Day 1, May 17: The day after the tornado, we were leaving for a trip to Vancouver and then a cruise to Alaska. And by the day after the tornado, I mean, our flight was at 6 am, and it was an international flight, so they always say, oh get there 3 hours ahead of time. Of course, then everybody says, oh, you don’t need to do that, and “it’s just Canada” and “that’s really early” so we really had no idea what to do. We decided to compromise and plan to arrive at the airport two hours ahead of time, which was likely entirely too early, but Louie and I are THOSE people who would rather be early to the airport than late. Also we would be able to get coffee and charge our phones there anyway, because we had no power.
So let me set the scene. No power. Thankfully we had water. Oh, and the main access to our street was blocked by a tree, so how would we get picked up by a Lyft/Uber? Which we needed to be picked up around 3:45 am? I decided our best bet would be to meet them at the end of the block by a main street instead, and go from there. Frankly, on the best of days some drivers can’t even find the house, so I didn’t want to tell them how to find it by using an alley and dodging trees! But the driver called and he insisted he would come and get us, and he did find the house. It was surreal leaving. It was pitch black and we were indeed dodging trees and wreckage, and then…it was absolutely normal within a few blocks, nothing had happened at all.
Anyway, we got to the airport, drank our coffee, and flew to Vancouver via Minneapolis. We took the Sky Train from the airport to Downtown and were planning to walk from the stop to our hotel, but first we were starving and realized a restaurant I had noted on the map as a good option was right there, so we ate first. It was a terrific vegan restaurant called Meet in Yaletown and I think everybody would like it, but those that eat plant based would especially love it.
I forget exactly what this was called, but it was potato patties with vegan caviar on top, and we split it for an appetizer.
It was lightly raining as we walked to the hotel. It was a fairly long walk, but we thought it was nice to walk anyway, and enjoyed looking around. Finally we made it to our destination and home for the next four nights, the Sylvia Hotel.
It is a historic hotel with ivy growing up the walls. It was one of the best deals I could find and still be in the downtown area. We were right by English Bay Beach.
We cleaned up and relaxed a bit, and then went out to explore.
It was important for Louie and I to get accustomed to our usual vacation selfie pose–we had walked up Denman Street from English Bay and I think this is overlooking Vancouver Harbour.
And we changed direction so you can see the buildings now.
The Olympic torch from the Vancouver Olympics in 2010! There was a seagull on top so I guess it is a nice place to have a nest now.
We had a reservation for a sushi dinner at 6 pm so we were just wandering around getting the sense of the city and working up an appetite. It kept raining off and on, but never too much. Some of the streets were just full of restaurants, we were blown away by how many and how many nationalities were represented. I think you could eat at a different restaurant every day for years!
This building was bigger on top!
We had dinner at Sushi Bar Maumi, which was a great experience. The reservation was for 6 pm and they said they would unlock the doors at 5:45 and we should arrive 10 minutes early. We ended up being there a little early, so we waited outside, and at 5:45 on the dot we heard the doors unlock! We went in and got seated at the bar: everybody was seated around the bar, and we all ate the same thing, all in turn. The man you see above made all the dishes in front and his wife helped out with everything else, and it is just the two of them that run the place, one seating a night. We had a great time and really enjoyed ourselves.
After dinner, I was completely exhausted, between the time change and the early flight, so we walked home and I fell asleep pretty much right away.
Day 2, May 18: I thought it would be fun to do a bike tour to get a good overview of the city, so I booked a tour with a guide through Airbnb. His name was Ian and he came highly recommended. We took an uber to the meeting spot, which was near a bakery called Terra Breads, so we ate breakfast there first.
The rain had stopped, so this is another view of the hotel, while we were waiting for the Lyft/Uber.
We met the guide near this giant bird statue. It may be hard to know how large it is, but trust me. Large.
It was a small group of us on the tour, just 5 and the guide, which was a good number: small enough to easily stay together, but large enough not to feel awkward. And the weather was gorgeous, not rainy at all like the day before! Off we went.
Ian immediately showed himself to be a great guide and good with bikes as well. He got us set up well, and did a great job helping us feel comfortable, giving us great information about Vancouver, and having a nice mix of riding and stopping. I was able to take plenty of pictures along the way but still we felt like we did plenty of riding. It also helps that Vancouver is a terrific biking city with dedicated bike lanes!
We saw the skinniest building in the world? Or at least one of, and certainly very skinny. It’s just that black part, and is an insurance company. The insurance company has another building nearby where they do more of their business.
The famous Gastown clock. We didn’t see it go off on the hour, but we did catch it on the 45 minutes. It was very exciting. Very.
And then we headed into Stanley Park, which Ian said was bigger than Central Park! It seemed to not be bigger than Forest Park, though I believe it is a bit wilder and I hate to say it, prettier and certainly has more bodies of water around it.
Gotta have our biking pictures! I wore that black zip up hoodie practically everyday of the trip–it was super versatile and I loved it. It was black, wool, had zip up pockets AND thumb holes.
The camera keeps getting further away!
You can see the Lions Gate Bridge. Spoiler alert: later in the trip we will go under this bridge on our cruise ship.
This was some of the “wild” part. If you don’t know, Vancouver is in a temperate rain forest climate, which basically means it is super green with lots of plants and ferns and mosses. I was blown away by how lush and well, green, everything was. We had to walk our bikes on this path a little ways.
We got to this beautiful lagoon with some dams built by beavers. At one point we started biking again and I ALMOST crashed into Louie but I did not. But I almost did.
This is a stump from when they did logging back in the day. You can’t really tell from the picture but it was gigantic. When you hear about “old growth” wood, it’s really something to see what they mean by that. And to imagine how people would cut these trees down using hand saws, and then roll them out without using machinery.
We continued on our bike tour around Stanley Park, past English Bay Beach and the Stanley Hotel (hi hotel!) and then we got onto a ferry over to Granville Island.
Technically it was an aquabus.
It was a quick trip across the water and then we had probably our most dangerous bit of biking because it was Sunday afternoon on Granville Island and it was wall to wall people and cars. It was a bit much for me! Too many people and cars. We lived, and we made it to a lovely bike path and then back around to Terra Breads to finish our tour. Overall we loved the tour and we would definitely recommend it to anyway who wanted to learn more about Vancouver and do some biking while they were at it.
After the tour, we got some sustenance at Terra Bakery again (ha!) and then ended up deciding to go back to Meet at Yaletown for lunch again. I was feeling hot and thirsty and we had seen quite a few things on the menu the day before that we wanted to try, so another visit seemed like a good idea. After lunch, we walked back to the hotel to relax.
Our friends Ben and Roz got into Vancouver and were meeting us for dinner this night. We had been texting, but it seemed to make sense just to meet for dinner. They were going on the cruise with us, but they were staying at a different hotel which wasn’t really near ours.
Louie and I walked around the water a bit before dinner, just enjoying the air. We thought it would be easy to get an uber, but it ended up being kind of annoying, but we managed finally. We were going to Kissa Tanto for dinner, which is a restaurant with a Michelin Star, the only one I have ever been to. We had a great time, enjoyed some lovely food, especially this pasta, which I didn’t photograph well, but I did propose marriage to.
It was also great fun to catch up with Ben and Roz: we actually hadn’t seen them in St Louis for awhile due to our busy schedules (the end of the year was insane, as you may know) so we were excited to spend more time together.
Kissa Tanto was right across the street from the Dollar Meat Store, which made me a little nervous with the title. Should meat cost a dollar? What is the quality of that meat?
That’s where I will leave off today. Next: more Vancouver!
