Kayla and I got up before 5am on Wednesday to start the long trip to Vancouver. It was a long day, but we had a good time. Today we’re much more rested.
After arriving shortly after noon Pacific Time, we made our way through customs pretty quickly. The Customs agent apologized about the “heat wave” in Vancouver. We told him that we were from Texas and rather liked the 22 degrees celcius weather (22 C = about 72 F).
We ate at the Hurricane Grill in Yaletown until the condo was ready (at 3pm). Kayla had an Asian Beef stir fry and I had a Seafood Linguine (both were excellent).
When we got into the condo, a few things were immediately obvious. For one, the place was very, very small. There’s a combo kitchen/living room and a bedroom. It’s 200 square feet or so. It’s cozy for sure. The other thing that we noticed was that there was a portable air conditioning unit going in the corner. Because it’s usually quite cool and damp in Vancouver, central air conditioning wasn’t built in to the buildings. So the place is a little stuffy, but livable.
Aside from the creature comforts, the place is wonderful for it’s location. We’re on the West End of downtown (very close to Stanley Park). We were able to walk to everywhere we wanted to go. There’s a Safeway about a block and a half away. All very nice.
After spending the day walking around and drinking a bunch of coffee (Blenz is Canada’s version of Starbucks), we both had a few observations about the city:
- Green – Vancouver is “green” in so many ways. The city buses run on electricity, people use reusable bags and bicycles. However, the really striking thing is how many plants and trees there are throughout the place. Kayla noticed roses on several occasions. There are shrubs and trees everywhere. Really neat.
- Dogs - It seems like a huge number of the locals have dogs that they walk at all days of the day and night. Anywhere you find a grassy stretch of land, there’s a dog playing frisbee or ball with his owner. Some of the public water fountains have dog dish fountains at their base. Hurricane Grill had a community dog dish set out on the sidewalk for dogs passing by.
- Restaurants – I’ve never seen a bigger concentration of eating establishments anywhere. In just the blocks surrounding our condo, you could eat at a different place every night and not eat at the same place for months. There’s variety too…some cuisines I’ve never heard of. It’s true you couldn’t throw a rock without it being within 40 yards of a Sushi place, but what about Malaysian? Korean? African Fusion? I actually saw a Ukrainian-Russian restaurant.
My little MSI Wind Netbook is holding up pretty well. There’s free wifi in most public places. My iPhone isn’t as useful because I refuse to pay the $15 per megabyte data roaming charges…I usually make due with the free wifi.
Today we hope to go to Gastown and Granville Market. More on that later.
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