Vancouver (Canada)

...'''ABOUT VANCOUVER'''

Vancouver is located on the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada, and it's proximity to Asia lends a massive influence from the east. Its metropolitan population of over 2 million makes this a big city, with all the skyscrapers associated with this kind of North American city.

Downtown is made up of several distinct areas such as Gastown and Chinatown, and venturing a little further will take you to ...
...Banff and Whistler. The beautiful Vancouver Island is also close by (sadly I didn't get to go there). It isn't so far over the border to the state of Oregon in the USA, and Seattle is a short plane or longer bus, train or car journey away.

'''DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER'''

Out trip began in Vancouver, the first time either of us had been to the west coast of North America. The long flight (about 10 hours) meant that we ended ... more

INTRODUCTION

Myself and Ms Larsbaby have spent our vacation this summer in Canada, visiting both the east and west coasts on our travels. This is an account of our travels on the West coast, in the city of Vancouver, in the province of British Columbia.

For those of you who like my restaurant reviews, I'll be taking a look at some of the places I mention in more detail in due course!

As a topical aside, even though it wouldn't have affected us, I am very glad now that we booked through Trailfinders and flew with Air Canada rather than Zoom!

ABOUT VANCOUVER

Vancouver is located on the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada, and it's proximity to Asia lends a massive influence from the east. Its metropolitan population of over 2 million makes this a big city, with all the skyscrapers associated with this kind of North American city.

Downtown is made up of several distinct areas such as Gastown and Chinatown, and venturing a little further will take you to places such as Richmond, which hosts a Chinatown night market much bigger than one that is held in downtown Chinatown.

The city is often used as a stop off to the nature of the rest of the province of British Colombia, with national parks and ski resorts such as Banff and Whistler. The beautiful Vancouver Island is also close by (sadly I didn't get to go there). It isn't so far over the border to the state of Oregon in the USA, and Seattle is a short plane or longer bus, train or car journey away.

DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER

Out trip began in Vancouver, the first time either of us had been to the west coast of North America. The long flight (about 10 hours) meant that we ended up at our downtown hotel at about midday, leaving us unbelievably tired but determined to stay up and enjoy the day. We stayed in the Century Plaza Hotel on Burrard Street, which is nice and central. Thanks to the excellent Trailfinders, we had a free upgrade to what was a 1 bedroom apartment, complete with cooker, fridge and balcony! Our view of the city was amazing from the 15th floor, and we could see that the city was full of skyscrapers. What was also handy with the hotel was that it was one of the stop off points from the airport bus, which stops at many of the downtown hotels.

There seemed to be a lot of building work going on, with even more skyscrapers being erected; it seems that this city is on the up. One building which particularly impressed me was the Marine Building, towards the water, which had an art deco façade.

There are a lot of different areas on enjoy in downtown Vancouver, in fact I was surprised just how many things there were to see and how big it actually is. The other thing I was surprised by is the number of Starbucks outlets; they seemed to outnumber even the McDonalds, there seemed to be one on every corner.

We walked pretty much everywhere, but there is an extensive bus network and Skytrain metro train system. Hiring a car might also be an option, whilst hiring a bike seems like a decent alternative in this bike friendly city. There are also taxis available if need be.

GASTOWN

We went to the historic district of Gastown, which is so named after "Gassy" Jack Deighton, a Yorkshire immigrant who proclaimed himself mayor and ran a pub. Arriving in 1867, he is seen as one of Vancouver's founders, and is called "gassy" due to his tall tales. There is a statue of Jack to the edge of Gastown. This was a run down area until relatively recently, but the tramps and drug addicts have been shunted eastwards as the area was declared historic, with the oldest buildings in the city here. The area now is a plethora of tourist shops, trendy cafes and bars. There is the worlds only steam powered clock, which is quite impressive - until you find out it's actually run on electricity! We found it a very pleasant area to spend some hours in and watch the world go by from one of its excellent cafes. We also enjoyed looking at the narrowest office building in the world, the Sam Kee Building, which houses an insurance company. In 1912, the owner of the company built it as a bet, as the surrounding area had been taken up by road, making the building area narrower that what was previously agreed with the council.

CHINATOWN

We both love Chinese food, and Vancouver is home to one of the largest Chinatowns anywhere, to serve the huge Chinese-Canadian community. I really enjoyed wanderering around this area, entering through the huge, ornate Chinese gate. The area seemed to be more shopping than restaurants, with lots of clothes and gift shops and relatively few bars and restaurants (enough, but not as many as I would normally expect). What was most prevalent was the fresh food shops, which had Chinese ingredients the likes of which I have never seen before. Out in front of the shops, huge boxes of 4 or 5 varieties of dried shrimp, dried fish, fruit and vegetables such as dried mushrooms were laid out. I was hugely impressed by this and would have loved to have cooked with some of these promising looking ingredients. We ate a couple of times here, once on a Sunday, enjoying Dim Sum at the Floata restaurant on a Sunday, which was delicious, and packed with Chinese diners; always a good sign. The variety of dim sum was excellent, the value for money great. We also ate al fresco on a Saturday night at the weekend night market at Keefer and Main Street. Alongside stalls for clothes, electronics, bric-a-brac and gifts, there were also hawker food stalls with various kinds of dishes. We managed to snag ourselves some barbequed squid on sticks, prawn dumplings and satay beef and chicken.

Chinatown is also home to the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden, an ornate Chinese garden that is also a cultural centre. The garden is designed as a classic Chinese garden, with several elements, and a guided tour (and some Chinese tea) is included in the admission price. This explains the ying and yang contrasts of the garden such as running water under the still rocks, and how the buildings are designed to blend in with and complement the natural elements. Dr Sun Yat-Sen himself is considered as the "Father of modern China" and led the 1911 revolution to depose the Qing dynasty. He became the first president of the Republic Of China in 1912. His connection with Vancouver is that he visited it 3 times to gain funds for his revolution. The garden is a fascinating, tranquil place. There is also a public part of it next door with free entry, which isn't as ornate but still worth a visit.

GRANVILLE ISLAND

Granville Island is a very pretty small island, packed with trendy shops, restaurants and a fantastic food market. You can walk around it in no time, and the market is a huge building full of every kind of fresh foodstuff you can imagine. All kinds of meat, fruit and vegetable are on offer, and there are 2 sections of food stalls, where you can buy ready made meals to scoff in the food hall seating area. All sorts was available; from curry tiffin boxes like in India (metal containers to keep the food hot that you return when finished), to Mexican, to Italian, through to seafood. We plumped for a huge portion of mixed seafood and munched contentedly from the upstairs seating area as we watched shoppers go about their business. Another highlight is the guided tour of the Granville Island Brewery, where the brewing process is explained and you are given small sample of five of their beers in their bar at the end. They seemed particularly proud of their latest fruit beer but it wasn't much kop to be honest. The weissbeer was excellent though. They also had a small shop where you could buy t-shirts, glasses and samples of their various beers.

STANLEY PARK

To the north west of the city is Stanley Park, a huge 1000 acre area of woodland that you can spend the day in; there are several marked trails that you can follow, by bike if you want to hire one. It's the largest urban park in North America, and makes a nice contrast from the skyscrapers. We stuck to the parameter and had a nice walk all the way around the perimeter, taking in the beaches and sampling some salmon burgers on the way. We missed out the aquarium but I gather it's worth a visit. About a quarter of the way round going anti-clockwise there are some native Indian totem poles. I never knew this but this area (Pacific Northwest) is the only one where totem poles can be found. These are a very impressive sight.

VICTORIA ISLAND

This was a daytrip for us from Vancouver by seaplane there and bus and ferry back, and so I think I can include this here as it's in the general area which you might want to see if you spend at least a few days here. We booked this at the excellent tourist information office, but you can also book this in advance or through your hotel. Be warned though, the flights are pretty popular (not least amongst business people - we seemed to be the only tourists on our flight). I would recommend booking ahead if you're here for a very short time. Also, make sure you arrive for the bus back early as the queue is quite long and you might be unlucky and miss a seat!

The flight to Victoria gave us an amazing view of Vancouver as we left. The island is seen as the most British of areas, and until recently it was apparently a very old fashioned British theme park kind of a place. Now there are lots of trendy shops, and I must admit I bought a lot of clothes that day! I was impressed by the big shopping mall in the centre. Most of the buildings are in keeping with the quaint, historical image. The Empress Hotel is a fancy building covered in vines. The parliament building is very fetching too. The highlight of the trip for me was the Royal British Victoria Museum, which had fascinating exhibits on the history of the native people, and Canadian social history in general. One thing that was good was a storytelling session, where actors were invited to bring their own stories of British Columbia histories. We were treated to the story of the Kitsilano Boys Band, a band put together by Arthur Delamont, which toured throughout the world. It turned out the storyteller was one of his descendants! A fascinating story.

The Chinatown in Victoria in North Americas second oldest. Obviously not nearly as big as in Vancouver, this compact area nevertheless was a nice place to stroll through and eat in, though apparently we missed dim sum by an hour. Oh well! You can also go whale watching from here, and it's a convenient stopping off point for this. I gather that many people stay here for a few nights but I thought the daytrip, travelling there by seaplane (or floatplane, as they called they) and returning by bus and ferry the same day was quite enough. You get some nice views from the ferry so it's a nice round trip overall.

FOOD

As well as Chinese, we also managed to eat some of the excellent Japanese fare. We found the best area for this kind of food was to the west of Robson Street and the surrounding area. One restaurant we went to, Asahi-Ya, is a well known student eatery. Its brilliant food belied it's budget prices; the fried squid I had there is some of the best I've ever had. Sushi is also excellent in the city, with a huge Japanese contingent catered for, even down to the fake plastic mock ups of dishes that you can see in Japan. We also tried Thai which perpetuated the high standard of food the city offered. As noted above, Granville Island Market is a haven of fresh food, and some tasty morsels can be picked up at the Chinatown Night Market. Near to our hotel was a supermarket, Market Place, which was a haven of organic food. It was no surprise that we ate Asian food most of the time, with our proximity to China and Japan on the Pacific Northwest being a factor in its excellence. I think it's fair comment to say that you can't go far wrong with the fresh local seafood, no matter how it's cooked.

SHOPPING

In a curious gender role reversal, Ms Larsbaby isn't much of a shopper but I can easily spend hours looking for clothes. On Robson and Burrard Street, you will find a selection of the usual shops like Gap, plus local chains like Roots (more or less a Canadian Gap). There is a huge shopping mall called Metrotown which is accessable via the Skytrain metro system. This has 3 large floors of over 500 shops and a big food hall. Although I didn't find much to buy there, it has to be said. There is also more trendy shopping in other areas but I'm not trendy so I didn't delve into this at all. Strangely enough though, Victoria provided the best shopping of this leg of the trip.

CONCLUSION

If you hadn't already realised, I had a superb time in the Vancouver area. Great food, friendly people, a laid back atmosphere, cheap prices and a quite green city environment all went towards my enjoyment. One strange thing was the many vagrants we saw around, particularly around the edges of Gastown and Chinatown, but I guess this is big city life, although it seemed far worse than in London, the poor souls. But apart from that, this has made its way up my list to one of my favourite North American cities. Having been to Toronto before, and been disappointed at its boring skyscrapers, for some reason I had a completely different feeling here, which I can't quite explain, as this was also a skyscraper dominated city. Perhaps it is greener, and being by the sea makes it more interesting. In any case, Vancouver is definitely worth the journey. We hardly scratched the surface for things to do and places to see even downtown, with lots of nature in the summer and winter sports at other times of the year at the nearby Whistler. Neither of us drives so I'm sure many of you would have ventured further out of the city, but equally there is a lot to do if you choose to stay in it. I'm sure we'll be going back someday!

TOURIST INFORMATION

We used the excellent Lonely Planet City Guide to Vancouver as our reference, and found many of the restaurants and sights mentioned there.

Lots of information can be found at the following websites:

http://www.tourismvancouver.com/visitor s/

http://visitvancouver.com/

http://www.bcpassp ort.com/

http://www.tourismvictoria.com/ 

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