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| Friday, August 11, 2006 - Vancouver - we arrived in vancouver and checked into the Vancouver Fairmont. The Fairmont is one of the grand old Canadian Pacific railroad hotels that were established across Canada. We always attempt to stay in one when we are in a city in Canada that has them. They tend to be landmarks and are wonderfully full of old world charm. |
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| We had a lovely large room with a view of the city. |
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We heard that Vancouver has the best Chinese food in North America so we decided that our dinners (and a lunch) would all be Chinese. The first night we had dinner at an amazing Chinese restaurant - Shanghai Chinese Bistro. It served the most fantastic szechuan shredded beef dry that we have had since Hwa Yuan in NYC Chinatown closed many years ago. It was fiery hot - hotter than we even remembered at Hwa Yuan. And was dry and chewy just the way it should be. The rest of the food was also excellent. A wonderful place and if we ever get back to Vancouver it will be on our short list of places to eat at. So far Vancouver is living up to its claim that it has the best Chinese food in North America. |
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Saturday, August 12, 2006 - Each morning we went to a local Starbucks for some coffee and croissant, scone or other treat
The city is very interesting and quite beautiful - and the sign not withstanding I don't think there are many 75cent a night rooms available. :-)
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The city is under going an amazing amount of construction. I think the emblem for the coming Olympics (2010) should be a crane atop a building. Everywhere you look there is major construction going on. |
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We decided to drive over to the University of British Columbia to go to the world famous archeology museum.
As there is everywhere, there was some major construction going on around the museum on the BC campus.
The museum has the most spectacular display of first world (native North Americans) artifacts. We spent a couple of hours just viewing these fantastic items, including the most beautiful totem poles.
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We left the museum and headed for the shore line. The university is across the bay from downtown vancouver. There was a lovely beach along the bay with the most wonderful views of the city. |
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| There are amazing views of the mountain in the distance as we drove around town |
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| At Stanley Park, Vancouver's answer to Central Park there is a lovely drive that circles the point on which the park resides. The views of both the city, the bay and the mountains are spectacular. |
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| We continued our drive around the city noticing the amazing amount of construction and the fact that the city was modern, clean .... and full of homeless people. |
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| Note the reflection of the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel in the mirrored glass of the skyscraper across the plaza. |
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At night the streets are alive and busy. There are these funny dressed bears all over town. I think a bear is the mascot of the Olympics coming to Vancouver. |
That night we had dinner at one of the branches of Hon's Wun Tun House that was on Robeson Street a few blocks from our hotel. It is a giant cafeteria type place with communal tables and HUGE portions and very very cheap prices. We ordered a lot of food as we wanted to try a lot of different things. We ended up eating about 1/3 of what we ordered as the portions were just gigantic. The food did not go to waste however as there were a couple of young Canadians sitting next to us at our communal table that we shared our food with. |
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| Sunday, August 13, 2006 - We got up Sunday had breakfast at the local Starbucks and then headed to Granville Island. Granville Island is a small (tiny) island that is just across the bridge from downtown Vancouver. There is nothing there except all sorts of tourist shops and markets, galleries, and public spaces. A perfect place to spend a Sunday afternoon. |
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There was a wonderful juggler performing in the a square on the island. He was very funny and the kids just loved him. He really connected with the kids (and the adults too....) |
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There was a giant kids market on the island, but Jane could not find one thing suitable for Eliza that she couldn't get in NY - so why schlep it 3000 miles. |
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| That night we had dinner at another amazing Chinese Restaurant - Kirin Mandarin Restaurant - also just a few blocks from our hotel. This was a very lovely place. We had Peking Duck and it was fabulous. They served the skin in delicate wrappers with hoisin sauce and scallions as is the norm. But then they took the duck meat and chopped it up and stir fried it so that it was dry and crispy and absolutely delicious. It was the best preparation of Peking Duck that we had ever had. Unusual and fantastic. It sealed the case for us that Vancouver does have some of the best Chinese restaurants in all of North America..... including New York and San Francisco. |
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Monday, August 14, 2006 - We started the day with our usual Starbucks breakfast, packed, checked out of the hotel and headed South to the border and Seattle. There was about an hour wait to get across the border. About what we expected. We stopped at a Taco Bell for some lunch north of Seattle.
We found a Red Lion Hotel at the Sea-Tac Airport and stayed there for the night before our very early morning flight back to NY. We tried to see if we could check in the night before but were unable to. We did drop the car off so we wouldn't have to deal with that in the morning. An American Airlines agent told us we should get there very early - 4am for a 7:10 flight (this was right after the London planes bomb scare). We thought that was nuts and woke up around 5am and headed for the airport. We got there around 5:30 and just had to wait around for no good reason. The flights back to NY LGA went through Chicago and were uneventful.
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