Burrito West Blog

Lately I've been watching season 1 of Downton Abbey, a British production set in 1912 (& onwards) that follows the gentry and their servants in a big fancy estate. The show is fantastic and I'm really enjoying following a show set in this period, as so few are. What a ripe era - the Titanic, WWI, women's suffrage, the introduction of the motorcar, the telephone, etc.

And, oh my, the costumes!

I'm glad I don't have to wear a corset, don't get me wrong, and I love pants, but wow did they dress incredibly in that era. Apparently, this is the most expensive English tv series ever made and one look at the setting and the costumes and the vintage cars and you can easily believe it.

Random factoid for the day. I learned the word "censure" from Pride and Prejudice. "I deserve neither such praise nor such censure."

I don't find a lot of opportunities to use it, but I like knowing it. Thanks Elizabeth Bennett (and Jane Austen).

With the disaster in Japan on everyone's minds, I can tell you people in Vancouver are giving some thought to earthquake-preparedness finally. It's a bit of a silver lining in all the terribleness, that it's making folks in BC think about what we will do when our big earthquake hits. Fortunately for us in Vancouver, we're not at risk of tsunami, which seems to be what caused most of the damage in Japan. Though on the flip side, our airport is about 10cm above sea level in an area that expected to basically liquify (everyone assumes that Richmond will be underwater completely, given the city was built on a flood plain of a river delta next to the ocean - so, don't move to Richmond), which seems like a problem when it comes to getting relief supplies to/from Vancouver. I'm not sure what the plan is to deal with that, perhaps bring everything in by float plane?

Anyway, Peter and I have had our disaster kit packed and ready for a few years now, though this does remind me to go replace some of the foodstuffs and maybe add to our water supply. Funny how easily we as humans can forget/ignore the dangerous conditions we live in, when we see no signs of it in our day-to-day life. Kind of like how we fail to change our behaviours to try to avert climate change feedback loops.

Not much going on to post about - but I've edited some more Cuba photos and found a few more favorites including one of sneakers over a powerline, which is apparently a global phenomenon (love the textures in that one), and one of a woman in the ocean which I feel should be a Bacardi ad or something.... [click to see bigger versions]

I think this may be my favorite pictures of all the ones I've taken, ever (click to see bigger version). I have a thing for windows/doors, crumbling ruins, old architecture - this one has it all. This is a building across the street from El Capitolio (see below) - the old government building. In any other city, this place would be restored to luxury and used as a vacation home by someone stupidly wealthy who stops by once a year. Instead, it's crumbling, but lived in by actual people. [The rest of my Cuba photos can be found HERE]

Peter and I spent the last week in Varadero Cuba, which is technically in Cuba but is full of Canadians in reality.

Still, Canadians are nice, and the beach was lovely and the weather perfect (sunny, 30deg, nice breeze) and Peter and I really needed a week to sit and read and familiarize ourselves with the sun again.

Also, I finally got to swim in the ocean and it was pretty awesome.





The all-inclusive resort thing was strange, convenient in some ways (no cleaning up!), annoying in others (can only eat at set meal times - what if you have a cookie craving at 11pm?!). Our hotel was lovely, with a beautiful atrium full of hanging vines, we never had to wait in line for anything, and I saw virtually no bugs at all.

Yay! What more can you ask for? Maybe some spices in the food, but I'd been warned that the food was bland, and if that's the biggest complaint then you're doing okay.








We did do a bus tour thing into Havana which was our first time on a bus tour. It was strange to pull up to tourist spots in a shiny new enormous bus, troupe off with all the other Canadians, take photos, and then all get back on the bus and head to the next spot. We did walk around old Havana for a bit which was very nice and we met a lovely couple from BC that we got to know over the day and evening.

But Cuba is weird. There's two Cubas really - one where people live in crumbling buildings with questionable infrastructure/services and one with fancy restaurants that charge North American prices for things - and these two Cubas coexist side by side. It's just weird. So you sit in your cafe and drink your $4 mohito, served by a fancy waiter, and someone is standing at their balcony on the crumbling building across the street, hanging their laundry or just watching all the tourists.

I wonder how Cubans really feel about tourists. It's great that old Havana is being restored, but if none of the people that live there can afford any of the shops/cafes.... what's the point?

Deep thoughts aside, it was a wonderful relaxing trip. We didn't get to do much salsa, but got a few semi-private lessons (because no one else showed up for salsa class). We did dance a chacha at the a la carte restaurant when the band came by our table. Everyone was very excited about it and the staff all complimented us, I think it may have been the first time they ever saw Canadians dance in Cuba. :)

Here is Peter pushing me into the water at the end of the day because he's a boy and that's what they do:

















More photos are on the flickr account (warning: heavy on the architecture), as I get around to uploading them.