Vancouver, Canada – Exploring the City

Flying into Vancouver the skies were as open, warm and friendly just as the people were out and about on the street.  The politeness and relaxed natures of the drivers, walkers and cyclists seems to epitomise the Canadian way and it is as refreshing as the early autumn air in the city.  Rosie and The Operator think they are going to enjoy this laid back, tree lined, garbage free city of Vancouver.

Vancouver is the largest city in the state of British Columbia and is relatively young, like our own country, having been first settled in 1829.  The city has certainly grown from its early origins of logging, lumber and coal mining days due to the exporting of goods from its natural harbour and the introduction of the railway.

Rosie and The Operator are staying Downtown and the journey was a quick 45 minute drive from the airport on roads made for commuting.  It was also nice to be in a country where we could have a conversation with the taxi driver…sadly though he wasn’t speaking Rosies language…The Taxi Driver was obsessed with cricket,  International cricket, local cricket, 5 aside cricket, 20/20 cricket and his own Saturday league cricket.  The Taxi Driver and The Operator chatted about cricket for a full 40 minutes….Rosie interjected once by wondering out loud if that was the bridge and mountain range in the distance to Whistler….Rosie was met with silence.  Before tips on bowling resumed.

Our one bedroom apartment is on the twelfth floor of a high rise apartment block.  It is in the heart of Downtown and all of the sights are pretty walkable from it.  Rosie is quite surprised by the noise this high up and how the traffic, construction and the sounds of day to day life rebounds off the canyons of buildings around here.  The noise is almost to much for Rosie, writing these words on her high rise balcony, it is to loud to concentrate properly…city living is not for Rosie who likes to have the door open and the fresh breeze blowing in, but minus the noise.

We are staying on the edge of the Davie Street Precinct, a rainbow coloured area with a huge amount of quirky restaurant bars and cafes.

There is a large vacant lot just up the road on a corner that is currently under submission for building consent.  While it is waiting to be built on it has been turned into a community garden.

It was a little messy with it being the end of the season but it was such a great idea!  You could also tell it actually did have a lot of input from some people in the community.  There were wind chimes hanging from trees, rows of staked peas and cherry tomatoes, beds for cabbages and lettuces, herbs and painted plaques and inspirational signage.  People were walking through it as a short cut across the lot and some others were sitting in the evening sun. It just felt like such an awesome space, this scruffy piece of green surrounded by high rises.  Great to see the city allowing the community to use this space.  It sure put a smile on Rosies face.

We were heading up Davie Street on our first evening in town on a recommendation from Stitch and The Sparky who lived in Vancouver for a good few years….Stitch said there was a place called Moxies that made the most amazing  white chocolate brownie…..and she wasn’t mistaken!  It was a cool bar and grill open to the footpath and that desert was to die for!  Thanks for the travel tip!  We do not get enough of them!

Rosie and The Operator are up at the crack of dawn….literally….the curtains in our apartment are very thin and not conducive to a lie in at all.  Lucky for us we are early birds!  We have a big day planned.  Down towards the water we head to the Aquatic Center water taxi dock under the Burrard St Bridge to catch a ferry over to the Granville Island Public Market.

It is a beautiful day!  The sky is blue and the harbor is flat and shiny.  We step out onto the pontoon and wait for the taxi, Rosie isn’t sure what to expect….is this it?  Rosie asks The Operator?  It is the cutest wee thing straight out of a cartoon and looking just like a toy you would play with in the bathtub!  The ferry was as tall as it was wide and the paint job was as cheery as the driver who knew the two other clients greeting them by name as he shuttled us all across the harbor.

The Granville Island Public Market had just opened its doors and Rosie and The Operator were one of the first inside. Housed in five of the original buildings which have been converted into one big space to form about 50,000 square meters of enclosed stalls, this Public Market has been here since 1979.   What a beautiful huge open industrial space with a prime lookout across the bay to the magnificent downtown skyline!

One of the converted buildings is the BC Equipment Ltd warehouse, one of the first original tenants on the newly man-made Granville Island which was established in 1917.  It repaired and assembled heavy equipment for the mining and forestry companies in the area, receiving machinery and goods from dockside barges.

The other part of the market was occupied by Wrights Canadian Ropes.  It made heavy duty wire called Green Heart for the forestry and mining industries.  During the Second World War Wrights was the biggest manufacturer of wire in the whole of Canada.  A fire in 1953 gutted the plant and it relocated into new premises off the island and is still going strong today.

Like all markets worldwide Rosie and The Operator love to amble….wishing they could buy some of the delicacies to take home, cook and try.  Not while we are on holiday, you cant carry groceries around at the start of the days sightseeing Rosie.  Still we love to browse and look and pick up some snacks to have during the day.

Have you ever seen Teardrop Grapes before?  We haven’t either!  All the fruit and veges looked so delicious.  Salmon was being sold everywhere!  All packaged and ready to be freighted anywhere you wanted in the world! Vancouver is very cosmopolitan and has so many nationalities living here the market was a real melting pot of food from all around the world.

The market also sold arts, crafts and  so much more.  Positioned as it is on an island it is also a starting point for a lot of the water tours, whale watching, SUP rentals around the harbor, kayaks, jet skis and more.

There were a lot of little quirky things to see and also a good range of street art housed under the bridge…plus under the pylons, advertising fresh fish on the side was a whole boat…

We boarded the just as cute and colorful aqua-bus for a zigzag journey across the harbor where we gawped at the amazing modern city skyline of Vancouver.

We passed beautiful painted silos and a row of houseboats….they do not look like boats Rosie!  I know right!  They look like houses!  They are all built on floating pontoons though so can be motored/moved along if necessary….so technically they are houseboats.  So beautiful looking.

We jumped off the ferry at the Plaza of Nations by the old Olympic Stadium at the end of False Creek which is basically the end of the waterway.  We walked up into Chinatown from here and had a breakfast of DimSum in what we had heard is the best Chinese restaurant in Vancouver Chinatown.

Well, the 450,000 Chinese that call Vancouver home were not wrong!  The Floata Restaurant on the third floor, inside a tired mall, festooned with red and gold lanterns and large handwritten Chinese signs from the 1960s was simply amazing.  We were the only Europeans inside the open plan plainly decorated restaurant.  The lovely old maitre d in a suit, white shirt and a bow tie seated us and asked if we wanted forks.  Bless.

Jasmine tea was complementary and we had to tick the form written in Chinese with tiny English underneath as to what we wanted.  Our orders were wheeled out on steaming trolleys and delivered in the bamboo steamers directly to our table.  Rosie can honestly say they were the only native English speakers in the room!  We had a beautiful mid morning breakfast and we were glad we found this wee tucked away gem!

Close by in Chinatown, was the walled Dr Sun Yat-Sen classical Chinese garden.  We entered, and stepped into a magical garden of water, carp and perfectly groomed trees with people sitting and enjoying the dappled light.  A small oasis ringed overhead by the towering city.

The light cast beautiful sunspots on the ponds and turned the waterlilies into magical Monet paintings.  A heron stood statue still on a rock staring into the water with zen like meditative poise.  He wasn’t interested in the modern world at all walking around snapping pictures of him.

We walked through the giant Millennium Gates of Chinatown and left the red and gold festooned streets behind and entered Gastown….the oldest part of the city.  The lowrise three storied brownstones with iron fire escapes zig zagging down the sides dominated this suburb.  All in various states of repair, some painted colorfully and others clinging to the faded signage of the past with their mortar chipped and broken.

Wide access lanes between the buildings are lined with giant redwood power poles and are full of dumpsters and the homeless.

Rising out of the landscape is the most beautiful building made out of decorative red oxide colored iron.  The Woodwards building was originally built in 1903 as the cities flagship department store from the areas heyday.  The giant ‘W’ sat on the top and was a landmark feature in the city.  The department store traded from 1903 until its bankruptcy in 1993….the building was then vacant and demolished in 2006 to be rebuilt in all its glory as housing and office space.  The giant ‘W’ that sits outside the building is the original.

So how did Gastown get its name?  Well, a former river pilot, by the name of Jack Deighton opened the first saloon in 1867 about a mile inland from where the first sawmill in Vancouver was built.  This place was popular and a well worn trail between the sawmill and saloon was quickly established.  Deightons nickname happened to be Gassy Jack, this moniker came about because he was known as quite the talker or ‘gassy’.  A number of men began living by the saloon and the settlement soon became known as Gassys Town, which was quickly shortened to Gastown.

This was written on a public toilet in Gastown and gives an excellent, site appropriate account.

There on the corner of the tree lined Water Street sits Vancouver’s most popular tourist site…The Steam Clock.  A glamorous grandfather type clock with a beautiful casing and gleaming brass workings that looks straight out a Victorian steampunk melodrama even though it was actually built in 1977.  It blows quite a head of steam on the hour and the quarters through the whistle pipe on the top.  A steam clock in the middle of the street?  Where does the steam come from asked Rosie?

The Operator had checked the facts and knew that there was an underground network of high pressure steam pipes which is used to heat over 180 buildings in downtown Vancouver.  Enterprising building owners in the 1960s were sick of all the coal pollution and the cost of installing and maintaining individual heating boilers in every single building so they devised this central distribution hub fired by natural gas.  This heat distribution system is still used today and the company was recently sold for 32 million!

The UFO shaped tower Rosie didn’t really take a photo of but is peeking over the rooftops to the left of the pic below, is the Vancouver Lookout building.  The flight deck of the UFO has a 380 degree window that shows you around the whole of Vancouver.  The day was perfect for photo taking through the glass and the hazy green forests of the mountains that covered the distant mountains seemed to stretch on forever.

The small red and gold building in the middle of the picture used to be the tallest building in the British Empire back in the 1900s.

This is the huge container laden Vancouver Harbour or as it is called, Coal Town, which hearkens back to the early days of the towns inception.

The dock with the sails is Canada Place which was the site of the 1986 World Expo.  These buildings have now been transformed into a convention center and cruise ship terminal.

Rosie and The Operator sure had a good time checking out the landmark sights of the city but we also had a fab time eating and drinking around the city too.

Rodneys Oyster bar was a favourite of ours and we met a great couple of Texas gals who had driven all the way from Dallas to Vancouver to visit this restaurant…they had been there once 10 years ago and though it was time to come back!

The Poutine…OMG…a Canadian hmmhmm, classic.  Chips, cheese and gravy, but not your ordinary Chips, Cheese and Gravy.  Well, OK the chips were ordinary but on top of them is sprinkled the softest, creamiest lumps of cheese curd you could imagine.  Rosie has never had this cheese before…she would describe it as being a soft mozzarella like consistency maybe.  But the coup d gras is the salty rich beef gravy ladled over the top…the ultimate dirty late night snack!

We loved being in a town with plenty of dive bars to nip into for a beer and a plate of wings if we needed a snack. Sometimes in our travels its actually hard to find an old school pub for when the thirst takes you.

The Moose Garage was a typical dive bar…themed for the classic rockers the duke box was good, the beer was cold and you could pay for your beer…..by handing over your bra….then and there….to the barman.  Sorry dude, Rosie would trip over on the way home if you had mine!  Plus, my bra is way to expensive to be traded for a beer!

Vancouver is an amazing, modern, young and vibrant city.  It is a city that is easily walk able and, coupled with the friendly, efficient ferry system around the harbor we enjoyably covered a lot of ground sightseeing.  Vancouver is one of the worlds largest eco cities striving for sustainability and actively promotes recycling, reusing and self propelled modes of travel. Cycle lanes criss cross the city and the numbers using them are huge!  So, tomorrow we are heading out into the fresh air, to embrace the active lifestyle Vancouver promotes, on a bicycle, to discover the Jewel of Vancouver, Stanley Park.   Come along for the ride!