INTRODUCTION

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!

ABOUT VANCOUVER

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.

DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER

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.

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.

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.

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.

GRANVILLE ISLAND

Pictures of Vancouver (Canada)

View of downtown from hotel room

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

STANLEY PARK

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.

FOOD

CONCLUSION