If you have seen my blog for the past almost 3 weeks you have noticed that I have been on vacation.  Yep—it was the vacation to beat all vacations.  An anniversary trip of grand proportions thanks to my wonderful and fabulous husband.   I had scheduled posts up through this week in anticipation of not being able to post while we were gone and I am glad that I did.  I will start posting some snappies and thoughts about our latest trip later on this week after all my scheduled posts have been done—that will give you something to look forward to!  🙂

Tea at the Fairmont Empress….lovely!

A few thoughts before I check out for the day—-which is pretty easy since I am severely jetlagged and feel like a baby who has her days and nights mixed up.

1. I am glad to live in a country where I can access whatever I want to access on the web.  China blocks many things including most blogs (which explains why I was pretty quiet on comments both on my blog and yours the past week) and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

2. Ours is a wonderful country —and our neighbors to the north in Canada are pretty darn wonderful too.

This is what greeted us as we took the boat into Victoria!!!!

1. I am happy to have lived through several harrowing taxi rides in Shanghai—-nothing like dodging in and out of traffic including bikes, motorcycles, scooters, vendors with carts of food and bbq’s and pedestrians with wildly honking horns  from all around where there are obviously no rules .  Anything goes. 
   

2.  It is great to have a very responsible teenager and her mom tend to the furbabies and the house while we are gone–makes for a great homecoming.

3. People who travel have interesting stories and are willing to share freely with others which is a fabulous thing around a breakfast table at Bed and Breakfasts. There are also some really great folks who run B & B’s and they make those visits perfect–more on some of those memorable places later! 

4. Bears are alive and well and living in neighborhoods in Squamish, British Columbia —-I saw this with my very own eyes! 

5. Chinese babies are the cutest things ever—-if I could have I would have brought one home with me.

6. There are no vampires or werewolves in Forks, Washington.  We ate lunch there and honestly folks—I don’t know what the big to do is all about.  

7. Our trip included travel by car, plane, sea plane, train, subway, multiple taxis ,ferries,  horse and carriage, and by foot.  It was pretty amazing.

8.  It is always good to come home to our own bed, our own house, our furbabies and yes….even to the mounds of laundry and cleaning that must be done.  There is no place like home.

9.  And without a doubt–the universal language is TEA!!!!