Oh, Canada!

We got through the border crossing easily (and people think Canada and the United States are similar—HA!) We stopped at the Visitor’s Center to get maps and there was a town up North called Houston. Unfortunately, it was too far away to visit. It took us both awhile to get used to looking at the itty bitty kilometers per hour numbers on the speedometer, but we did eventually. Our first stop in the Maple Leaf Country in Beautiful British Colombia was Granville Island. It was delightful, and we got free parking! We wandered around the Market and watched the ships for awhile. After Granville Island, we went to Gastown, which felt like a sleepy old train town you only see in faded photographs; it was nearly empty, which added to its character. We stumbled upon the southeast side of Vancouver, which is notorious for heroin usage where suddenly a shouted drug deal materialized around us. It was filled with vulgar language, yells, and people who seemed disturbed and generally unpleasant.

Bryan and I eventually found our way to Chinatown, which was really interesting. The little shops and restaurants and hair salons were filled with big posters that I could not remotely understand. We ate at Floata’s seafood. It was well recommended, but once we arrived, we decided it was very odd. It had a mildewy sort of smell; it was the size of a hotel event space, yet there were only two tables—not including ours—being used. Also, the surveillance footage of the entrance to the restaurant was displayed on a huge projector at the front of the restaurant. We had four different types of Dim Sum—shrimp, pork, beef, and dumplings. We were also served hot tea. It was a delicious, but strange place to have a meal. After lunch, we went to a beautiful Chinese garden called Sun Yat-Sen. It was so elegant and simple. The ponds were by far my favorite; they showed the reflections of the gentle trees in the garden and the harsh outlines of skyscrapers a few blocks away. It reminded me of Al-Azhar Park in Egypt. The juxtaposition of nature and metropolitan areas is always fascinating to me.

After a wonderful time there, Bryan and I went to the Vancouver Library, which was huge and very impressive. We decided we preferred nature areas to the big city, so we headed to Stanley Park. It was lovely and peaceful. We sat by the lake near the bridge to read and we watched two birds (a crow and a seagull) and observed their odd habits. For dinner, we went to Whole Foods and had some of their fresh selections. Vancouver is quite expensive, and we were trying to save in anyway that we could. We went very inexpensive with a hotel that night, and realized once we got there that we were somehow back in the Southeast side of Vancouver; this time at nearly midnight. Not a wise choice, but by the next morning, the street looked utterly harmless.

For lunch, we had Japadog. It’s a Japanese hot dog stand near Canada Place, which is delicious! We went to Queen Elizabeth Park to enjoy our meal. There were trees and gardens and ponds and flowers; it was overflowing with delightful things! It also brought to mind one of the facets of Canada, which had begun to truly interest me—the gender neutrality of blue-collar workers.Many of the lawn workers I saw were women, and most of the roofers/ painters I saw were female. The contrast between this and what I’ve seen as the norm in the United States was fascinating. Next, Bryan and I went back to Granville Island to watch the dragon boat show! We couldn’t find the boat show, but we had a lovely walk along the seawall.

My favorite part about my time in Vancouver centers around a group of men I never met and will probably never meet—the Canucks. Vancouver was in the finals for the Stanley Cup and you could feel it in the air. The houses and cars bore flags yelling “GO CANUCKS GO!” and it seemed as though half the people in Vancouver were wearing jerseys. We met up with our host, Hayden, and watched the game at his house. It was so much fun and so exciting, even though they had not yet scored when we went to get sushi for dinner during the break. It felt like it happened suddenly, but it was also a long time coming when they scored! For the rest of the game I would yell Luoooooo for the goalie Luongo when the puck would come near him. I was so happy when the Canucks won (or how I said at the time “we won”). GO CANUCKS GO!

We started our trip out of Canada with Tim Horton’s donuts, which were quite yummy. Our welcome back to America came in the form of an excessively long line at the border followed by a second agricultural checkpoint. Even though the food in our car was from the United States, in the words of the Customs Agent “food loses its citizenship when it crosses the border.” Oh bother.