Canada 2014: Vancouver

Vancouver 2014

I fell in love with the city right away. 

Truly and deeply.

It's just the right mixture of city and nature. From Downtown you could get to a beach or a mountain pretty soon and we saw some of the most beautiful sunsets. I was told that Vancouver is a very rainy city but during our time there, there was only like half a day of rain. Lucky us! Plus it probably helped me to like the city. Who know if it would have been different if it rained all the time? We'll never know...

I enjoyed the quality of life the city seems to have. Lots of smiles, lots of nature, tons of beaches and heaps to do. It was great just wandering around. In the evenings one could join the locals at the beaches where many met, had bbqs and so on. 

 

  Food

 

We ate out a lot and I was totally overwhelmed by the amount of good (!) sushi one could get. I adore sushi but it is pretty hard to get good / special ones over here in Germany. A lot of the sushi we ate had wild red salmon - W.O.W.! Amazing!

Fish was so fresh and so cheap in Vancouver! We wished more than once that we had sharp knives and a good oven to cook some wild salmon. Honestly - if I lived there, I would have fish at least 4 times a week! Or more. Probably more… 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we also had Bison Burger. So yummy! Should you come to Vancouver I can highly recommend it. It’s not exactly cheap (18 Dollars + Tax) but worth it. The restaurant is located in Gastown which is apparently one of the oldest quarters in Vancouver. It’s a lovely place but packed with tourists and tourists’ shops. Nice but not my favourite place in the city. 

Places

I really loved Granville Island. The market on there is always packed with people but so much great food to look at (and to eat). I especially liked the veggie and fruit displays. So much ripe fruit. The mangoes were juicy and the avocados ripe and delicious. Heaven! Don’t you just love ripe avocado and mangoes? Also the cantaloupe melons! Again, we wished for a better kitchen to prepare food. Did you ever try a salad of green lettuce, cantaloupe and feta? If not, you definitely should.

Our first hostel was close to Stanley Park and English Bay Beach . Wonderful places to have a walk – even though I felt totally unfit all the time. Why? There were always people at the beach running, doing sit-ups and so on… I didn’t but kinda felt like I should. Our hostel was close to Davie Street and there were so (!!) many health stores around and all the shops had signs with organic, gluten-free, sugar-free and so on in the windows. Made me feel like I am living really unhealthy…

Events

The boyfriend attended a conference at UBC and I was registered as an accompanying person. That meant I got to attend the opening ceremony, the field trip and the gala dinner. 

After the opening ceremony, we went to see the sunset at one of the beaches at uni. Soo pretty! Wished we could have stayed longer but we had to catch the bus to the city.

The field trip was a bit of a disaster really… We took the trip to Grouse Mountain. They got us there in a huge bus, sat us in the gondola and left us on the mountain for 5 hours. There was nothing to do there except really really touristy stuff which I didn’t like. So we were naughty and ran off. Well, we took the gondola down early and left by public transport. Since we saw more people from the conference in town later, I guess we weren’t the only ones.

The gala dinner was really nice – very well cooked salmon was served. Hurray for salmon! 

 After spending two ways away from Vancouver, we returned for our last 2 1/2 days in Canada. And what wonderful days they were! We got to see the fireworks of the Celebrations of Lights. Our hostel was really close to the beach on the other side of the water from the fireworks. It was really great: We got to sit at the beach, see the sunset, enjoy reading a book and just after 10 pm the fireworks started. They lasted for 25 minutes and were a real treat! 

On the 3rd of August it was the annual Pride Parade. We saw bits and pieces of it which was a lot of fun. Many, many shops had rainbow coloured decorations in their windows and one could see the day was enjoyed. It was so great to see how open and lovely the city embraced their queer community.

There is so much more too tell but I don't want to bore you. So I'll end the entry here and reminisce about the holidays!

Take care
Anne