Photography Encouraged.

It was time for a little art, so we headed to Vancouver Art Gallery to get our art on! After we paid we walked through the doors and were greeted with this sign..

..I thought how awesome! Photography encouraged indeed! So snap snap snap we went!

Then we went up a floor and as Emma was about to take a snap, one of the guards who obviously likes his power a little too much, snapped "no photos!" and stormed over to her. A little too aggressive in my opinion. We had not seen another sign that stated that photography was no longer encouraged. We headed up to the next floor and as we walked around, looking here and there.. we saw many people taking photos and nothing was being said, there were no signs to say either way. We looked. We looked hard. But then as Emma thought it must be safe, others were doing it after-all, a woman guard came over and said no photos, a little nicer than the previous one. When we asked about the signs she was rambling on about something.. I think she misunderstood what we were trying to say.. not that it was difficult. To be honest, it put a little bit of a dampener on the outing. It really isn't that hard to have signs.. after-all the photography encouraged sign was large and pretty clear. I will admit, they had some pretty cool exhibitions on, even if some were a little on the smelly and/or creepy side. What's life without a little creep and stink, amiright?!

It seems no matter where you are in the world, Fjällräven isn't far away. FYI: it's the backpack.

With our fill of art, we headed to a shopping mall. We had to get our shop on. Emma needed Levi's and this was the only store left. We searched high and low on our previous shopping outing last week to no avail. It was well worth the trip out, she got 3 pairs.. for about the price she would have paid for one, maybe one pair and a leg, here in Sweden.

Another reason it was worth the trip was... this!

It totally cracked me up to see MKR's Pete and Manu on the side of a train. Where was I again?! Australia or Canada?! Totally LOL worthy indeed.

With our shopping tucked safely away back in the room, we headed our for beer. Yep, more beer! We hadn't given up on Vancouver beer just yet. A trip to 33 Acres was.. at capacity. So we had to wait.. luckily it wasn't too long before a couple of dudes left and we were able to take their spots. Once in, it was... loud. A little too loud to really enjoy it. And why is it that most females feel the need to scream in these places?! It's always the females you hear over everyone. Anyways, we got our drinks.. ordered some bread and took a seat. We did a couple of rounds.. for some reason, no photos! Maybe we still had Mr Angry from the gallery in our heads?! We did take an outside snap of the funky little joint tho. The beers there were, again.. nothing special. I dunno, I just feel like it lacks some.. originality? All drinkable yes, but nothing I would want to buy again. Nothing really memorable. The noise was really starting to get to me so we headed out the door and off to another brewery, Brassneck Brewery to be exact! Once again, they were at capacity. I put my name down and was told it could be up to a 30min wait.. we headed back out and ordered a crushed meatball (I guess that sounds better than mince?) pizza.. just as the pizza was ready, we were called into the brewery to get a tasting! Nice timing! Emma went to grab drinks as I went to nab a seat with the pizza. I found a nice little area behind a wall, a few others were already there but there was room to share and share we did. They turned out to be really lovely people.. could have sat there all night drinking and chatting to them... if the beer was more to what we liked.

Left: 33 Acres
Right: Brassneck

One of the guys was telling the others that in one year he made $55,000 in tips alone when he worked at a burger joint. That's a lot of tips, so that has to be a lot of burgers too! I must say, I feel like the tipping culture is worse in Canada than America, I felt like more people had their hands out for tips than I did in America. Even tho the tipping rate on average is less, it still felt like I was being gouged. And no matter how hard I try, I still can't get my head around why you would add tax on after. Show a price, have it be that price. It's really not that difficult. Really Canada, it's not. Adding tax on after is just stupid and makes for really unusual sums. Gosh.