Vancouver: Days 3 & 4
I did end up going backwards into Gastown, because I called Matt immediately after I left the net cafe and he said he wasn’t ready to go yet. I was surprised at how touristy it was – it reminded me a little of parts of Key West, in an alternate universe. Once I’d done a walk-through there, my feet were so tired I decided to head back to the hotel for a shower and a little rest, regardless of Matt’s status.
I pulled out the handy visitor’s center map I’d been referencing all day, decided to head back to Howe using a different, not-yet-walked street – Hastings – and then tucked the map back into my jacket pocket and starting walking.
This was a mistake.
Hastings = Skid Row.
Now, I used to work in a homeless shelter – like, my office was actually inside the campus. I am not squeamish at all about the homeless. But this looked like a freaking gauntlet – literally, bazillions of shopping carts and wheelchairs, lined up on either side of the street. There was no way I was walking that voluntarily, so I backtracked and then headed back to the hotel a different way. By that time, Matt called and said he was on his way, and when I got back to the room, I read Coupland’s chapter on Hastings & Main and it all made sense.
That night, we ate had some delicious burgers and then made it to the observation tower just half an hour before it closed.
The next day, we celebrated our first sunshine with a beautiful tour of Stanley Park (fun fact: named after the same guy as the Stanley Cup), had lunch at PHAT (Matt had French Dip, I had a BLT with avocado – great bacon), then drove to Seattle.
I met Matt’s friends Jess* and Ana, who were kind enough to let us stay with them that night. The original plan was to stay in Vancouver, but since our flight was at 8:20 a.m., this was a much better plan. Ana works at MySpace and spilled all kinds of fun, dark, behind-the-scenes info. We had dinner at Cactus (I had prawn tacos), before watching Top Chef and heading to bed.
*Hee, I’m only linking that because it came up in conversation – Matt was taking a photo of Jess being all schmoopy with is puppy and Ana threatened to post it to wikipedia.
I’ll upload photos today or tomorrow and post a link then.
So. How did we like Vancouver?
Matt liked it a lot. I think he’s partially motivated by hatred of Florida, and would like to go anywhere else, period.
I like Florida, so I’m more conflicted. But I liked Vancouver, too. It says something that despite the initial gloominess, I already have a list in my head of stuff to do, places to try. I guess I’m preemptively planning a return trip, so apparently my subconscious is on board.
It’s not 100% in our hands, even at this point. I can’t get into any more detail than that. But it’s hard to get excited about something if there’s a part of you that feels like it might not happen.
So I guess we’ll just see how it goes.