vacation: Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia
While the best thing about B&B’s is their breakfast, today it caused a little bit of panic as a lengthy and delicious meal made us late for our ferry into Vancouver. Luckily with a foot on the gas we just made it.
The drive into Vancouver wasn’t particularly beautiful. The ferry took us through forested islands, but dumped us out in farm country. The midday haze hid the mountains in the distance, so it wasn’t until we crossed the bridge over the Granville Market that we got into blue skies and mountains over the cityscape. If you took the mountains out, you could almost feel like you were in Miami with a few oddly placed palm trees and towering condos.
We checked into our hotel and then walked down the sushi shop lined Denham street to get some lunch. I had planned for us to visit the Cafe de Paris for some cheap soups and sandwiches with a Parisian flair. Cheap was miscalculation on my part, some poor internet research which usually serves me so well. Instead we got a fairly pricey lunch, but it was undeniably delicious and definitely, definitely full of Parisian flair. We’d need to find a cheaper dinner option.
With our bellies full of wine and heavy cheeses, we rented some bicycles for touring Stanley Park. The park is laid out as a giant peninsula off of the Vancouver downtown with a 5 mile seawall that outlines the circumference. Even with stopping for pictures, we managed to fly around the park in no time at all. So, next we ventured into the center. The gravel paths lined with huge pines made it easy to forget you were even in a city at all. This put us right back in Olympic National mode.
We made our way up to Prospect Point for a rest and some ice cream. The view wasn’t as incredible as we had hoped, especially for the amount of gravelly uphill we endured. But, it was fun to watch the raccoons chase down the tourists.
We returned our bikes and set out on foot towards a recommended sushi restaurant. We stopped off at Delilah’s, who claim to have invented the flavored martini. Whether fact or fiction, their infused vodkas made for some tasty drinks. I especially loved my vanilla infused vodka with pear liqueur and fresh lime.
Kadoya was a unique sushi experience. Based on the recommendation, we were expecting something perhaps a little too fancy or maybe a little too authentic. We got neither. This was a hole in the wall, packed with people, and a menu that was even a little too bastardized for me, bacon bits, chicken sausage, pop rocks? We floated in the middle, ordering some more traditional rolls with only a little bit of “creativity” in the form of tempura-fried anything. It was yummy!!
We finished the night watching the sunset at The Boathouse, as a bartender who kept calling me “love”, poured us more unusual cocktails. We wandered back to our hotel, talking about or adventures for the next day, while I tried to convince Tom that we just might have enough room in our suitcase for that bottle of awesome lychee liqueur.
Tomorrow: Granville Island
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