Vancouver: Land of Great Beaches, Wonderful Friends and Thoroughly Enjoyable Food and Drink
Once again, I’ve proved very lucky in having gracious hospitable hosts waiting for me at a destination. After a long day spent in airports and airplanes, I arrived in Vancouver at 10:30 on a Sunday night. The gracious, hospitable hosts in question, Juliana and Alex were there to pick me up at the airport. After the quick drive out to their place, we went out for dinner and a beverage or two at a nearby pub, turning in relatively soon thereafter.
As evidence of what a great friend she is, Juliana not only set me up in her very comfortable new apartment, but also took a week’s vacation so she’d be able to properly entertain while I was in town. Thus we were able to head down to Wreck Beach on Monday afternoon. Wreck Beach is probably pretty much my favourite place in Vancouver. It’s a clothing-optional beach pretty much right in the middle of the UBC campus. Despite its proximity to the university, it still manages to be very secluded, due to the band of forest, and high cliffs (more than 300 steps down. And up) separating them. In addition to being a gorgeous beach (very soft dark brown sand, great swimming, lots of space on the sand) Wreck Beach may well be the most laid back place in North America. Everyone is incredibly friendly, and there’s a constant stream of disrobed vendors walking around offering cold beer, soft drinks and marijuana cookies for sale (this is BC after all.)
Juliana and I hung out on the beach for a while, alternately swimming in the cool water and drying off under the sun. Later in the afternoon, Alex finished work and joined us at the beach. We enjoyed several of the cold beverages we brought with us, then took off into the water to play Frisbee. Perhaps the most memorable part of the game was the appearance of Mermaid Girl. She looked to be maybe 15 or so, had long dark blonde hair and swum in and about us through most of our game. Her easy swimming style made her resemble a dolphin, or (as you may have guessed) a mermaid. This resemblance was compounded when we tossed the Frisbee her way and she held it in her hands, staring as though perplexed by it. Eventually, she swam away, never having said a single word throughout the 20 minutes or half hour she was around us. There was some debate afterwards as to whether she was possessed of a very odd/unique personality, was somehow mentally disturbed, or was just very stoned.
It was going to be hard to top the day at the beach, but we gave it our best shot on Tuesday. Waking up late, Juliana and I headed to Granville Island (*trivia fact* Granville Island is not actually an island) to participate in the Granville Island Brewery tour. (As I may have mentioned to some of you, my “default” activities on this trip are hiking and brewery tours.)
The tour was pretty standard. Though I kind of hate to admit it, once you’ve been on one brewery tour, you’ve been on them all. After the tour, we retired to the tap room to enjoy some samples (four apiece.) Juliana claims that I “commanded” the table with my travel story, and by virtue of this command, managed to wrest an extra 11 sample glasses from fellow tour members. Myself, I just think that some of them didn’t like the samples.
Finishing all of these samples left us sitting at the taproom table for some time. In fact we were two of the last three people at the table. The third, as we found after chatting with her for a bit, was Juliet, an environmental biology professor from San Francisco, who also owns a condo in Vancouver. Juliet very kindly offered to drive us to our next destination if we would wait for her to get some pie from the Granville Island Market. We happily agreed, only to find the market had just closed. So, after some valiant attempts to find our way in, we eventually gave up and headed down to the Yaletown Brewing Company, to meet my friend from Toronto, Dan Furst and his host Alexei.
It was entirely a coincidence that Dan and I were in Vancouver at the same time, but we did our best to make the most of it. Dan is at the end of a tour of the West Coast, in which he’s traveled by train from San Diego to Vancouver. In addition to Dan and Alexei, we were joined by Alex, Juliet, and Juliet’s real estate agent, an older (than us anyway) lady with a raucous, but entertaining nature.
After a pleasant few hours at the YBC (they have a cask conditioned IPA on tap there, which is, in my mind beer heaven) we decamped to take a look at Juliet’s condo. Dan is considering moving to Vancouver and since Juliet rents it out when she’s back in San Francisco, this might have been a convenient match. As it turned out, Juliet’s apartment, while utterly gorgeous (it’s quite new, full of hardwood, with floor to ceiling windows that look out on the harbour, Stanley Park, and Grouse Mountain) was far beyond Dan’s price range.
At this point, Dan and Alexei headed home, in respect of Dan’s job interview the following morningm while the rest of us moved on to a small, local bar near Juliet’s. Tuesday night was “acoustic jam night” and I took full advantage of the music by dragging Juliana out on the dance floor for the Violent Femmes “Blister in the Sun.” (Juliet, Alex and Juliana at said bar)
Juliet also had to be up relatively early, so we headed home before it got too too late.
Wednesday began with my first solo trip on Vancouver’s public transit (as with Atlanta and Baltimore, a simple and enjoyable experience.) I was headed out to meet Dan Furst in Gastown, (an old part of Vancouver that’s been designated as a historic area) where we joined up with a free walking tour. After the tour, Dan headed back to North Vancouver, and I hung around downtown, waiting for Juliana to come and join me. In the meantime, I explored downtown on my own, and had some of the best one-dollar pizza ever. Eventually I settled down at our proposed meeting place, The Railway Club, which is one of my favourite bars in the world. I head there every time I’m in Vancouver. It’s very reminiscent of the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, with somewhat nicer décor. everyone there is supremely friendly (they actually have a courtesy phone on the bar that patrons are invited to use-with a two minute time limit) and they book lots of great bands of the exact sort I like. Indeed, this was the exact point of Juliana and I’s trip to the place. The Corb Lund Band were playing there that night, and I’d been hoping to catch them in Toronto for ages, and so jumped at the chance to see them at a place I’m so fond of. (CLB are an Alt-country band, and Corb is a great songwriter. Check out their website.)
Juliana eventually did show up, well before the band started, and we sat around enjoying a few beers while waiting for the show to begin. A few beers, as well as a couple of shots. Juliana claimed that if we drank them then, it would remove the temptation of doing so later in the evening. As it turned out, this was probably not a good idea. About ¾ of the way through the show, I’d gone inside to get a closer view of the band, leaving Juliana out on the patio. 15 minutes or so later, I was informed by a fellow we’d been talking to earlier that she was somewhat “over-refreshed” at the bar outside…
We quickly made good our departure, took a taxi home and went straight to bed.
On that note, I think I’ll go straight to bed myself. Rest assured that there’ll be more from Vancouver to come.
Tags: North America
Llew
August 15th, 2004 at 12:12 am
Pace yourself Llew.
August 16th, 2004 at 4:36 am
It was great to meet you in Vancouver and now I’m excited to be able to watch your world tour blogged from the coziness of my temporary home.
Take care!
Cara
– Juliana & Alex’s friend
P.S. We were at Wreck today and a wooden catamaran-type boat was very close to shore. We could have taken it over, but due to an ill-timed very chilly nipply biting wave, I accidentally named us the “Pirates of Oh God Cold.” That’s not a title condusive to pillaging, so we laid on the beach instead. Oh – the Coast Guard also showed up in a hover craft.