{"id":4290,"date":"2019-03-07T07:05:17","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T15:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=4290"},"modified":"2019-03-29T03:05:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T10:05:59","slug":"sechelt-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/sechelt-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"Sechelt \u2013 Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I write\nthis, we are currently in Lisbon and we must say, it\u2019s nice to be back in\nEurope.  Decent weather (18 with sun and\nsome showers here and there), Mediterranean food, and cheap beer.  We haven\u2019t written much in the past 3 months\nas, well, there wasn\u2019t a whole lot to write about.  Sechelt was ok but it\u2019s a small west coast\ntown and there\u2019s not a lot to do there. \nIt was also winter (and still is judging by the weather report), so even\nless to do.  But we had a dog to look\nafter and we continued our \u2018european-like\u2019 lifestyle which was get up whenever,\nleisurely breakfast, go get groceries (with the dog), and wander about.  So, we got our 7 to 10 km daily walks rain,\nshine, or as was the case for the month of February, snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rocky chasing the ducks
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In some\nways, the time dragged a bit knowing we were out of there come March, but generally,\nit flew by.  We always seemed to be busy.  Errands to run and dogs walks of course, some\nyard\/maintenance work at moms\u2019 place, the obligatory medical and dental\ncheckups some of which required the occasional trip into Vancouver.  It\u2019s interesting how stressful BC ferries and\nthe traffic in Vancouver is after being away from it for a year.  Still, there are worse places to spend the\nwinter.  Like, anywhere else in Canada.  A hundred feet of snow and minus 40.  Yikes. \nIt\u2019s been a brutal winter in the great white north.  There was a news report I saw last week about\nsome Alberta worker\u2019s lunch being frozen complete with a nice photo of noodles\nand a suspended fork over a plate.  While\nthis kind of \u2018art\u2019 might seem funny when you are in your twenties, it\u2019s stops\nbeing humorous when you get to our age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, we get\nasked a lot about why we want to spend winter in Canada and not somewhere\nwarmer.  It\u2019s what everyone else\ndoes.  The answer is\u2026it\u2019s\ncomplicated.  Would we do it again?  Possibly, maybe even probably.  The house\/dog sitting is a good gig and short\nof being \u2018ex\u2019, as in expats or even exit stage right, we need to be in Canada\nfor some length of time.  Spending the\nwinter in South America, Australia, or South-east Asia and the summer back here\nhas its appeal but it cuts into our Euro-time. \nThere\u2019s a lot to see and do over there and we still have much of Canada\nwe want to visit.  Nobody travels Canada\nor northern Europe in the winter unless you\u2019re into skiing or staying in ice-hotels.\nAnd since we need to be in BC for at least some of the time\u2026. it\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hear some of you saying, \u2018oh boohoo, life\u2019s tough, suck it up!  Must be nice having all these first world problems!\u2019  And to that we say\u2026 yes, you are absolutely right.  Sometimes it doesn\u2019t sit well, and it gets in your face after being in places like Guatemala.  There are a lot of bigger issues we could be dealing with and maybe it\u2019s time to think about giving back in some way.  Thoughts for a later post perhaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As I write this, we are currently in Lisbon and we must say, it\u2019s nice to be back in Europe.  Decent weather (18 with sun and some showers here and there), Mediterranean food, and cheap beer.  We haven\u2019t written much in the past 3 months as, well, there wasn\u2019t a whole lot to write about.  Sechelt was ok but it\u2019s a small west coast town and there\u2019s not a lot to do there.  It was also winter (and still is judging by the weather report), so even less to do.  But we had a dog to look after and we continued our \u2018european-like\u2019 lifestyle which was get up whenever, leisurely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4290"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4555,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions\/4555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}