Good Times

It's hard to believe the the trip has come to an end and I am already back in Toronto. The past couple of days have been spent doing little more than chatting with Tom, eating yummy food, and sitting at the beach. We took the ferry boat over to Granville Island, popped into a couple of restaurants, but otherwise sat on either a bench or a log to people watch and read at Kits.

If anyone is keeping up with the food journal, we also discovered some ridiculously good Vietnamese salad rolls at Granville and udon soup at a sushi place in Jen's neighbourhood. Tricky to eat at the beach, but I'm pleased to report it can be done.

On our last day, we spent almost 12 hours at the beach and weathered any number of weather systems as they rolled in an rolled back out. Wind, rain, sun, cold, hot, it was a Vancouver sample platter of wacky summer weather. Laura and I finished our night under umbrellas with a couple tasty beverages.

The time has passed quickly this trip, but when I look back it is amazing how long I have been gone and how much I have squeezed into that time. I have had three legs to my journey and have been very fortunate to have loved ones at every step of the way. I'm extremely lucky to have a mother and sister that I genuinely enjoy travelling with. I'm lucky to be from a family that not only enjoys each other, but can laugh no matter how things are going. I've seen Canada's diversity from the train, rocked out at Pemberton, broken my camping drought, braved my fear of bears, tried surfing, finally seen Tofino, fell in love with the PT Cruiser, watched whales, walked amongst trees, and eaten more good food than should be allowed. Not too shabby for a summer holiday :)

This trip has also confirmed my instincts about Vancouver. My first impressions weren't overly generous, I love this place. People are friendly, the ocean is at your doorstep, boys are cute there, nature activities are easy to access, and there are mountains everywhere. I feel a stay in Vancouver is in my future, I'm just not quite sure when or for how long at this point. I think the trip has solidified for Laura that this is true for her as well and that in her case it should happen sooner rather than later.

Right now, it is nice to be home and have a chance to catch-up with friends and family before the school year kicks into overdrive. Thanks to everyone who has been in touch and has been playing along with my blog. I look forward to seeing you shortly :)

I Don't Want to Live Where Animals Aren't Welcome

With only four days left, we decided to do some apartment browsing, checking out our two favourite neighbourhoods and browsing the classifieds.  The Vancouver market is super frustrating, as apartments are rarely listed and most will not allow animals.  Where Ontario has made it illegal to refuse animals, Vancouver has allowed bylaws making it almost impossible to find housing that allows pets.  This is particularly strange, given I've seen more dogs in Vancouver than in any other city I've travelled to.  Where are they all living?  Plus, most buildings don't list a superintendent or manager to contact and/or don't post vacancies.  After a day of looking, we had seen no actual apartments and had no real insight into average costs.  We did, however, have a better sense on where apartments were densest and whether our two favourite neighbourhoods would be safe, friendly, quiet, and clean to live in.  

Mid-way, we stopped at the Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company to have some dinner.  I had passed by it when returning the car and thought it looked like a great little place to grab a bite.  Now I know I've talked a lot about food lately, but generally speaking I'm just not that into it.  Eating is something I do because it is required and occasionally I really enjoy it.  When I really enjoy it, look out.  This place was frickin' fantastic.  Seriously.  I actually googled it, just to see if we had any franchises open in Ontario.  We had a bocconcini pizza that was ridiculous and a brownie that could kill.  Plus, it's almost all organic and they have a carbon tax on their bills.  The waitress was super helpful and gave us some insight to the Kits area and rental strategies.

We spent a bit of the late afternoon at Sunset Beach, camped out on the mats we purchased at the Coombs market and reading a bit.  We then took the ferry over to Kits and grabbed some dinner at Vera's.  We finished the day with the tail end of the sunset, perched on a log at the beach.

I'm On Top of the World

Laura and I headed back to the car rental place, only to discover that we had lucked into yet another PT Cruiser.  I'm really loving this car.  Plus, the car rental guy is totally cute.  

We loaded up with coffee and headed for the highway.  Traffic was decent, but the 50km zones for construction are brutal along the Sea to Sky highway right now.  My last trip, I was less vigilant in keeping with them since there weren't really workers around.  This trip I used the cruise control to keep within the limit as workers were all over the mountain.  This really adds a lot of time to a trip that usually takes just 2 hours.

Porteau Cove had been cleaned up after its recent rock slide, so Laura and I pulled in for a quick visit.  I love this place.  There is almost nothing to it, but it has such a lovely view of the water and mountains that it is simply too good for your heart.  A bit further up the way, we also stopped in at Shannon Falls to have a bit of a stretch and see the falls.  It has some of the clearest water I have ever seen.   You just want to drink it.

Whistler was fantastic.  We found a nordic shop that would rent a walking stick for Laura and headed straight up the mountain in the gondola.  We navigated the tricky path down to the chair lift and were up at the peak in no time.  There is a tiny, jagged, path at the top that leads to a great rock to sit on and look out at the horizon.  We spent a long time sitting there, so we squeezed in a quick version of the Carpenters "Top of the World."  After the long walk up from the chair lift back to the Roundhouse, we grabbed a burger just before the restaurant shut down for the day.  Our timing has really been bang-on this past week!  A good burger is a treat, but it doesn't get much better than eating a good burger while looking over mountain tops.

It took even longer to get back to Vancouver from Whistler, but we made it in time to drop off the car, pick-up some Flying Wedge pizza, and catch the end of the sunset at the beach.   

Dim Sum, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, and an Aquarium

One of Laura's clients introduced us to a great dim sum restaurant called Floata the last time we came to Vancouver.  We dream of their colossal har gau often.  It is a huge restaurant above a mall in Chinatown that seems to have evaded discovery by anyone outside of the Chinese community.  We arrived just in time to catch the end of their morning special and snagged some BBQ pork buns, har gau, steamed sticky rice, steamed pork dumpling, and bean curd.  There aren't words.  

We then rolled our way over to the coffee shop to recover and rest before going to the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden.  Recovery took some time, it was an epic meal.

The garden is small, beautifully designed, elegant and peaceful.  If I lived in Vancouver, I would have an annual pass.  The entire garden is designed to reflect yin-yang elements.  The stone tiles have also been done in light and dark patterns, as well as smooth and sharp contrasting patterns.  It is a great place to take off your shoes and let your feet rest on warm stone.  It is a very balanced and calming place to be on a sunny day and I have been told it is also quite nice on a rainy day.

Our next stop was to pick Tom up to go to the Aquarium.  He's got a mini-van equipped with a chair lift and after a short tutorial we were all in the van and on our way.  

We couldn't have timed the Aquarium much better.  We arrived in the middle of a dolphin presentation, so we bypassed that and got to the front of the line for baby beluga viewing. The beluga nursery shuts down super early, so we really made it just in time.  The nursery is the underground viewing area where you get to see the mom, grandmother, and little one.  That is one cute baby whale.  After our time was up, we went to see them from above.  A baby beluga surfacing to take a breath is really ridiculously cute.  We also spent quite a lot of time with the otters.  I think an otter life is a pretty good existence.  Fun swimming paths, napping while floating, cracking food open and eating off your tummy.  Top notch.  The aquarium also has a number of seals and sea lions, a temporary frog exhibit, and tons of underwater displays with alligators, fish, sharks, anemones, etc.  Laura and I finished the trip by buying an environmentally friendly shopping bag from the gift shop.  This is our new souvenir favourite.  Most places are selling them, they're totally cheap, and you actually use them.

Post-aquarium, we drove around to the west side of Stanley Park and enjoyed the early part of a sunset before heading back to Tom's place to devour some of the best sushi I've ever eaten.  This was made with brown rice, which I was skeptical about, but ended up being delightful.

Lovely day :)

You Can Take The Girls Out Of The Cruiser, But You Can't Stop Them From Cruising

There are two different ferry companies that run tiny ferry services between stops along False Creek that separates downtown Vancouver from the south end.  They're happy little boats and seem to be popular with tourists, some locals, and new couples looking for dating activities.  You can take one trip for the same as a bus would cost, buy blocks of tickets, get a mini-cruise of the creek, or sign-up for a day pass.  It was cloudy and a bit rainy, so Laura and I decided a mini-cruise would be a good way to start the day and see some of the inner city from the water.  

We bought a day-pass and hopped off at Granville Island to find food at the local market.  Vancouver does public markets up right.  Cheese, meat, fish, produce, flowers, maple syrup, you name it.  It's very St. Lawrence Market, only brighter, cleaner, and less hectic because there are more of them.  We were stopped in our tracks by a pie shop that also specializes in pot pies of all different kinds.  We snagged a couple of clam chowder pot pies. Several people actually stared at them as we walked by and asked where we had found them.  So good.  We ate them on the patio, while watching kids feed/terrorize some pigeons.  What genetic coding makes children so fascinated with pigeons?  Totally captivating.

In a chowder haze, we grabbed some tea and headed off for our "cruise."  It's a fun little tour and a nice way to spend a hour.  Vancouver is in a pre-Olympics building frenzy and is succumbing to the Toronto condo blitz.  There is a sizable development going in for the athletes at the end of the creek and evidence of other buildings popping up all over.  Still much less dense that at home, but they're clearly on their way.  Tom told us that 20% is being dedicated to low-income &/or subsidized housing and 80% is being called high-end housing. That kind of money flooding into an area tends to change the dynamic.  I wonder what impact this will have on Vancouver leading up to the Olympics, but even more after them when much of that money moves on to a different city.

Done our cruising, Laura and I beetled it over to the UBC campus to check-out the Museum of Anthropology.  Guide books have it posted as free after 5pm on Tuesdays, but this has since changed to $5.  It is about all I would pay to go and see this museum.  Guidebooks tend to spend most of their time discussing the architecture and it really is phenomenal.  It is also the primary selling feature to those not heavily invested in anthropology.  The museum is quite small and the main source of information comes in a room filled with pull-out display drawers and catalogues with descriptions.  As a student, this would be a phenomenal resource!  As a tourist, not so much.  The museum does, however, have a lovely collection of totem poles and other Native carvings.  It is a very small space and was easily done in the hour we had available.

UBC is connected to the public transit system with community shuttles.  These are also run in smaller routes within the downtown.  They are cute little buses, with super comfy seating, and complete wheelchair access on all of them.  Really a lovely way to service the university and smaller communities within the city.  

On the subject of wheelchair accessibility, we have come to the conclusion that businesses in Vancouver neither answer their phones, nor return phone calls.  We called the ferry and the theatre to see if they would be accessible for Tom and neither returned our messages.  For a super-accessible city, it seems surprising that calls aren't returned and information isn't posted on their websites.  We've called several other places for a variety of different reasons and those calls have not been returned either.  Strange.  The beaches are very busy mid-week, perhaps they're all there?

We finished the night with a trip to Commercial Drive to see The Pineapple Express at the Rio theatre.  It's a great old theatre in an alternative little neighbourhood in Vancouver's east end.  It seemed like an appropriate movie to see while in Vancouver and it couldn't have been in a more appropriate setting.  Plus, it was stupid funny and James Franco is a totally hot stoner.  I take no pride in saying it, but it doesn't make it untrue.  Admit it :)

Tom's Garden

We started the day with Laura taking a very bad fall on the way to Tom's place.  Being a trooper, she got herself dusted off and we kept trekking to Tom's, but her whole body took the force of it and was bound to be quite sore later.  If there is an upside, her face didn't hit (which I thought it did at first) and it confirmed our need to scrap plans for the Oakanagan/Nelson holiday and just sit back and relax.  When will we ever have free beach-front accommodations in Vancouver again?

Tom took us to see his plants at the community garden.  Vancouver has quite a few of these gardens that have been planted along unused railroads.  Several seem to be squatter gardens, but this one has rent paid to CP for use ($10/year seems reasonable!).  He has planted some great sunflowers, mini-corns (on huge stalks), purple carrots, tomatoes, & peas.  It's a beautiful garden and a lovely place to sit on a bench and chat.

We then headed down to Kit's Beach and saw some areas and grabbed a surprisingly fantastic hamburger from the concession stand there.  I don't generally spend a lot of time contemplating food, but I've had some unexpectedly great grub on this holiday!  We had sat for a while with a great view from two points on the beach and then walked back up to Broadway with Tom.

Laura and I were considering going to see the Pineapple Express, but got waylaid by a patio that offered views of a super-fine looking man and some tasty frosted beverages.  Seriously hot.  Stop in your tracks hot.  Nice to know it still happens once and a while :)  The man left, but the beverages stayed and we decided to scrap the movie for the night and have an earlier evening.

Our trip home was slowed by our bagel-crises.  There are surprisingly few things open in Vancouver at night and almost none supply bread products.  In the end, Safeway saved the day and our crises was averted.  I love holidays where the quest for bread products rank as a crises!

Can It Still Be Double D-Double Decker Tours If They're Done In a PT Cruiser?

We had the PT Cruiser for another day, but the weather in Whistler was too cloudy for the trip we had planned.  Instead, we decided to take a day, have a great breakfast at Denny's,  and use the car to tour through Vancouver.  I'm no BigBus, but we covered a lot of ground.

Post-tour, we met-up with our friend Tom and spent the evening at his place getting caught up and eating some yummy Thai food.