A Rough Kind of Beauty

There was a rough kind of beauty in Gibsons and Sechelt today.

It was raining a heck of a lot over on the Sunshine Coast, but instead of feeling closed in and suffocated (like I usually do on rainy Vancouver days), the pelting rain felt free and fresh.

We set off from home to catch the late morning ferry. We still had those prepaid tickets from 10 years ago (good grief), and didn't want to let them go to waste. Well, what do you know; when we got to the ticket booth and eagerly held out those bright pink slips of paper, the lady said that they were obsolete now and that they were mere scraps of paper! She told us we had had until March 2010 to transfer the money on them to the new "Experience" card they have now, and that it was too late for anything. It was awful. So we paid about $100 for a trip we would not have taken if we hadn't had those tickets.

Anyway. I was hopping mad, but there wasn't much I could do in this situation.

We were also very nervous because we really wanted to get on this ferry now, but it was so full! We were lucky to get on; we were the last car in.

Our anxiety evaporated when we got up to the deck though; we saw a dolphin! It was leaping and splashing about in the distance, and you wouldn't have known it was a dolphin amidst all the slate-grey waves unless you looked for it. It was so majestic, the way it blew and great spray of seawater and then a shiny arc in the air before it dived back in. SO BEAUTIFUL. I love dolphins.

This was the first time I had seen a wild dolphin, and it was really different from the ones at the Aquarium. It too had a rough kind of beauty. It just seemed...free.

After the dolphin swam away (or rather, the ferry sped away), we stared at the sea for awhile. There was a lot of wind out there today, and I wish I could have gone sailing. I'm so afraid I'll forget how to sail come next summer! I'll post sometime about how I finally learned how to sail a small sailboat.

We took a ton of photos of the ocean and the dark clouds and the islands.

It's a short ferry ride, so we didn't do much else on it. We got off, and explored Gibson's Landing a bit, looking for a bite to eat. We finally decided against eating there, because we couldn't find something we all agreed on. We picked up a map from the Visitor's Centre and drove to Sechelt (I love that name! Sounds like "seashells"). It started to rain on the way.

We stopped at Wheatberries Bakery because it looked promising, and took a quick peek in the open door. We only saw cakes and stuff in the display cases then, so we moved on. (read a review here).

We went to Daphne's for lunch (at 2pm!). Read reviews about it here. I was starving! I ordered the lunch souvlaki platter, which included a skewer of meat (chicken, beef or pork), rice, Greek salad, pita bread, and a small tin cupful of Tzatziki sauce. It was really good. I loved the pita bread! It was puffed up, coated with a layer of olive oil, and simply dee-lish with the sauce. Anyone know of another Greek place in Vancouver with that kind of pita bread??

Other members of my family got the seafood sandwich with fries, the donair with fries, and the special prawn souvlaki lunch. The fries were perfect, as were the prawns, and the donair was nice and flavourful (I wanted to try some lamb this time, but they didn't have lamb on a skewer...) All of us enjoyed our food very much.

The atmosphere was cozy and perfect for lunch on a rainy day. There was a pretty drawing and story about Daphne, from Greek mythology, on the wall behind us. Bathrooms were decent.

Our server was friendly and explained everything we asked her. She seemed a bit in a hurry though near the end. Eh, we were too full to do much else except roll out the door anyway.

After lunch we headed out to the beach in Sechelt, but the water was up too high to go onto the sand. The waves were crashing against the rocks below. We just admired the wind and waves and watched a seagull drifting on the gusts of wind for a long time. We drove around town, finally stopping to walk around the local mall. I love local supermarkets...we went to one called Clayton's there. Then we watched 'Avatar' from outside an electronic goods store, then sniffed at some aromatherapy shops goodies, then ran out of things to look at. We went to a different beach, and took a short walk. My sis got her socks all wet, so we had to all suffer through some hot car air (I HATE that). Along the drive back to Gibsosn, we stopped at another small mall, but this one was about to close so we headed out quickly.

We bought some pumpkin pie and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies at Wheatberries. Mmm, those cookies were good, though I don't usually like cakey cookies. I like chewy ones, with lots of chunky chocolate. Can be slightly crisp at the edges, but I don't mind if they aren't if they're chewy enough. YUM.

The people at Wheatberries were great; jokey and comfortable to talk to. Fantastic last stop on the way to the ferries. They seemed to be a chain in that area.

I tried to study during the half an hour we had to wait for the ferry, but it was getting dark and my family insisted on watching music videos on my sister's iPod, so naturally I got distracted by them. Grr..I really had to read that chapter! I've got too much to do these days....I can't wait until this week of projects and tests and endless homework assignments ends.

But this trip gave me time to actually relax, without having to constantly think about my omnious TO-DO LIST during my "free time". If you could call it that. It's usually spent on the computer researching, emailing, or blogging.

Oh dear. I have to stop staying up till 1am all the time. Doing nothing, basically.

ANYway. Enough complaining.

Go visit Gibsons or Sechelt once in awhile. It's a very quiet community, but a good, peaceful getaway for a day or two.

One thing that was really noticeable though was the way a lot of people seemed to stare at us. I guess maybe there aren't many Asian families who visit/live on the Sunshine Coast often...

But it WAS very unnerving when people looked at us and constantly paid attention to what we were doing. Awkward. Hmm.

Maybe it was even more awkward for my sis and I because we have lived in Canada our whole lives, where we live, there are a lot of Asians. I suppose I felt even more exposed during our trip because there were hardly any Asians there...