Vancouver 3&4

Sunday morning I got up and made my way over to Granville island. It's possible to walk there or get a bus, but it's kind of indirect and when a cheap and more fun option is available it seems foolish not to take the opportunity; so I took a ride on the aquabus!

Granville island has a fantastic farmers market with lots of wonderful fresh produce. It gives an opportunity for some nice photos, but not much in the way of items I can readily store and take home with me.

I think this may be the first time I've seen a prickly paw paw (other than in the jungle book)

The Island is also home to a few boats.

After visiting Granville Island I headed over to the other side of downtown Vancouver to see 'Gastown'. It's quite a touristy area with lots of souvenier shops and such. It does, however, contain one curiosity: a steam powered clock.

After this i headed over to the convention center, registered and attended a tutorial (actual work - i know, crazy right?). The (west) Vancouver Convention Centre is a huge and attractive building. It has grass growing on its roof, and huge panes of glass across the northern edge from which there is a spectacular view of the mountains in North Vancouver.

after this i went and got "dinner" at a coffee shop which boasted Vancouvers best cheesecakes.

The next day, before leaving the hotel room, I researched good places for breakfast; one suggestion was the pacific hotel (in the east Vancouver Convention Centre) because it has a fantastic view looking north. I decided upon a different view.

I walked to the waterfront terminal and by 8am I was waiting to board the sea bus. The sea bus, unlike the aqua bus, was a giant hulking battletank of a ferry. Angular and grey it cried it's foghorn as we crossed the choppy sea bound north. In the distance the tree covered mountains pierced the blanket of cloud that lay suspended overhead. It's quite the view for a morning commute, of course the other passengers, so used to making the journey, had their noses buried in books, smart phones and coffees.

We arrived on the northern shore and I caught a bus. North Vancouver seemed like an older part of the city with an architecture very slightly reminiscent of the wild west. Streets are wide and the shops and houses were distinct blocks with brick or wood panelled faciers, rather than the endless wall of concrete found downtown.

Before too long I arrived at my destination, the beginning of the Grouse Mountain Grind! A 3km forested mountain trial with an elevation of 900m. Having recently completed a difficult fitness challenge I had rather naively imagined that I had a chance at competing with the best time - under 30 minutes - and set off at a reasonable pace. I quickly learned that the nickname for this trial "nature's stairmaster" was well-earned. One hour later I arrived at my snowy destination; oh well, at least I smashed the average time - 90mins.

I grabbed my well earned lunch from the cafe by the 'skytrain' (cable car) and was treated to a view that I think competes with the view from the pacific hotel.

The mountain top has a number of shows and activities but they were mostly rather touristy and not of interest to me. The one exception may be this wind turbine with a built in observation deck, but I decided not to bother and caught the next skytrain down the mountain. It was probably the largest cable car I've ever been in, holding around 30 people in one cabin, and it had a distinctly 'solid' feel to it in a way that smaller cable transit systems don't.

I completed my return journey and once more attended a workshop, and then the opening ceremony, at the conference centre. The 'entertainment' consisted of performers on stilts and it seemed, to my mind, to be rather jarring with the otherwise relatively dry academic environment. Lighting the Olympic flame was a nice touch though.

Finally I had the opportunity to try the infamous 'fatburger', and was pleasantly surprised to find that it tasted rather like a home-made burger. Perhaps not fine cuisine, exactly, but leagues apart from British fast food. So ended day 4 and with it, my free-time in vancouver!

Vancouver 2

Today the plan was to ascend Grouse mountain but the weather had its own plans. First stop, breakfast at Scoozis! Amazing eggs benedict, and a less than healthy cinnamon bun drowned in syrup.

My food options here may be somewhat less than healthy

After breakfast I took a stroll to Canada place and, although it was still raining, decided to visit Capilano park. I caught the free shuttle and, after a short delay (caused by the Monsanto protests), we crossed the Lions Gate bridge and arrived at the park in North Vancouver. I spent a few hours in this beautiful park whose main attraction is a bridge crossing that is not for those afraid of heights.

Vancouver certainly has a great deal of natural beauty to it.

Yet no argument was proposed that I should not bite the squirrels to feed myself

There were some interesting plaques around describing the flora and fauna of this rainforest, and the authorities were especially keen to push a 'green' agenda stressing the importance of conserving water. I spent a few minutes listening to a falconer describing bird aerial combat techniques but eventually got tired and made my way back to downtown Vancouver.

I took a little time to read my travel book (Walzer's 'Just and Unjust Wars') with a coffee at a Blenz (Canada's answer to Starbucks) outside the library. The jet lag was still affecting me so I endeavoured to take the rest of the day slowly. When I visit a city for the first time I like to check out a local supermarket to see if the range of products tells me anything interesting about the people. I guess I was slightly disappointed to find that, on the whole, the products were largely recognisable and familiar. There did seem to be a particularly strong market for special health/nutrition products, which is interesting because so far its been pretty difficult to find restaurants selling healthy food (at least in downtown Vancouver), with names ranging from the unimaginative to the bizarre.

I suspect this product name would not be permissible back home

This appears to be brown rice juice.

In further wanderings I spotted an outlet of the legendary Fatburger, but wasn't hungry enough to take on the challenge today. So ends day 2.

Vancouver 1

Yes, yes i referred to myself as a 'scientist' - stop your giggling! Also my wanderings aren't entirely random, since I'm here for a conference (two actually). Now that I think of it 'great white north' is a line from a song/comedy sketch rather than an actual nickname, so I guess it's not a very accurate title after all. Whatever, you're here, let's begin. Are you sitting comfortably? (my god I can't stop with the references!)

I'm flown to Vancouver on work but I've managed to get a little bit of free time during which I plan to do my usual highly organised wandering around the city. Being not quite the 3-week adventure my that my trip to Japan was (ha! a self-reference) this might turn out to be less of a coherent story and more of an arbitrary set of observations; but hopefully the observations will be of mild interest.

haha haha ... no

Anyway the first thing interesting thing I noticed after arriving and checking in at my hotel was a poster beside the lift explaining that the Canadian penny is being phased out. A very logical move I think and if you don't know why feel free to check out C.G.P.Grey's awesome video explanation.

After dropping off my stuff I went for a wander around downtown Vancouver. Like most cities it has its pretty angles and its not so pretty angles. But since no one wants to see pictures of cranes (okay maybe not "no one") I've opted to mislead you with the full power of my Canon Ixus 75 digital camera!

view from the bridge over Granville island

... and another

Granville street

The Vancouver Convention Centre looks kind of like a ship

The city itself is laid out like a regular grid which confers some advantages: buses stop at intersections (so you know pretty accurately where you will end up just by the name) and traffic lights for vehicles and pedestrians follow an alternating pattern where at any given time everyone can travel either north-south or east-west.

Among the pedestrians I've noticed there's a pretty large proportion of Japanese, but otherwise Vancouver is, as most big western cities are, pretty ethnically diverse. Which is a really great thing for dining options! I even found a small place which advertises the sale of both pizza and lahmacun (though they spelt it phonetically); which is possibly the first time I've seen an establishment recognise that such a distinction exists. After a brief visit to the Vancouver Lookout Tower I went to find my dinner and settled on a Japanese restaurant with actual plastic food outside!!!

Vancouver Lookout Tower

Like Tokyo except the labels are missing cryptic symbols.

It's return-of-the-pretense-that-this-is-not-a-food-blog! I was feeling very hungry so I went for Salmon Toro Zushi and a seafood okonomiyaki with the classic beer-edamame combination (just for the sake of nostalgia). The sushi was amazing but the okonomiyaki had a heavy cake-like texture to it. I was also slightly disappointed that a spoon seemed to be the only appropriate implement for eating it with, but I guess I had my hopes too high.

Some rather well presented sushi

After this I began to feel the jet lag creeping up on me and headed back to hotel to crash. So ended day 1!

Bonus photos:

Perhaps it is unfair of me to begrudge a sex shop its poor command of grammar.