Chinese Lanterns and Italian Food

Sunday the 21st was a reasonable day, dry, quite bright and not too cold.  Nancy L and John had stuff to do and Nancy had to go and Senior sit her Mom so we were left to our own devices. A rest day was the order of the day. Knitting for me me  and Surfing the Net for Dave. Just like a lazy day at home.

At five in the evening NancyL collected us and we drive to China Town in Vancouver to the Winter Solstice Chinese Lantern festival.

City Lights

The Festival in held in the Sun Yat-Sen Garden in China Town. It's 18 years since we visited these gardens when they were first opened in 1986 in time for Expo.  Over the years even in the dark of the lantern lit gardens I can see they have changed greatly. 

 In the outer courtyard Of the Community Centre at the entrance to the Gardens there is a line up that goes back a few hundred yards. We have online tickets and march past the line up into the gardens. Theres already many people milling around. We get a cup of warm spiced Chinese tea and admire the lanterns.

 The drummers arrive and set up in a corner of the garden. Children arrive with the Lanterns they have made during the day in the Community Centre.

 I'm afraid my camera was not up to the night time photoghaphy. Luckily Nancy L had her Fuji with her. We use the torch light of her iPhone to add light.

Winter Solstice over the next morning we are up early. Th sun is out with us. Nancy L and John need to shop at the large Italian store in Burnaby. As we drive through East Vancouver we can see the mountains, across in North Vancouver, bathed in sunlight this morning but Downtown Vancouver is shrouded in fog.

The car park at Bosa is already quite full. After several circuits of the store with our trolleys adding all sorts of goodies for Christmas we finish with a cup of delicious Bosa coffee.

Bosa Coffee time

After a quick trip across to Gourmet Foods to fill in time we head back to Burnaby to Anton's Pasta Bar It's just gone 11.30am but we know we need to be early. There are already people there ordering. Anton's had been opened for 25 years but it's still very popular. It was 2008 when I was last here (and it was just as busy) and Dave hadn't been before. By 12.15 the restaurant is full. We order a Mista Salad for started between us followed by four 'lunch' pasta dished between the five of us. the Lunch dishes are smaller then the 'Dinner' dishes. The dishes arrived piled high!

Four dishes five people......

......and we hardly make a dent in the pasta.....

......but we were all stuffed!

Five very  stuffed people leave with four well packed and labelled 'Doggie' boxes. They came home with us. Oh and when we left people were lining up waiting for tables and this is a Monday!