Vancouver – Mo’ north, mo’ green

update: I was really tired when I first put this up yesterday and it was full of mistakes and I’d also forgot to thank everyone who hooked it up. All rectified now and also added something important about the idea of the city lacking history.

My short trip across the border from Seattle to Vancouver only served to reinforce my feeling about the omnipresence of nature I got when I arrived in Washington state. The landscape and sights as the bus rolled down the highway were hypnotic at times, and mundane at others, and with the sun setting it only made those hypnotic moments feel all the more relaxing. The US-Canada land border proved to be the first real testing bordercross since my return to the west. We all had to exit the bus, get our bags scanned and queue (or should that be line?) for border control. And that’s when I got my first taste of totally straight-faced, unbending border officers who seem to lack any sense of humour, or at least common sense. Border control is serious business get me, especially in these terrorist times. Not only was I asked absolutely ridiculous questions about where I was staying, how long and why (I still don’t get how explaining that you’re travelling the world on holiday can cause such concerns) but I was then made to go and get a stamp only to be met with more straight faced non sense, forms and general pissing about. So much for visa waivers. The irony of the whole thing being that everyone had told me to expect this and worse from the American customs, and they turned out to be pretty painless on the way in. Though I got an indirect taste of it on the way out of Canada, but we’ll get to that later.

Vancouver turned out to be a lot like what I’d expected but also a lot different. I’d seen a lot of adverts for it in Japan, as it’s a popular destination being relatively ‘close’, and I’d met a few locals in Tokyo who’d given me a good idea of what to expect. And what I expected was a large, modern city surrounded by beautiful nature. And that I got, though it didn’t hit me in full until my first proper day there, as I’d arrived in the evening. As an aside, I arrived the evening of the big HSBC sponsored fireworks display competition, making hooking up with my friend trickier than I’d hoped, thankfully internet is standard in North American coffee shops and Skype is a godsend when you don’t have a mobile and most payphones turn out to be busted.

All the adverts and stories I’d been told turned out to be pretty much accurate: Vancouver is really stunning. The mountains loom, in a very literal sense, on the north side of the city, while on the west side the ocean creeps in and on the south/east side the city expands into the suburbs, very flat but still full of green. And everywhere you look there seems to be a lot of green, even in the downtown area, which kind of sticks out into the bay and has Stanley Park, a pretty big forest and park, attached to the end of it making it possible to walk through downtown and end up surrounded by nature (pretty much), which I can’t say is something I’ve seen in many cities before.

After spending a few hours downtown on my first day, I ended up in North Vancouver, which as I later learnt is actually a different city situated across the bay from Vancouver and at the base of the mountains. Another aside – West Vancouver is also a different city, which is situated west of the city of North Vancouver and bears no relation to the west side of the actual city of Vancouver… still following? Who would have thought naming cities could prove so tricky. Downtown Vancouver didn’t particularly do it for me, aside from some interesting buildings it was all a bit too much deja vu from what I could gather on a first impression basis, and so with this idea firmly lodged in my head that Vancouver was very much all about nature I decided to head towards said nature.

One boat ride (which is part of the public transport, efficient and relatively cheap, London take note and sort it out) later and I was in North Van, at the bottom of the mountains as it were and trying to figure out how to reach the various parks and other nature sites I’d seen advertised around the city and in the tourist brochure I’d been given. At first I decided to go with my trusted ‘walk and ye shall find’ approach which had worked quite nicely so far. About 30 minutes later and a fruitless walk around the lower part of North Van I came to the disappointing realisation that North Van was essentially one massive suburban town with nothing much to it aside from the docks and quay at which you arrive, and that the parks and other attractions were a shit lot further in reality than they seemed on the map. Walking got scrapped and I hopped on one of the free buses going to Capilano suspended bridge, one of the nature related attractions I’d seen/read about.

Capilano is a regional park, and while it has lots of trekking paths I didn’t realise this until much later on. Instead I spent this first day at the Capilano Suspension Bridge, a tourist attraction inside the regional park. I guess it’s one of the downsides of being a tourist, unless you’ve got local info (which I did later on) you’re always most likely to end up in the more ‘tourist trap’ places. Still the suspension bridge was nice, part of a fenced off area inside the park which includes plenty of nature, but also plenty of fairly standard, not so attractive shops and other things that go with tourist attractions. The bridge itself is pretty dope, stretched above the Capilano river, quite high up, it’s shaky and pretty fun, apart from when you find yourself behind some overweight tourists moving from side to side and making the whole thing sway more than it should. While the side from which you enter is full of not so exciting shops and other touristy things, once you cross the bridge you find yourself in a much more dense forest area where you can witness some of the seriously impressive trees that inhabit the park, as well as take some fairly entertaining tree adventure walks, going up to about 10 or so meters and walking around the trees looking at their trunks and habitat at the same level as some of the forest’s animal inhabitants. You just got to pretend like the tourists aren’t there.

Overall Capilano was definitely an interesting little adventure, cementing the impression that Vancouver was most definitely all about the nature. As I said though, thanks to my friend Kelly I discovered later in my week there that the rest of the park is actually just as nice, with some seriously dope treks up to the dam where the river starts, and you don’t have to pay the 30$ entrance fee!

Making my way back to town, I took a boat, crossed downtown and found myself back in the leafy suburbs of Commercial Drive all in the space of about 30 mins, a very surreal ‘urban’ experience. My friend Jules pointed out later that day that it’s possible to go from downtown Vancouver to a skying area in the mountains in roughly 45 minutes or so and to do so by using mainly public transport. Which is pretty bugged. Growing up in Nice I am used to the whole mix of seaside and moutain, but the mountains on the south coast of France are at least a couple hours drive away (the parts where you can sky anyways). In Vancouver, as I said, they loom over you and you can be quite high up and well away from downtown with a simple combination of metro and bus rides, like I did when I went to Capilano and back down to the suburbs. It’s a really crazy feeling, to know that nature is so close. It really brings a new dimension to the whole idea of the best of both worlds. And talking to locals during my time there, pretty much everyone mentioned that one of the best things about Vancouver is the ability to escape into nature at pretty much the drop of a hat if the fancy takes you.

Later in the week when I hooked up with Kelly (who by the way also goes by the name Decaf and makes some lovely music), he also took me to another one of the city’s main parks. This one borders the university of British Columbia and is yet another stunning example of this whole nature/urban co-existence thing that Vancouver has going on. As you drive through some fairly affluent, quiet suburbs you come to a forest. Once you park and start walking you find yourself deep inside the forest before you know it, unable to really hear any city sounds or see any urban elements. And yet you’re still within city limits and not that far from it at all. The forest also boasts some pretty impressive trees and had a very natural (excuse the pun) feel to it, it didn’t feel like someone had tried to make a forest inside an urban area for the sake of it or for some eco-friendly purpose. It reminded me a lot of the place where my father moved to in Provence, a hamlet surrounded by a huge forest spread over the hills. The trees and nature are obviously different, but the way in which you can just lose yourself and walk around the forest gave me the same feeling, but in Provence my dad lives about 10km from the nearest village.

Going back to the urban element of the city, one thing that really shocked me a few days into my stay in Vancouver was how open the public transport system is. Basically there are no gates at any of the stations on the skytrain, which links the suburbs to downtown and parts of North Van. It’s crazy, and it took me a little while to get my head around. Coming from London, the first reaction is ‘well why should I bother paying then?’, which isn’t very nice but it’s true. I’m so used to it, that coming across a system that seems to rely a lot more on trust leads me to automatically see the ‘advantages’ I can take from it. Again talking to Jules later on he explained that apparently the level of fare evasion is pretty limited, though they have started to do more ticket checks at station entrances and exits. Thing is, the lack of gates also brings something else with it: there is no station staff at the station. Only machines that dispense tickets. I was stuck for change on my first day and spent ages walking around looking for someone, only to realise that there wasn’t anyone that could help me. It’s a bit of a strange one for me, especially considering how many tourists the city gets. Still it’s quite impressive to see parts of public transport rely on such an open and trust-based system, because I know that in Europe that would just be abused and even in Japan where people are a lot more respectful and likely to not abuse trust, I never saw anything like that. The skytrain is also a nice way to cross town, offering a bird’s eye view of parts of the suburbs and downtown, showing just how strange and stunning a mix of nature and city Vancouver offers.

On the other hand, while this mix of nature and city is really impressive and quite unique (to me anyways) it’s also the only thing that really grabs you about the city. In my week there I went to explore most of downtown and parts of the suburbs and what I found left me wanting for more, a lot. Overall, the urban element of Vancouver, the city itself, I found to be quite plain and not so attractive. Downtown is a strange mix of businesses and habitations, with a lot more habitations than you would normally expect in a downtown area due to developments over recent years that have apparently turned huge chunks of downtown into appartment blocks and condos. And beyond habitation and businesses, downtown doesn’t have a great deal to offer. Visually it’s arresting and intriguing (especially when viewed from afar), but once you’re in downtown, I didn’t find much to grab me or prove really arresting.

The old part of town, Gastown, has a few quirky attractions but nothing amazing, and it looks very homogenised and cleaned up, a bit like how Sausalito felt in California – a nice, cleaned up version of an old town for tourists complete with bars, restaurants and souvenir shops, but lacking a certain something. Then there was Chinatown, which also failed to really strike me as anything remarkable, with no real attraction or center piece, or even a feeling that this was a particularly vibrant or interesting neighbourhood, which surprised me a little as Vancouver has a big Asian community, so you’d assume Chinatown would be a vibrant or at least interesting neighbourhood.

In an ironic turn, probably the most interesting element of downtown for me was East Hastings, which is possibly the least touristy part of town. East Hastings is known as the junkie area, but strangely enough, and in a similar fashion to my experience in San Fran, it’s sandwiched between Gastown and Chinatown and right next to downtown. This mean that you can literally walk from one end of downtown to the other (starting from the ocean side) and you’ll end up in East Hastings, surrounded by junkies, crazies and other ‘interesting’ things. And that again is a pretty crazy concept for me coming from European cities where this kind of area is generally nowhere near the tourist centers. In my case I actually walked from Chinatown to Gastown, and had to go through East Hastings to do so. I didn’t know it at the time but as I looked up and around me I realised that all of a sudden things had taken a turn for the weirder, and as I caught sight of the street name sign I realised I had stumbled across East Hastings. Everyone had told me about it, and in hindsight, I’d have to say that was definitely one of the most interesting things about getting to grips with Vancouver as a city.

Aside from downtown and the few tourist spots that surround it like Gastown, another area I was told to check out was Main St, with the promise of a more mixed neighbourhood experience, with cafes, restaurants, shops and a generally more ‘communal’ vibe. Again I was left a little disappointed though it’s true that compared to downtown I found the main part of Main St a lot more appealing. Thing was, being Main St, the road is actually pretty big and a main artery into the city, and so even though it’s lined with some really interesting shops and restaurants, it’s hard to just sit outside and watch life go by or relax with the non stop noise and movement of vehicles. Still, I found a lovely little restaurant as I crossed East Broadway, with a totally surreal interior and a great mix of European and North American cooking, and a pretty sweet little coffee spot, which was similar to my Seattle experience with its standard Starbucks-like inside but full of amazing homemade cakes and brews.

Jules also recommended I check out Commercial Drive a bit more, which I thought I had. As with my Capilano experience though, it wasn’t until my last day that I actually found the interesting bit he’d mentioned, when Kelly took me to a different part of the neighbourhood which felt a lot more like what I’d expected of Main St. Lots of shops and eateries lining the, much smaller and less traffic heavy, street and showing a colourful mix of influences from European to Asian. Kelly took me to this coffee spot there too, part of a small Vancouver only chain, that continued the whole coffee experience with some serious cakes. But by far the best, and quite possibly the highlight of my culinary excursions in Vancouver, was a sandwich from an Italian deli on Commercial Drive that was something else. Being half Italian I don’t say this lightly, but this was by far one of the best home made sandwiches I’ve had and it was also serious in size, big enough to provide me with two full meals for the day.

As I got towards the end of my stay in town, I was thinking about this whole nature and urban thing, and how Vancouver had proven a surprise. I expected the nature and splendor of it, but I didn’t expect it to be so close to the city, so much a part of it to an extent. And I also didn’t expect the city to feel so much less exciting than it did. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it wasn’t exciting, because it did hold a lot of surprises and was a real pleasure to experience but at the same time it didn’t have the same impact, or hold the same interest, than any of the other big cities I visited during my trip. And I got an understanding of why that was during my last evening there, when I hooked up with my friend Trevor from No Luck Club. An aside before that though, Trevor and I ended up having dinner near the place I was staying in this Asian restaurant which specialised in Dosa, the south Indian ‘crepe’ which I’d first discovered in Borneo a few weeks previously. The restaurant did all sorts of amazing things with Dosa, including serving them as a full meal with a curry inside. Seriously amazing and a very surreal link to my time in Asia. Anyways, going back to what I was saying, as we spoke during the evening, I was telling Trevor my impressions of the city, and when I told him about how I’d felt a bit let down by the city itself, he remarked that it was hardly surprising for him considering that Vancouver has a very short history, with the city itself being really no older than about 100 years. Once he’d mentioned this, it clicked in my head. That was what I couldn’t quite put my finger on when I was visiting and walking around town, but now that I knew it made sense. Being such a young city, Vancouver really misses a sense of history, something I’m really used to coming from Europe and which I also experienced in Asia. And while Seattle was a little similar I didn’t spend enough time there, and San Fran had a lot more history even if it is also a fairly young city by worldwide standards.

Now while it’s true that Vancouver’s lack of apparent history left me feeling a little disappointed about the city itself, I did come across an interesting book that showed a side of the city, and its history which is fascinating. While staying at Kelly’s house one afternoon he showed me a book by Fred Herzog, a German immigrant, who photographed Vancouver, the city and its inhabitants, for about 50 years. The book collects pictures from these 50 years that show a lost city, one that has drastically changed in that time, to the point where it is at times, unrecognizable. And I think that’s also what I could feel and which made me think that Vancouver lacked a little something. The city has a history, an interesting one at that, but in the 100 years it has changed so much, and so quick, that to find traces of it is a lot more difficult than it would be in most cities that still hold remnants of their past. Kelly took me around East Van one day and that was probably one of the few parts of town where I felt a sense of history, of finding something interesting about the city as we drove past various houses showcasing different types of architecture from Vancouver’s history. I can’t recommend the book enough to anyone who likes photography and also anyone who has visited Vancouver, it’s a real eye opener. It just seems such a shame that a lot of the city’s history has somehow been airbrushed by its modern evolution.

Vancouver as a city has plenty going for it and it is attractive, but the lack of a certain something, of a sense of history made a big difference for me. While it offers incredible nature and a unique experience in how it blends this nature with the city, it lacked any sense of history, a feel of time if you will, of neighbourhoods or places that give off this impression of having a story to tell through the architecture or the surroundings. The only place I got that sense was in East Van and through the book that Kelly showed, with pictures of some of the neighbourhoods I’d visited that showed them in a totally different light. I have spent the majority of my time on this trip in big cities, and I love cities, I love discovering them and exploring them, but with Vancouver this exploration was somehow dampened by the sense that something was lacking. However, it did give me something that I hadn’t experienced until then with the breathtaking nature and the way in which you could just hop from urban to nature surroundings. By the end of my stay Vancouver had proved to be very different to what I’d imagined but not necessarily in a bad way. I don’t know if I could live there, but it’s definitely one of the most stunning cities I’ve ever seen.

Oh yeah and I just remembered something else that totally tripped me out while I was out in Vancouver. Much like Seattle, Vancouver has very strange licensing and drinking laws. You can’t actually drink in the streets or out in public and the booze is pretty pricey. The most surreal thing for me was on the sunday, when Jules took us to a Trinidad and Tobago festival in North Van. The festival was held in a park, with music, food and people relaxing and enjoying themselves in the sun, but no one drinking apart from a designated bar-like area that was cordoned off and slightly away from the main part of the festival. Coming from London where these kinds of festivals are the norm in summer, it was really weird not being able to just walk around drinking and eating and enjoying the festivities. Even in Europe and Japan it’s also quite normal, but not in British Columbia. It’s not like it’s a big thing, but it was definitely a pretty strange experience, a sort of sober public gathering, something you don’t see very often.

Massive thanks goes to the whole Andre-Brown family for their hospitality and kindess and showing me around-ness! I owe you all a massive one if I can ever return the favour. Also big shouts to Kelly for playing the guide and hooking up the airport ride on the last day, Trevor for dinner and everyone else I met during my time there.