Our quick trip to the US ended in a stay on the west coast, where we visited old friends. And then we took a quick jaunt north to Vancouver, where John had never been. (Also, our flight from Vanuatu was departing from Vancouver!) We had a great few days there, helped by the lovely weather, sunny and dry (temperatures in the mid-70s, 22-24 C).
We were staying in a fancier-than-usual hotel: Vancouver is expensive, so we decided to embrace it. It was near the waterfront, so that was the first area we checked out. The water itself is spectacular, and there are beautiful mountains not far in the distance. We loved the many walking paths – including into and around Stanley Park – and enjoyed watching the small sea planes taking off and landing every few minutes right in front of us. The green spaces that bordered the water were extremely attractive and offered lots of places for sitting down and people-watching.
Not far from our hotel was Gastown, the oldest part of the city with lots of shops and beautiful Victorian buildings. Some of the streets are open only to pedestrians in summer and we had an extremely nice afternoon/evening wandering around. We had a drink at one of the many bars in the area as the sun was setting, and then had dinner. We hadn’t had Greek food in a long time, so we decided to go in that direction, and we were glad we did. The Greek Gastown offered some of the best Greek food we have ever had (including in Greece!). And it didn’t hurt that we were sitting outside on a beautiful evening.
We learned that Vancouver has the second largest Chinese population in North America, exceeded only by San Francisco. So a trip to Chinatown was a must, especially since we had not had dim sum in many months. We went to Jade Dynasty: there were lots of Chinese folks there, and the food was excellent.
So: food, parks, waterfront views: what else could you want? Well, there were three more things we loved. The first was Granville Island, which has tons of breweries, restaurants, and stores selling a wide variety of crafts and other goods. But we especially liked the food market in the centre. It’s an enclosed building and has both prepared food and the raw ingredients. Virtually every ethnic cuisine was represented (some more than once) with astonishingly beautiful fruits and vegetables. The local specialty, the Nanaimo Bar (a chocolate confection named for the city on the eastern end of Vancouver Island) was tempting, but one of us does not, alas, like coconut.
The second highlight was the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens and Queen Elizabeth Park. The park is very lovely but the botanical garden is a knock-out. With more than 50 acres, the park has over 7,500 species. The layout of the park is almost as lovely as the plants themselves; everything flows into everything else. There are a number of individual gardens with plants from the Mediterranean, Chile, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. There’s a Japanese garden, of course, and a small but lovely waterfall, and there is even a maze! We tried it but never got to the centre – although we think we got close!
And we haven’t even mentioned the public library, which is a beautiful space. And it has books in it! So those are the major things we did in the two days we spent in Vancouver. We think it’s a great city and we’ve even discussed meandering back that way some day and spending a couple of months checking everything out!
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