The Perfect Place?

You know how it is when you move to a new place, and you find reasons to think that you're lucky you ended up there and not anywhere else? Even though most of the reasons are ones your brain invents for you. It seems no matter where you end up, you'll come up with reasons why it's the best place. Well, I've started to do it for our place.

Sarah and I just got back from Kensington Park. We go out our door (the back way), cross the quiet road, and walk about a hundred metres and we're there. We rode our bikes to give her practise. We rode on a tennis court, then later a soccer field (yes, it's called soccer here), then a baseball diamond, and then a large gravel field. There's perhaps ten playfields here; the high school is nearby but after hours these are all open for community use. There's also an outdoor pool that we have yet to explore.

We still have gorgeous weather, and tonight in the last golden rays we saw all of Mount Burnaby to the east, Mount Baker to the southeast, and a range of mountains to the northeast.

If we walk to the far side of the park, about ten minutes from our apartment, there's the Kensington Square shopping centre. The main store is a Safeway, but we're learning to avoid it. Instead we patronise a meats shop, a bakery, a health food store, and a produce market. There's a post office and drug store and a video store. There's a wine shop that only sells wines made in British Columbia (by members of the Vintners Quality Alliance - VQA). We're on our third bottle.

The next two blocks have local shops. There are two coffee shops (one Italian!), an Italian deli, a yoga studio, a hair salon, and across the street is the bike shop where we bought Sarah's bike.

If we go out the front way, across Hastings is Sarah's elementary school. There's a crossing guard there at school times. One of us accompanies Sarah both ways, but we may start letting her go on her own soon.

Also across the street is the Italian restaurant we enjoyed (we've visited twice now) and a barber and a 24-hour convenience store (that's quite clean and spacious inside).

We'll be looking for longer-term housing soon, and I'll be wondering if we can achieve the same level of convenience, but of course I'll be doing the same rationalisation for that location also eventually ...