Selcouth Chronicles Week 27
Hello family and friends! Welcome to week 27 of the Selcouth Chronicles.
Week 27: July 7 - July 13
July 8: Skerries 🚗-> Dublin🛫 ->🛬Amsterdam🛫 ->🛬Calgary
July 12: Calgary 🛫 ->🛬Vancouver
IRELAND AND CANADA
Highlights: breakfast in Skerries, limoncello shots with Patrick, Ardgillan Castle, KLM Delft Blue Houses, visiting friends in Canada, Calgary Stampede, Vancouver Public Library, seeing cousins, dinner with a water view in Vancouver, being back on PST for the first time since January
James:
This week was a very lazy week. We mostly just ate and relaxed. But do not despair, readers, we did do at least a few things this week worth mentioning!
Our first stop on Sunday was for a late breakfast at a place called Root. Everybody else had sensible meals, but me? I had almost entirely meat. Specifically, I had a meat-filled brisket sandwich, and it was delicious and deserves its special mention here. Once I had polished it off, we decided that the best course of action was for us/me to walk off all that food. After stopping at the house to prepare, we went to Ardgillan Castle. It’s not really a castle, just a medium-sized medieval building surrounded by beautiful walking paths and trees. I loved the view, but I think that the highlight of being there was the dogs. Ardgillan is dog-friendly, so the place was chock full of adorable dogs and their owners. We had a nice walk around the property and when we had to leave to go to dinner I was very disappointed. I was still a little annoyed when we got to the restaurant, but our server, Patrick, quickly made me feel at home. He surprised us by knowing that we were from California the minute we walked in the door! It turns out that he had lunch at Roots right after we left and the lady there told him about us, our trip, and that we were planning to go to that restaurant for dinner. I felt a little like a celebrity! Patrick was really nice and we were lucky to have him. He gave us great pizza recommendations and he really spiced up our night. It was extra nice because we were a little sad going in and feeling like our trip was basically ending the next morning, but by the end we all left happy.
Monday was the usual hustle and bustle of a travel day. We woke up at 5:30 and managed to stay awake long enough to catch our flight to Amsterdam, which was just a connector to our actual destination: Calgary. It was almost 11 hours of travel, and when we got there I was sleep deprived and jet-lagged. This is not a good combination, and it didn’t help my mood when we discovered that one of our big duffel bags was left in Amsterdam. After making that annoying realization, we went outside and met Mrs. Jan and Mr. Barry, some friends of Mom and Dad that they’d met on their Antarctica cruise! They were so kind as to let us bunk at their place and even picked us up from the airport. We met their daughters and some other relatives that were visiting, and the party went on for so long that we were awake until 8:30! This might not seem so bad, but between the time difference and our wake up time we had been up and moving for over 23 hours straight! We were very glad when it was time to sleep.
On Tuesday we were lazy bums. We slept for an obscene amount of time and lazed around the house for the rest of the day. Jan and Barry took us for a walk around their neighborhood and were very understanding about our jetlag. The only other time we left was to go out for dinner - Greek food, which was pretty good. Even though we didn’t get much done, it was nice to have a slow day with friends.
On Wednesday Mom, Abby, and I went to the Calgary Stampede, an annual fair that is one of the biggest things to do in Calgary. The train ride there was absolutely packed with people dressed in cowboy hats and boots. I felt a little out of place in my scuffed up shoes and bright red baseball cap. When we arrived and tried to get off, I nearly lost Mom and Abby in the sea of humanity. After that little scare we went and got tickets, which was actually a very orderly process for a huge fair. At the booth we scored a map, and when we looked at it, there were so many options to choose from! Stock dog competitions, food, rides, animals, motorbikes… it was all there. We decided to start with the animals. They were all stationed in separate pens inside a massive room. The smell of farm animals assaulted our group the second we went in, and Abby went straight for a group of chicks. They were very cute, with their fuzzy bodies and high-pitched cheeps, but they didn’t do much. The same could also be said for the hens and chickens. All of the animals were like this, except for a batch of piglets that were a constant blur of activity. Personally, I think that it was just a lead-in to my favorite event: the stock dog competition. The stock dog competition pits a handler and dog against three sheep. To make it to the next round, the dog needs to herd the sheep around the arena in a specific pattern before hustling them into a pen, and all this needs to be done within four minutes. It may sound easy, but it’s not - of the 10 dogs that we watched, only 2 actually managed it. In other words, only 2/10, or 20%, of the competitors that we watched made it. That’s pretty ruff… get it? 🤣
The thing that I was really looking forward to was the motorcycle show! We went to the right area and sat down in a nice spot… and discovered 10 minutes later that the show had been listed at the wrong time and had already ended. This made me quite grumpy, so I crushed my sorrow in a flood of lemonade and mini donuts. We went inside one of the buildings to see some booths before hopping the train back to the house to hang out.
Thursday was the best day of the week by far. After breakfast, we went to a beautiful place called Bowness Park, where we found a nice spot by the river to set down our things. Once we unpacked, Barry and I tossed a football around for a while. Eventually Abby joined in, and it was a lot of fun until Barry went back to rest and chat with Mom and Jan. Abby and I went over and got some other kids to play with us, and we played Monkey in the Middle until Mom called us back to eat lunch. After lunch, we all went for a walk upriver, and found the perfect rock throwing spot! I always love throwing rocks into the water - it just feels so satisfying! Abby and I played there for a while until we had to go back to the house to get ready for dinner and pack for the plane to Vancouver.
On Friday morning we said our sad goodbyes to Jan and Barry and boarded the plane to Vancouver. We checked into our hotel, then Dad stayed to do some work while the rest of us went out to explore the city, starting with lunch at a bakery, where we got sandwiches and donuts. Then we were able to wander the city, and we found a great playground! Abby and I had a lot of fun there while Mom watched. Then Mom found our next destination: the Vancouver Public Library. It had 9 floors of books of every type, size, and genre. There was even a rooftop garden where you could sit and enjoy your books. I could have spent all day there, but alas, we only had an hour before it closed for the day. Dad met us there and the four of us walked back to the hotel together through the city, with a brief stop for crème brûlée ice cream.
We finally met our cousins on Saturday! After breakfast, we had a little time to rest before meeting Aunt Marja, Uncle Vinit, and our cousins Zibby and Max on Granville Island. We stopped at the Public Marketplace to grab some food. While we were eating our lunch we discovered that some more relatives had arrived, so we made our way back to our hotel to meet them. Aunt Erin, Uncle Andrew, and cousin Millie drove all the way up from Seattle to Vancouver just to see us for one night! (Everyone else will be getting on a Disney cruise to Alaska on Monday, but Erin and co have to get back home.) We all hung out together for the rest of the day and even got to have dinner together. Meems and Papi were also supposed to arrive, but they missed their connecting flight because of bad weather and got delayed until Sunday morning. Even without Meems and Papi, we were lucky to have a reservation for so many people for dinner! It was a fun night.
For the next nine days we will be on a fun Disney cruise to Alaska. It should be very laid-back and relaxing compared to all of the planning and bustle of the last six months. We won’t be able to send out our regular newsletter because we won’t have internet, but don’t be too disappointed! When we are done we will be sending out one final letter to everyone.
Sean:
As we close out the trip, we are returning to a place we went for our 10th anniversary, 6 years ago. Vancouver was a nice place that we could get to with young kids without dealing with any time changes. We truly enjoyed our trip there and return now with a need to relax and prepare for the cruise that will truly end the traveling portion of the trip.
As the third largest city in Canada behind Toronto and Montreal, there is plenty to see and do in the area. One thing that our family really enjoys are books, so we had to check out the library. The central branch of the Vancouver Library is a full city block of the city. Opened in 1995, the library building is 9 stories high, though originally the top two floors were leased to government use. The structure that houses the library also has other businesses and shops within it, forming a one stop shop area that Vancouverittes can leverage. Wandering the floors, there were places for board games, puzzles, and just open seating areas that people could use to study or spend the day. The top floor now has a garden space to make sitting outside quite appealing. It was a great way to get out into the city for us while giving some down time to settle in.
Of course, another big draw of the city is the water, as it sits right on the bay. Since we’re catching a ship out from here, our hotel is right on the water as well. For dinner, we walked along the shoreline to get to the restaurant, which was very nice. It was a real treat to spend time with so much of the extended family. Granville Island is also a great stop where there’s food and shopping. We unfortunately got a little turned around while walking and went over the wrong bridge to get there, but it gave us the opportunity to see more of the city than we normally would. You’d think after seven months we would be better at finding our way. 😛
For those who haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Vancouver, the highlight of Granville Island is the public market that has been there since 1979. In the market you can buy local crafts, which when we visited years ago we picked up some great shirts that I still love today. Granville Island is also where we stumbled upon a local artist whose art hangs over our fireplace in our bedroom back home. Locals can also do their grocery shopping here, but the highlight for us is the take-away food and Lee’s Donuts. We of course picked up some more treats on this trip, but I’ll always remember walking out with donuts years ago and James coming across a busker outside and just staring at him playing the guitar.
This trip didn’t lead to us seeing too many of the sites in Vancouver that we caught in our last trip, such as the rainforest to the north and the suspension bridges, but even just wandering around in the city is refreshing. Outside of returning at the end of the cruise, I’m not sure we’ll be back in the future, but this city will always have some great memories for me.
Abby:
Calgary’s best known event is probably the Calgary Stampede. It is centered around the stampede, but the fair outside is a big part too.
The first fair was in 1886. However, the stampede and festival started in 1912 by an American guy named Guy….haha! (This also reminded me of Guy Fawkes from London.) He arranged the stampede honoring army men who survived WW1, and it became a yearly event in 1923. This was because it merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition and was called from then on the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. The rodeo has become very, very popular with the locals and many across Canada and even other countries. Shockingly, the record for people visiting the stampede was in 2012 when 1.4 million people came!! Thank goodness the rodeo is spread out across 10 days! Including tickets, the fair, and other things, the stampede makes millions and millions of dollars each year.
It was very hot when Mom, James, and I went to the stampede. Somebody working there told us to head to the stadium so we could see the herding dog competitions going on. We decided to go…it had air conditioning! To get through to the competition, we had to go into the agriculture exhibition building. It was a large building hosting some farm animals and games. (I got to pet a lamb!) The herding dog competition is where dogs compete to see how well and how fast they can get three sheep through a course and into a pen. We watched ten of the canines, and eight got disqualified, unfortunately. They either nipped one of the sheep or the sheep ran away just as they got them to the gate of the pen. We decided to head out. James wanted to watch a motorcycle show, so we sat at the stands waiting for it to start. A while after the show was supposed to start, we gave up waiting and checked with one of the volunteers to see if anything happened. Apparently, somebody put the wrong time on the rodeo website, and the show ended only a few minutes before we arrived. Bummer!
Afterwards, we pushed our way deeper into the fair grounds to find some food and drink. We found a bucket of mini donuts to snack on and lemonade. Later, we went into a center where people were selling items, giving makeovers, hosting games and more. It was almost like a large farmers market in Costco.
The stampede was fun, but after two hours, it was a bit much for us! The heat and the jetlag definitely got to us by the end. We didn’t make it long, but it was my first fair and rodeo, so that’s cool! We didn’t stay late enough to see the actual stampede and things like chuck wagon races in the evening, but many people like it a lot. Maybe someday we can go back to Calgary and try out the Stampede again when we are less jetlagged!
Caitlin:
I like to scan the bookshelves when I walk into someone’s home because it tells me a lot about them. What piques their interest? What do they find worthy of sharing? Have we read many of the same things? Is the shelf stuffed with titles or carefully curated? For many of the same reasons, I love to hear travel histories. Do you travel close to home or far away? Cruise in comfort or camp in a tent? Are you drawn towards urban jungles or natural wonders? Each choice, each adventure, is revealing.
As we have made our way these past six months, telling our own story has often given us the privilege of having other people open up to us and share some of their own lives. It’s inspiring to hear about other lives lived and adventures had. Even when we’ve been to the same places, we often find that other people have experienced, say, parts of a city that we didn’t get to see, or a national park we didn’t have time to visit. The people that we’ve met along the way have enriched our travels greatly. Sometimes they inspire us with their own travels and ways of exploring the world. Other times we’ve had local hosts, guides, and acquaintances who teach us about where we are and help us to get more out of each day than we could get on our own. History may be fascinating in a book, but hearing it told as a personal story from someone who lived through it is even more rewarding. Plus we’ve gotten many of our best tips - for restaurants, hiking trails, day trips, and more - by word of mouth. If only we had time to follow up on every tip! By the time we get home we will have been gone for seven months, but we just might be coming home with a travel wishlist that’s longer than when we started.
This week we had the special experience of using a past trip to launch us into a brand new one. Many of you know that when I was 25 I told Sean that I wanted to see Antarctica for my 40th birthday, and so we found ourselves on a cruise there with Jan and Barry in January 2023. We kept in touch afterwards, and it was delightful to introduce them to James and Abby this week and spend time at their home in Calgary. They are fairly experienced world travelers, and we loved getting to reconnect and hear of their stories. If it weren’t for our shared travel interests, we might never have met! What a lucky chance. Whether it's us venturing out or welcoming people to our own home, we hope that in the future we’ll be able to reconnect with some of our new friends from this trip the way that we have with our friends in Calgary!
See you in a few weeks!
Sean, Caitlin, James, and Abby
Catching up? Read week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23,24, 25, or 26.