Tuesday night Alicia and Adam invited us over to celebrate Mexicans. There is a long standing joke between Adam and the rest of us that Claudia is Mexican. This is why every year at Christmas Claudia gets a little Mexican gift in which to decorate her office with. We’ve tried to correct Adam and inform him that she is Chilean and not Mexican but he keeps forgetting. Sometimes he even thinks she is Peruvian, or Ecuadorian, or anything Latin other than Chilean. It is beyond amusing for everyone except Claudia!

I not a Mexican! Clueless, I love you.

Alicia and Adam made us amazing fajitas with so many options to chose from. They even did Mexican rice which tasted SO good in the fajitas, I don’t know why Chad and I have never thought of doing that. MENTAL NOTE.

We sat around the TV and chatted the night away. The boys stayed in their work clothes just so they could feel extra special and a little Mad Men-esque.

We watched the episode of Modern Family with the pigeon. Claudia wanted to watch it so that we could all have a visual example of what she went through when the pigeons attacked her apartment. I’ve never watched an episode of Modern Family (yes I do live under a rock) but I  have heard so much about it. OMG hilarious! Chad and I need to get our TV watching act together.

After our little TV episode the men settled in with rather large glasses of scotch and talked business, while us girls chatted about girly things.

It was a wonderful evening that we need to do more often!

So, last night didn’t got as planned.

We’ve been meaning to try and hit up a food cart downtown FOREVER but it seems that every time we plan it, it never actually works. Last night we were sure it was finally our time to eat delicious street food, but fate had other plans for us.

Since we don’t work in the downtown core I haven’t seen any of these food carts or food trucks around, so I wasn’t quite sure how it worked. I did, however, find a great website that gave a lot of info on the different food carts in Vancouver. I quickly realized that the majority of the carts downtown are lunch carts and therefore are gone by 3 or 4 in the afternoon. This left us a little weary as to what we were going to find for dinner.

We stumbled upon Poke’m, which closed at 5:30 and decided that we’d leave work a little early to catch some meat ball delight.

Well, we left work, got cash, found parking, walked to the corner, and…NOTHING! It was 10 after 6 and there was no cart to be seen. WHY!? Why can’t we catch a street meat break!? We have no idea what happened or why the cart wasn’t there. It was all very strange because Alicia had seen the cart there the day before, but yesterday…NOTHING.

Le sigh.

So, we made the best of a disappointing situation and walked up a few blocks to the Crepe Cafe. You can’t really be too sad when you have amazing crepes in front of you, right?

I use to frequent the Crepe Cafe but haven’t been in a while. Their Prociutto & Brie crepe was amazing, as expected. Add to that a nice glass of Merlo and I was happy with the fate of the situation. We were going to share a sweet Crepe but instead opted to walk down the street to catch Bad Teacher at the Scotia Theater and indulge in some butter pop corn and tasty nibs. Not a bad ending to the evening.

As for the street carts, they are still an elusive goal I have not yet concurred. I think Chad and I are going to try and find one one a Saturday, during the day. I hope we have better luck then with our past attempts.

We went to the Twisted Fork last night. What a cute little place that is!

We hit up Sephora and Pacific Center before making our way down Granville for dinner. Claudia seriously knows the best places in the city to eat. If you need a recommendation you should ask her!

Whenever I see a great selection of Scotch at a restaurant I get really excited, even though its Chad who drinks the stuff, not me!

The style of the menu was half Entrees half Tapas. We ordered a couple Tapas each and they were unbelievable!

Braised Beef Skewers
Braised beef skewered with rosemary and a micro green salad topped off with Parmesan cheese and matchstick fries

Warm Sautéed Mushroom Salad
Pan seared wild mushrooms, vine ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, sourdough chunks and feta cheese tossed in basil vinaigrette

We filed this dinner under ‘Business Meeting’. If only we could have written it off.

The girls ordered dessert. How cute!

This is what happens when you try and get three girls to all take a picture they all agree on.

RE: Alicias Skin Tone – She just got back from Mexico and shes a drunk Asian. She also had an allergic reaction to something she ate :(

RE: Claudias Facial Expressions – She is very particular when it comes to photos of herself. The only reason these are surfacing is because we all look goofy.

RE: My Facing Being Cut Out – Yea, Im just a bad photographer.

Another amazing night with these two sluts.
(Dont worry, we call each other sluts as sort of an endearing nick name)

Twisted Fork was amazing and chatting with these two is always a riot.

What a way to spend a Thursday!

You may have to bare with me and all my photos and stories today.

On Thursday night Alicia, Claudia, and I went to Bright Nights at Stanley Park. Finally a planned Christmas activity that actually happened! Yay!

We headed out right after work and made our way down to the giant light display.

Claudia was being shy.

Someone made a friend!

The lights on all the trees were very cool, and most of the displays were fun and brought back childhood memories. Some of the displays were a little on the ghetto side, but I’m sure who ever organizes it does the best they can with the money they have. As an outsider it seems like it would be easy to put together some simple and inexpensive displays that are a little less on the ghetto side, but then that’s me, an outsider.

I love Yukon Cornelius.

Ah…Jesus, there you are!

They are playing instruments to the music.

And now, for something offensive.

Claudia thinks her jacket looks like a vagina. Yes, you heard me.

She is being birthed by a giant black vagina.

That is way too graphic for my liking.

Now, onto something more wholesome.

We bought tickets for 6:30, which meant we could start to line up between 6:30 & 7. I thought that meant we had to wait in line for half an hour and that we would catch the train at 7. Turns out that’s not the case at all. You can start lining up at 6:30 and then the train comes every 10 minutes or so. We were lined up, rode the train, and we off all before 7! Perfect timing for us!

Everything was well organized and quite efficient!

Alicia is a loser cause she gets to sit all by herself.

Claudia and I are the snobs.

The ‘live’ bear was probably one of the best parts of the train ride.

Riding over the lake was amazing.

A tribute to Bob & Doug McKenzie. Priceless. The sad part was that half the people on the train didn’t know who they were. It is a part of our Canadian history! We need to bring up our kids with the knowledge of the amazing Bob & Doug.

Extra bonus points for who ever it was who found the Much Music sled and added it to the display. Awesome!

***

After the train we headed down to the West End for dinner at Nook. Claudia had been dying to go there for months, and it seems like the perfect opportunity to do so.

Nook is this little restaurant tucked away, literally, in a nook. The atmosphere is really great and reminds me of a NY Diner we frequented the week we were there. They don’t take reservations so we had to put our name down and wait about half an hour, but we walked around the West End and quickly killed the time.

Pizza was our meal of choice. Alicia went for the Ricotta Pizza with Veggies, and Claudia and I went for the Prosciutto Pizza.

It was probably one of the best pizzas I have ever had, but the price of it totally hurt my soul. $17 for a pizza I could have bought in Italy for 6 euro! My relatives are rolling over in their graves right now.  It was over priced (in my humble Italian opinion) for what it was, because honestly, if I went and bought all of those ingredients (arugula, prosciutto & garlic) it would have cost me a lot less. I feel kind of bad for saying that, but I am totally jaded after eating pizza in the Mother Land for a month.  

The ingredient that sent this particular pizza over the top was roasted garlic. Oh my lanta, how have a I never roasted garlic and then thrown it on a pizza before?! If you ever get the chance to do this, I suggest you do. Roasted Garlic makes everything in life 100 times better.

I am totally torn over my love of this pizza and my hate for the price.

The other items on the menu were a little more reasonably priced. The pasta dishes were huge and the antipasti looked amazing. I wouldn’t hesitate going back and trying the other things on the menu.

It was quite a fun night with my girlies. I’m so glad I finally got to do something Christmasy!

On our one ‘Free Day’ we decided to make the trip out to Malibu. In the four times I have been to California I have never been to the beach, until this time that is!

There were a couple of stops we wanted to make along the way. One was to the super cute and expensive out door mall on the Pacific Coast Highway, and of course, Malibu Seafood. Oh the things we do for food!

We passed by some pretty nice places on the was to the PCH. The directions we were given didn’t work out 100% but it was a wonderful drive non the less.

Hello dream balcony! Thanks to our misguided directions we did manage to encounter our one and only star sighting – Chris Parnell!

Pacific Coast Highway!

I find this sign quite amusing.

The giant fish tank at the out door mall. You can actually see a partially eaten fish at the button of the tank.

That store is just way too damn expensive.

Stormy clouds that never produced a storm.

Not the weather one would expect in Malibu.

SHEEPS

Malibu Seafood! Made it!

You can see all the yummi foods we ate in the FOOD post below.

Waves

There are always choppers in the sky.

Kind of an awkward photo. ahaha.

I was obsessing over the waves.

This strip of houses was ghettttto.

I was, however, obsessed with all the beach erosion and how the stairs all had to be constantly added on to.

Ghetto Beach Chic?

Malibu Shoot

Back towards the car.

DOLPHIN!

The only reason we actually spotted the pod was because some little Mexican girl started to freak out over them. Thank you little Mexican girl!

I invented a beach feet washing system.

Our next plan was to drive up the Topanga Canyon; possibly to try and find Charles Manson, and possible just for the drive its self.

Once Claudia told me Charles Manson lived close by I had to Wiki the whole story, and then obviously because overly obsessed. Sometimes, I have creep obsessions. Hello Riverview!

The look out at the top.

Lizard!

Claudia had this whole plan ‘mapped’ out that we could drive through the Topanga Canyon, come out the other side and take Mulholland Drive back to West Hollywood.

Well…we tried and ended up driving down some private dirt road that lead to no where. Umm…yea…not good!

So much for that plan!

We ended up just driving back the way we came and took Sunset Blvd home while trying to look for OJ Simpson. Current Obsession #2.

Speaking of OJ, has anyone seen that recent sports documentary about June 17th 1994 and how insane it was for sports lover with all the craziness that was going on plus the OJ white bronco pursuit thrown on top of it? I’ve caught the last half of it twice in the past two weeks. OBSESSED.

But I digress…

We (well, Claudia) though we saw something going down and paparazzi all around so I made an emergency right turn to catch the action. Turned out just to be a Jewish wedding. Claudia thought it had to do with the Mafia but I reminded her that the Mafia doesn’t run LA, the Jews do.

Next time we go back, we might as well break down and buy a map to all the starts home. Maybe we will get lucky that way.