutes. Once we left, we looked at the map to see which scavenge was the closest. This was one of the mandatory scanvenges: eating mussels and drinking a Pacific Coast beer at Chamber. We walked there because it was only a few blocks away. Soon enough we were there and seated. Super lucky for us the mussels were served from 12:30 till their close and it was 1:00. We're pro time planner people. Anyway we ordered mussels and one beer, cause I can barely drink a sip of beer much less a full glass. The food arrived pretty quickly in a fancy pot with bread and fries. Because my dad is super nice, he made me try the beer first. No bueno. It starts out tasting like apple cider and quickly sours making it have a yucky aftertaste. The mussels and bread on the otherhand were super good and refeshing after all the walking.
After that we were off to the second to last scavenge; seeing the steam clock. It was a pretty short walm to the clock. Gotta say, did not reach my expectations for size. I expected a huge clock that you see in disney movies (not Frozen), instead there was maybe a ten foot clock with steam coming out the top from these train whistle things and a gold pendulum swinging back and forth. As any fancy old clocks would, thisclock blew the big middle whistle wnd the four smaller surrounding whistles each hour. Fortuantly for us, we got there five minutes until, 2:00. When the clock reached 2:00, the whistles played a little jig and let out a bunch of steam. It was almost as much steam/gas as when Cooper farts. Almost. Other than looking like Coopers farts, it was pretty cool to see.
Once the whistles went off, we caught a taxi to take us to the Lions Gate Bridge. We were dropped off on the north side of the bridge (our hotel is on the south side), and walked across to the middle, taking many videos along the way. It was a fairly long walk but it was a nice view, but very loud cars next to us. We finally made it across and soon realized that we had no way of getting a taxi back and instead would have to walk a very long way to a bus stop. Let me just say, walking next to a very, very, very busy highway for about 20ish minutes, NO BUENO. On the bright side, we burnt a bunch of calories. When we finally made it to a bus stop, we took the bus to the hotel and immediately went to our room to nap, shower and chill.
Today was really fun and good daddy-daughter quality time, except that my dad kept freaking me out and saying that the actual thing is about 50 times more stressful than this. So excited. Actually though, I am very excited to see where we're going and what cool things we get to do.
To start it off we went to Roots. The scavenge is to find the Canadia in the store. To get to the store we used the paper map where we marked everything. I was the navigator who had never done this before. The intelligent advice given to my by my dear old dad was "be the map!" Thanks Dad. When we got there we had no idea what "finding Canadia" meant so we guessed it meant the collection made in Canada and influenced by Vancouver. We went in, took a few selfies with a helper and the Canadia collection and left.
The next scavenge we decided to tackle was the Vancouver Art Gallery. This one is where you have to dine the Group of Seven painting. With my super experienced navigation, we got there to find it was closed, except it was the wrong building. Luckily when we found the right building the gallery was open. We quickly purchased tickets and asked about the Group of Seven painting. Turns out its not actually a painting but instead a group of seven artists who painted a bunch of landscape pieces. We found the paintings by one of the seven artists in no time and took a picture with them in no time.
After leaving the gallery and coming out to the cold and rain, we headed towards a shoe shop called, Fluenog's, not Fluvengogs (that is my bad memory and pronunciation combined). We had a little trouble finding that one, not because of my navigation skills (or lack of), but because we marked it wrong on the map so we ended up using google maps to find it. When we went inside we had to find the most expensive shoe. So from going shopping, unwillingly, with my sister and mom I gathered that clothes and shoes, especially womens are super expensive; so I expected the most expensive shoe to be maybe $500. Nope. The most expensive shoe was a gold and black, hand stitched boot that was $999. I know, so expensive! After we finally overcame our surprise and took a picture, we went to ask some customers who they think is the most famous Vancourverian for one of the scavenges. A couple said Micheal Bubble, Micheal J Fox, Seth Rogen and my favorite, Ryan Reynolds. Yay Deadpool!
Anyway after that we decided to take a snack break and go eat to at Japadog which was one of the scavenges. I learned a japadog is a japanese hotdog. Honestly that doesn't sound that bad to try, unlik beer which will be talked about later on. We found the resturant with a only a little bit of a problem; problem being we couldn't find it but we eventually did with the help of google maps. When we did finally order and get our food, I was ready to use my critical writing experience from school to professionally judge these japadogs. My eloquent and detailed judgement is that it is a hotdog and sushi roll combined to create the japadog.
Onto the next scavenge. This one is you have to go to a cannabis store. For those who are youths like me or just don't know what cannabis means, it means marijuana. When we found a marijuana store I obviously could not go in, so my dad brought an employee out to take a selfie with. Unfortuantly I could still smell the marijuana from outside, no bueno. Ah-ma, Ah-gong and Mother you will never have to worry about me doing drugs or whatever (its your other children you have to watch out for, but you didn't hear it from me).
That was a pretty short scavenge and soon enough we were off to our next. We had to walk to Chinatown for the next scavenges so I was doing some complicated navigating. Luckily by then I kind of got the hang of it. Also by then my dad had started calling me Dora and I had heard him say "be the map" too many times to count. When we arrived in Chinatown, we first took a selfie at the Millennium Gate which is the entrance to Chinatown. After that we went hunting for the narrowest
building in the world, which was also in Chinatown. Fortunately for us, the building was near the
entrance and easy to spot. We took some selfies, tried to read the signs in Manderin (emphasized on tried, sorry Mr. Zhou) and then went to our next scavenge in Chinatown; to visit San Yat-Sen Garden. Apparently San Yat-Sen is a very famous chinese politician, who according to my dad is the 'Martin Luther King of China". There we relaxed inside and drank the complimentary tea, whilst also doing another scavenge. Talk about pro multi taskers. Anyway the scavenge was to find out our chinese zodiac and write down our good and bad traits. Luckily for us, we already knew our zodiacs and most of our good and bad traits. Yay self awarness.
After that was done and documented, we walked to the Police Museum which was only a few blocks away. Once we arrived we had to find out why this museum was built in the location it was built. We ended up asking the front desk lady for the answer. I know so creative, but I mean it gets an exact answer. We learned it was because it was near the police station and it used to be the Coroners Court but was currently not being used when they decided to open up a police museum.
We finished that scevenge a lot faster than I expected and were out within 15 minutes. Once we left, we looked at the map to see which scavenge was the closest. This was one of the mandatory scanvenges: eating mussels and drinking a Pacific Coast beer at Chamber. We walked there because it was only a few blocks away. Soon enough we were there and seated. Super lucky for us the mussels were served from 12:30 till their close and it was 1:00. We're pro time planner people. Anyway we ordered mussels and one beer, cause I can barely drink a sip of beer much less a full glass. The food arrived pretty quickly in a fancy pot with bread and fries. Because my dad is super nice, he made me try the beer first. No bueno. It starts out tasting like apple cider and quickly sours making it have a yucky aftertaste. The mussels and bread on the otherhand were super good and refeshing after all the walking.
After that we were off to the second to last scavenge; seeing the steam clock. It was a pretty short walm to the clock. Gotta say, did not reach my expectations for size. I expected a huge clock that you see in disney movies (not Frozen), instead there was maybe a ten foot clock with steam coming out the top from these train whistle things and a gold pendulum swinging back and forth. As any fancy old clocks would, thisclock blew the big middle whistle wnd the four smaller surrounding whistles each hour. Fortuantly for us, we got there five minutes until, 2:00. When the clock reached 2:00, the whistles played a little jig and let out a bunch of steam. It was almost as much steam/gas as when Cooper farts. Almost. Other than looking like Coopers farts, it was pretty cool to see.
Once the whistles went off, we caught a taxi to take us to the Lions Gate Bridge. We were dropped off on the north side of the bridge (our hotel is on the south side), and walked across to the middle, taking many videos along the way. It was a fairly long walk but it was a nice view, but very loud cars next to us. We finally made it across and soon realized that we had no way of getting a taxi back and instead would have to walk a very long way to a bus stop. Let me just say, walking next to a very, very, very busy highway for about 20ish minutes, NO BUENO. On the bright side, we burnt a bunch of calories. When we finally made it to a bus stop, we took the bus to the hotel and immediately went to our room to nap, shower and chill.
Today was really fun and good daddy-daughter quality time, except that my dad kept freaking me out and saying that the actual thing is about 50 times more stressful than this. So excited. Actually though, I am very excited to see where we're going and what cool things we get to do.
Steam Clock
Millennium Gate
City Cannabalis
Roots Canadia Collection
Wow, cannibas and beer on your first day. And of course you figured out how to include a jab to your little brother on your blog. Hey - I thought google maps weren't allowed, or maybe it was just because it was a practice day? Can't wait to read about where you go next.
ReplyDeletethe first leg is the "warm-up leg." at least the last time we went in 2017 it was, and it is this time as well. it was an un-scored leg, but do 10 scavenges and turn in your score sheet. this is a really good on-ramp for new folks, to get used to the documentation requirements.
ReplyDeletealso new, there are some legs where you will be allowed to use your phone. this is definitely a new development. anyway, this leg was one where you could use the phone. strangely enough, it wasn't really much help. you still have to find the bus stop or find a taxi or walk to the place or talk to the person to get the background, and some of the clues are still opaque and not on google. as you're running around, it's just more efficient to use a good ole big paper map :).
we turned in our paperwork at 8pm and got our four hour notice. we are leaving tonight!