The big sleep ( or a no-chocolate Nanaimo Bar)

After sleeping for almost 48 hours with interruptions barely long enough for eating, sneezing, sniffling, coughing, and aching, at the Island View B&B in Nanaimo, I am now on a ferry to Vancouver, where I will run some errands (including trying to get the severely scratched camera lens of my cell phone replaced) before hopping back on a ferry.

Impressions of Nanaimo so far can be easily triaged by an old movie title: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Ugly:  Malls have been allowed to fester here to never seen-before dimensions (e.g. Woodgrove Centre at Island Hwy and Hammond Bay Road)
The Bad: The chain-food feeling at Milano's and the size and dryness of the salmon teriyaki in the Seafood Box at Sushi Eh, with both venues being located in above mall.
The Good: The Miso soup and the Nigiri in the above Seafood box as well as the Fish as in Fish & Chips at Piper's Pub (a Nanaimo Bar ;-)  along Hammond Bay Road. Especially the almost non-existent batter of the latter deserves mention.  And foremost of all: Darlene Dillon, owner of the Island View B&B, displays a refreshing no-nonsense attitude, and coincidentally used to help my grandmother with her garden work about 20 years ago, before coming to Nanaimo 18 years ago. 3 photos of Darlene & her B&B gardens.

The regal Darlene

The mainland seen from a safe distance from Darlene's garden

The Garden

In the absence of any camera shots (I discovered a big scratch also on the lens of the brand new Sony Cybershot but a few pics might follow in an update), I include web-pilfered pictures of Hanoi, Hue, and of a train travelling along the coast of Vietnam ;-) Post-Script: The camera works after all, but I hesitate to take Vietnam out of here.

Hanoi (trainvietnam.com)

Hue (trainvietnam.com)