A long weekend in Vancouver
With an easy flight overnight from Auckland, we arrive in Vancouver. I discover that my choice of many years ago for just a fruit platter on long haul flights with Air NZ is still somehow in the system so my meals are entirely fruit for the 14 hours! The sun is shining and we have an easy transit through customs and taxi ride into the city. Our Air BnB is lovely, with 3 bedrooms and wrap around windows in Burrard Street in the heart of downtown Vancouver. It has everything we will need including space for a bike. We find the local IGA for some basics and Sutton Place Wine Merchant https://store.suttonplacewinemerchant.com/ which has a very impressive array of Canadian wines which we determine to sample a few of on this trip. We are meeting up with Will and Blair who have been here for a week as Blair was competing in the half Ironman on Vancouver Island. We are within walking distance of everything. After swapping stories with them we head out for dinner to Alchemy Bar and Kitchen in Hamilton Street https://www.alchemybar-kitchen.ca/. Hamilton Street has many restaurants and bars and is lit up with many lights, so the atmosphere is fun. We do quite well considering we have done Thursday twice this week with the time difference and are grateful for a relatively early night.
As a result, Tim and I are up early next day and head out in search of a coffee. We lucked in just around the corner at Elysian Coffee Roasters https://elysiancoffee.com/, so as is our usual practice this becomes our “local” for our time in Vancouver. Further on our morning wanders we find an amazing delicatessen which sells just about every delicacy you can imagine – worth a visit just to see how beautifully the produce was laid out. Tim took a fancy to the big football World Cup hat on display! We have tickets this morning for the Big Bus which leaves from right outside our apartment so is very easy to find. Always a great way to get our bearings we sit up top as the bus took us across the Burrard Bridge to Granville Island, past the World Cup Stadium, through China town, Gastown, the convention centre and Stanley Park. We didn’t hop off as we had to be back for a snack lunch before walking to the rendezvous for our bike ride with Ian Matheson.
I found this tour on Air BnB and can highly recommend it. Ian has cycled through North and South America, Africa and Europe and is the best tour guide to really get to know the city. We meet in the Olympic Village area which has been converted since into stylish apartments – from here we have a great view of the World Cup Stadium that they are just finishing. There are only a handful of other people on the tour, so it is easy to listen to what Ian has to share. We visit Chinatown and hear about the dreadful treatment of the Chinese migrants in Canada. Without them there would never have been the easy access from West to East Canada as prior to the railway the journey included a boat journey around Cape Horn which took several months. We see the smallest building in the world here – Jack Chow Insurance and hear a funny story about how it survived when a new road was built taking most of the frontage off.
From here we head to the famous steam clock – which literally is a clock that gives off steam to play a tune every 15 minutes. Located in Gastown, it was built by horologist Raymond Saunders and was designed to cover a steam vent from the city’s underground heating system and deter people from sleeping on the grate! Although it looks Victorian it was built in 1977.
Gastown is the birthplace of Vancouver and is named after “Gassy Jack” Deighton, an English sailor who arrived in 1867 and opened the area’s very first saloon. He earned his nickname for being a famously talkative storyteller and legend has it that his saloon was built in less than 2 days as Jack promised the labourers free alcohol if they finished it in record time. After passing Canada Place where the cruise ships and ferries depart from, we have a wonderful ride around Stanley Park, including heading off the coastal path into the forest and a visit to the amazing totem poles. These are located in Brockton Point and there are nine magnificent hand carved poles representing the indigenous culture across the province, including Haida, Salish, Kwakwaka’wakw and Nisga’a nations. Some of the poles date back to the 1880’s.
We head on around the coastal path spotting a blue heron in the water, to sunset beach then caught a tiny ferry to Granville Island. As we waited for the ferry, one of our party asks where is best to sit to avoid seasickness…. the trip is less than 3 minutes, so we all have a good laugh about that.
We then cycle back past Leg in Boot square, named after a part of a body that was found there but no other remains! A wonderful way to spend a few hours and I have since bought Ian’s book Wild Road, Open Heart which charts his cycling journey through North and South America. After all this exercise we are tempted by the Craft Beer Market https://www.craftbeermarket.com/ in the Olympic Village which has over 100 beers on tap, all running through taps around the big warehouse space – very cool. After a quick change we head out to dinner which I have booked at Pourhouse in Gastown – another great meal. https://www.pourhousevancouver.com/
Saturday is a day to walk off yesterday’s excesses – The Grouse Mountain Grinder!! This is really a gut busting climb, but it is proceeded by a pleasant walk down to the waterfront and a ferry over to North Vancouver and then a bus ride to the beginning of the walk. North Vancouver is very pretty and there is clearly some money here! It is 2.5km to the top of the Grinder, however it elevates 800m and is fondly known as Mother Nature’s Staircase. It is very steep and not for the unfit. The mature rainforest is home to a variety of wildlife including red-legged frogs, barred owls, black bears and cougars (we are glad we don’t encounter the latter two!). We have been joined by Antoine a friend of Blair’s from Quebec. He works in construction for the first nations people in that province and has some interesting insights into the challenges of meeting the needs of these communities in such remote locations, especially when many months of the year during winter there is no possibility of building anything.
The views from the top are well worth the effort and a nice café style restaurant enables one to catch one’s breath and reflect on the effort. The area at the top has amazing wooden carvings and a couple of grizzly bears (injured and in an enclosure – we didn’t see them).
There is also a scale poster of the various bear sizes – I look very small beside all of them.
As the sun comes out for us, we have the most amazing view over Vancouver, so we catch the cable car back down to the bottom and then hop in a cab back to North Vancouver for a drink in Tap and Barrel https://tapandbarrel.com/ enjoying the warmth in the sunshine.
Blair heads back to Toronto for work tomorrow so we take a walk to try and see the Law Courts – a beautiful building that he has read about. It is stunning from the outside but sadly being a Sunday we can't get inside. We have a lovely dinner out at a wonderful Italian restaurant tucked up some stairs called CinCin (recommended by friends Dave and Heather) https://cincin.net/ and then wander home to the beautiful lights outside our apartment block.
Sunday starts with a walk around the city and down to the waterfront – it’s a lovely morning and we enjoy exploring another part of the city, walking through Davie Village which is the gay quarter of Vancouver and very colourful. Along the waterfront at English Bay, we admire the Inukshuk a monumental version of a type of stone landmark built by the Indigenous peoples of the North American Arctic region. It is 6 metres tall and weighs 31500 kgs.
We head home to change and then walk and catch a little tugboat over to Grenville Market https://granvilleisland.com/public-market which is a wonderful assortment of colourful shops, great fresh produce and activities for kids. We watch amused as a yacht with people on board dressed up as pirates fire water canyons at each other – we have not idea why!
We meet up with Will and after exploring enjoy a nice lunch in the Sandbar Seafood restaurant https://www.vancouverdine.com/sandbar/ and then buy a few cute presents for the grandkids in the most amazing toy shop. After another ferry ride back Will and Tim head off to do some shopping along Robson Street while I have work calls. Then we all head out for a very special dinner at Minami https://www.minamirestaurant.com/ a Japanese fusion restaurant where the food is amazing.
Vancouver has been a treasure and a great way to start our Canadian exploration.
Photos courtesy of @alpstobeachphotos
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