vancouver!
Mar. 29th, 2009 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI've been sort of resisting writing up my week and a half of travel, because there was just so much going on (both physically and mentally/emotionally) that putting it into words will miss a good three-quarters of it. I had an amazing time despite the near-constant rain (and snow, once), and am in deeply besotted with Vancouver.
The easy facts:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
uilos and I flew into Vancouver on Thursday night the 12th, and flew back again on Monday night the 16th. I went to work somewhat jet-lagged on Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back to Vancouver on Wednesday (the 18th) to meet up with nixve. We hung out in the city for a day and then headed into the Cascades for a couple of days before I flew out again Sunday night, to return to work for a very jet-lagged week. It's everything in between that's difficult.
Dulles sucks mostly because the corridors are too narrow to have gates on both sides, so you end up running into Very Important people who are In A Hurry. SeaTac's a much nicer place, more spread out and calm in general. Having a train instead of the godawful people-movers doesn't hurt either. Vancouver International, though, wins the prize for coolest airport, at least the international-entry part. You walk along a catwalk over the rest of the terminal, and through a doorway and there are stairs down leading to the queue-maze of Customs. . . and there's a waterfall flowing down the steps next to you, and a lot of First Nations art, and (at least at midnight) customs officials who aren't terribly pushy even if you're a stupid American who doesn't have any clear idea what he's going to get up to while visiting Vancouver for a few days.
I knew I was in Canada when the bus we passed at one AM had a marquee reading NOT IN SERVICE / SORRY.
Vancouver's a big peninsula. The downtown is a smaller peninsula north of that. They're separated by a small inlet, and there are a couple of companies that run little passenger ferries back and forth. Downtown is made mostly of high-rises of one form or another, although we stayed in what seems to be the sketchiest four blocks or so in the area. The street out front of the hotel is entirely torn up, which made getting there Thursday night exciting.
The Howard Johnson on Granville seems to have been a hotel for a very long time: twisty turny staircase that's not a single continuous shaft, and sprinklers that were quite obviously retrofitted in later. It's neat. Got a bit of character to it. It's also got crap-all for heating, such that, in the wettest city I've ever spent any amount of time in, my heels were dried out and cracking after the third day. That was about the only downside to the trip.
It took about twelve hours for my vowels to widen out. I really hope no one thought I was making fun of them or doing it intentionally. At least now I know that it's not just that I pick up my Arkansan relatives' speech patterns when I talk to them. . .
Friday we met Cynthia W. for lunch in Chinatown (after getting on the bus going the wrong way), and visited the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden, which is a replica of a classical Chinese scholar's garden. Neat stuff. I'm a little sad that we didn't get to spend more time wandering around in Chinatown, that looked like it could have easily been good for a half day at least. Instead we rode the SkyTrain (Canadian for "subway") and then had a walk around Stanley Park. Since Friday was also the only day it didn't rain, so good timing there. We found a couple of old abandoned zoo exhibits that may have later been turned into fish hatcheries, and totem poles, and really big cedar trees. We also failed to get off the bus at the right time and got to ride it all the way through the park and over the Lions Gate bridge at the far end of the peninsula. Whoops. After dinner we walked back along Robson Street and got our fill of the high-end shopping experience. And also started noticing the zillion little crepe restaurants.
Satyrday was busy: up in the big round tower, down to Gastown for a bit of shopping (it's like Old Town Alexandria, except that they have a maple store! And also a jade [not soapstone, jade] store), and onto the tour bus for a ride around town. Like nearly everyone else we met, the tour bus driver was cheerful and friendly, happy to tell us about random things and when to be back to catch the bus after we got off to see the aquarium.
The aquarium's just about the right size for an aquarium, I think: not so big that I got fish fatigue (which happens at the one in Baltimore), but with lots of cool things. Including an aviary with a couple of sloths, for no apparent reason. And belugas (one of which calved a few months ago) and the most adorable sea otters ever (they weren't holding hands when we went through, though) and some large birds, and mudskippers, and fish that were bigger than me, and and and. So much stuff that we had to skip about a quarter of it to catch the tour bus back, because we didn't want to walk back in the rain. . . and saw the bus pulling away as we rounded the corner. Grr. On the other hand, we got to go back and see the jellyfish, and watch the octopus showing off for awhile, so it was hardly a total loss. Just rather wet.
We caught an IMAX movie (more fish!) and wandered back to the big round tower for a pretty good dinner with an amazing view. I don't think I'd ever eaten in a tower restaurant before. Highly recommended. Cities at night from above are good things, even in the midst of cloud and rain. After dinner, walked back through the construction and noted the point where it turned from "trendy" to "sketchy" (about a block or two north of the hotel).
Sunday started off with some confusion and mess and cold trying to catch the bus to Granville Island, which isn't. Eventually we gave up and walked there, through the rain and cold. Not a bad walk, though. Determined that the sketchy stopped about a block or two south of the hotel. Had lunch at the public market (E: "If I'd known this was here I wouldn't have eaten anywhere else") and wandered around the little shops and such. Eventually realised that there was a small ferry service that covered False Creek, between the Downtown peninsula and the rest of the city. Since it was snowing at that point, we took the ferry to a couple of museums.
The ferry's kinda fun. I mean, it's just a little motorboat thing, holds maybe eight people, but it's a neat way to get around. Direct, too, and no traffic lights. I'm a fan.
The Maritime Museum surprised me by how engrossing it was. It's mostly built around a retired RCMP icebreaker that sailed the Northwest Passage during WWII and then circumnagivated North America. There's also a whole bunch of 1/4" scale models of ocean liners, mostly built by one guy, and a number of other boat-related things. The Science Museum. . . eh. We caught a presentation on space travel by a guy who was really into his subject (always a good thing) and set things on fire (also always a good thing), and got to visit the planetarium. And, I think that was really about all there was to it. (The Vancouver Museum was attached, but we were starving, so we didn't stop in there.)
Caught the ferry back to the island, had dinner at the public market, rode to the near side of the far end of False Creek, walked home, and collapsed. I think we were starting to run down at that point.
Monday morning we finally made it out to one of the crepe places for breakfast, and had some amazing crepes. I mean, yum. (Me: "If I'd known these were this good I wouldn't have had breakfast anywhere else.") Rode the bus to the UBC campus and tried to go to theanthropophagy anthropology museum, but failed (it's closed on Mondays). So we rode back and had the slowest sushi ever for lunch
Then we wandered around the Vancouver Art Gallery, which was seriously unimpressive. Two floors of meh contemporary art (I brandish my enjoyment of the Minneapolis and San Diego museums as non-philistine credentials; this stuff just wasn't all that impressive), one floor devoted to three specific not-quite-representational landscape painters, and one floor of nineteenth-century landscapes. The venue doesn't help matters much, either: it used to be the court house before the justice system outgrew the building and moved to larger quarters a few blocks south, and they didn't do a very good job renovating the interior into an art gallery. Concrete floors, harsh lighting, and just a poor overall sense of space.
And then we rode the bus back to the airport, and all the trouble started.
I tried to check in with the automatic United terminal and got told to go check in with Air Canada. The automated Air Canada check-in process was deceptively easy, but then we had to wait in line with everyone else. I'm not entirely sure why we had to talk to a real person and not just go straight through the leaving-the-country part. I'm also not sure why they had exactly two people working the line, or why one of them vanished for half an hour. Or why people were incapable of filling out their customs forms before they got in line and thus stood around talking to one of the Air Canada people filling out their customs forms, making the wait even worse. Or why the Air Canada people didn't tell them to go away, fill out their forms, and come through the line again.
Eventually we spoke with the least pleasant Canadian in the city. (You'd think she wanted to be a New Yorker.) Turns out Air Canada's got stringent regulations about carry-on items (fairly small and under 20lb), and she took some amount of joy informing us that we'd both have to check our suitcases. Which, grr. The last time I checked a bag, it got on a plane to Denver instead of Chicago.
Frustrated and aggravated, we made it through there, and stopped at the US Customs entry. E's passport went through with no problems. I got five minutes of grilling followed by "If you'll come with me, Mr Taylor." Yet more frustration, yet more aggravation. We sat in a windowless room with two other people for about fifteen minutes. Eventually someone (not the same customs guy) came out, called my name, handed me my passport, and said "You're free to go, it's right that way." No explanation, nothing.
My suitcase and bag went through with no problems. E's got rooted through, because her tweezers and thread scissors are implements of TERROR.
We sorted out the luggage, removing laptops (because who wants to lose those?), sent the suitcases down the black hole of Checked Bags Only Do Not Climb, and had donuts while we waited for the flight.
The flight to LAX wasn't so bad.
We had a little over an hour to change planes. For any normal airport, this is plenty of time, even if you're changing airlines. LAX is no normal airport. Every terminal is physically isolated from every other terminal, and the maps they put up are next to useless. Three different people-who-work-there provided advice ranging from "unhelpful" to "wrong." We finally got directions from a guy who was being nice and giving directions as a pretext for collecting money for some charity or other. I gave him a fiver anyway, because despite his motivation he was actually helpful.
Did I mention that every terminal at LAX has its own TSA security checkpoint? So we had to do that song and dance again as well.
Made it to our flight about five minutes before takeoff. The very bright movie projected on the wall in front of us meant that I had to doze with E's blanket over my eyes to doze at all.
We arrived in Dulles around sixish, and watched other people's luggage go around the conveyor belt for awhile. Eventually it stopped going around and we went to talk to the United rep, who was surprisingly helpful and told us that our luggage had gone through Chicago and would be there later in the day. Good thing E had taken the day off.
We rode the blue van home and showered, and E crashed and I went on in to a fairly brain-dead day at work.
And really, that explains absolutely nothing. Vancouver felt freeing, in a way that I've not felt in years. The people are friendly and helpful, the bus system is pricey but it gets you where you need to go and runs pretty often, and the city's just. . . really nice. They stop for pedestrians and yield to buses. The SkyTrain works on an honor system with spot-checks. And Stanley Park and the mountains behind and all the water everywhere and non-neoclassical buildings and tea everywhere and crepes and new accents and fog and the intense brightness of the sun when it shines through.
Much of it is that I didn't feel tied down to a car. Living in the DC area has seriously broken me of much desire to drive places. I want to be able to walk to where I want to go, or take transit if it's a bit further. The sprawl, the distance between people, is killing me. As is the constant sense of rushrushrush. I expect these things are connected.
I miss it.
(Trip part 2, and photos, to come later.)
Update: photos now available.
The easy facts:
uilos and I flew into Vancouver on Thursday night the 12th, and flew back again on Monday night the 16th. I went to work somewhat jet-lagged on Tuesday and Wednesday, and flew back to Vancouver on Wednesday (the 18th) to meet up with nixve. We hung out in the city for a day and then headed into the Cascades for a couple of days before I flew out again Sunday night, to return to work for a very jet-lagged week. It's everything in between that's difficult.Dulles sucks mostly because the corridors are too narrow to have gates on both sides, so you end up running into Very Important people who are In A Hurry. SeaTac's a much nicer place, more spread out and calm in general. Having a train instead of the godawful people-movers doesn't hurt either. Vancouver International, though, wins the prize for coolest airport, at least the international-entry part. You walk along a catwalk over the rest of the terminal, and through a doorway and there are stairs down leading to the queue-maze of Customs. . . and there's a waterfall flowing down the steps next to you, and a lot of First Nations art, and (at least at midnight) customs officials who aren't terribly pushy even if you're a stupid American who doesn't have any clear idea what he's going to get up to while visiting Vancouver for a few days.
I knew I was in Canada when the bus we passed at one AM had a marquee reading NOT IN SERVICE / SORRY.
Vancouver's a big peninsula. The downtown is a smaller peninsula north of that. They're separated by a small inlet, and there are a couple of companies that run little passenger ferries back and forth. Downtown is made mostly of high-rises of one form or another, although we stayed in what seems to be the sketchiest four blocks or so in the area. The street out front of the hotel is entirely torn up, which made getting there Thursday night exciting.
The Howard Johnson on Granville seems to have been a hotel for a very long time: twisty turny staircase that's not a single continuous shaft, and sprinklers that were quite obviously retrofitted in later. It's neat. Got a bit of character to it. It's also got crap-all for heating, such that, in the wettest city I've ever spent any amount of time in, my heels were dried out and cracking after the third day. That was about the only downside to the trip.
It took about twelve hours for my vowels to widen out. I really hope no one thought I was making fun of them or doing it intentionally. At least now I know that it's not just that I pick up my Arkansan relatives' speech patterns when I talk to them. . .
Friday we met Cynthia W. for lunch in Chinatown (after getting on the bus going the wrong way), and visited the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden, which is a replica of a classical Chinese scholar's garden. Neat stuff. I'm a little sad that we didn't get to spend more time wandering around in Chinatown, that looked like it could have easily been good for a half day at least. Instead we rode the SkyTrain (Canadian for "subway") and then had a walk around Stanley Park. Since Friday was also the only day it didn't rain, so good timing there. We found a couple of old abandoned zoo exhibits that may have later been turned into fish hatcheries, and totem poles, and really big cedar trees. We also failed to get off the bus at the right time and got to ride it all the way through the park and over the Lions Gate bridge at the far end of the peninsula. Whoops. After dinner we walked back along Robson Street and got our fill of the high-end shopping experience. And also started noticing the zillion little crepe restaurants.
Satyrday was busy: up in the big round tower, down to Gastown for a bit of shopping (it's like Old Town Alexandria, except that they have a maple store! And also a jade [not soapstone, jade] store), and onto the tour bus for a ride around town. Like nearly everyone else we met, the tour bus driver was cheerful and friendly, happy to tell us about random things and when to be back to catch the bus after we got off to see the aquarium.
The aquarium's just about the right size for an aquarium, I think: not so big that I got fish fatigue (which happens at the one in Baltimore), but with lots of cool things. Including an aviary with a couple of sloths, for no apparent reason. And belugas (one of which calved a few months ago) and the most adorable sea otters ever (they weren't holding hands when we went through, though) and some large birds, and mudskippers, and fish that were bigger than me, and and and. So much stuff that we had to skip about a quarter of it to catch the tour bus back, because we didn't want to walk back in the rain. . . and saw the bus pulling away as we rounded the corner. Grr. On the other hand, we got to go back and see the jellyfish, and watch the octopus showing off for awhile, so it was hardly a total loss. Just rather wet.
We caught an IMAX movie (more fish!) and wandered back to the big round tower for a pretty good dinner with an amazing view. I don't think I'd ever eaten in a tower restaurant before. Highly recommended. Cities at night from above are good things, even in the midst of cloud and rain. After dinner, walked back through the construction and noted the point where it turned from "trendy" to "sketchy" (about a block or two north of the hotel).
Sunday started off with some confusion and mess and cold trying to catch the bus to Granville Island, which isn't. Eventually we gave up and walked there, through the rain and cold. Not a bad walk, though. Determined that the sketchy stopped about a block or two south of the hotel. Had lunch at the public market (E: "If I'd known this was here I wouldn't have eaten anywhere else") and wandered around the little shops and such. Eventually realised that there was a small ferry service that covered False Creek, between the Downtown peninsula and the rest of the city. Since it was snowing at that point, we took the ferry to a couple of museums.
The ferry's kinda fun. I mean, it's just a little motorboat thing, holds maybe eight people, but it's a neat way to get around. Direct, too, and no traffic lights. I'm a fan.
The Maritime Museum surprised me by how engrossing it was. It's mostly built around a retired RCMP icebreaker that sailed the Northwest Passage during WWII and then circumnagivated North America. There's also a whole bunch of 1/4" scale models of ocean liners, mostly built by one guy, and a number of other boat-related things. The Science Museum. . . eh. We caught a presentation on space travel by a guy who was really into his subject (always a good thing) and set things on fire (also always a good thing), and got to visit the planetarium. And, I think that was really about all there was to it. (The Vancouver Museum was attached, but we were starving, so we didn't stop in there.)
Caught the ferry back to the island, had dinner at the public market, rode to the near side of the far end of False Creek, walked home, and collapsed. I think we were starting to run down at that point.
Monday morning we finally made it out to one of the crepe places for breakfast, and had some amazing crepes. I mean, yum. (Me: "If I'd known these were this good I wouldn't have had breakfast anywhere else.") Rode the bus to the UBC campus and tried to go to the
Then we wandered around the Vancouver Art Gallery, which was seriously unimpressive. Two floors of meh contemporary art (I brandish my enjoyment of the Minneapolis and San Diego museums as non-philistine credentials; this stuff just wasn't all that impressive), one floor devoted to three specific not-quite-representational landscape painters, and one floor of nineteenth-century landscapes. The venue doesn't help matters much, either: it used to be the court house before the justice system outgrew the building and moved to larger quarters a few blocks south, and they didn't do a very good job renovating the interior into an art gallery. Concrete floors, harsh lighting, and just a poor overall sense of space.
And then we rode the bus back to the airport, and all the trouble started.
I tried to check in with the automatic United terminal and got told to go check in with Air Canada. The automated Air Canada check-in process was deceptively easy, but then we had to wait in line with everyone else. I'm not entirely sure why we had to talk to a real person and not just go straight through the leaving-the-country part. I'm also not sure why they had exactly two people working the line, or why one of them vanished for half an hour. Or why people were incapable of filling out their customs forms before they got in line and thus stood around talking to one of the Air Canada people filling out their customs forms, making the wait even worse. Or why the Air Canada people didn't tell them to go away, fill out their forms, and come through the line again.
Eventually we spoke with the least pleasant Canadian in the city. (You'd think she wanted to be a New Yorker.) Turns out Air Canada's got stringent regulations about carry-on items (fairly small and under 20lb), and she took some amount of joy informing us that we'd both have to check our suitcases. Which, grr. The last time I checked a bag, it got on a plane to Denver instead of Chicago.
Frustrated and aggravated, we made it through there, and stopped at the US Customs entry. E's passport went through with no problems. I got five minutes of grilling followed by "If you'll come with me, Mr Taylor." Yet more frustration, yet more aggravation. We sat in a windowless room with two other people for about fifteen minutes. Eventually someone (not the same customs guy) came out, called my name, handed me my passport, and said "You're free to go, it's right that way." No explanation, nothing.
My suitcase and bag went through with no problems. E's got rooted through, because her tweezers and thread scissors are implements of TERROR.
We sorted out the luggage, removing laptops (because who wants to lose those?), sent the suitcases down the black hole of Checked Bags Only Do Not Climb, and had donuts while we waited for the flight.
The flight to LAX wasn't so bad.
We had a little over an hour to change planes. For any normal airport, this is plenty of time, even if you're changing airlines. LAX is no normal airport. Every terminal is physically isolated from every other terminal, and the maps they put up are next to useless. Three different people-who-work-there provided advice ranging from "unhelpful" to "wrong." We finally got directions from a guy who was being nice and giving directions as a pretext for collecting money for some charity or other. I gave him a fiver anyway, because despite his motivation he was actually helpful.
Did I mention that every terminal at LAX has its own TSA security checkpoint? So we had to do that song and dance again as well.
Made it to our flight about five minutes before takeoff. The very bright movie projected on the wall in front of us meant that I had to doze with E's blanket over my eyes to doze at all.
We arrived in Dulles around sixish, and watched other people's luggage go around the conveyor belt for awhile. Eventually it stopped going around and we went to talk to the United rep, who was surprisingly helpful and told us that our luggage had gone through Chicago and would be there later in the day. Good thing E had taken the day off.
We rode the blue van home and showered, and E crashed and I went on in to a fairly brain-dead day at work.
And really, that explains absolutely nothing. Vancouver felt freeing, in a way that I've not felt in years. The people are friendly and helpful, the bus system is pricey but it gets you where you need to go and runs pretty often, and the city's just. . . really nice. They stop for pedestrians and yield to buses. The SkyTrain works on an honor system with spot-checks. And Stanley Park and the mountains behind and all the water everywhere and non-neoclassical buildings and tea everywhere and crepes and new accents and fog and the intense brightness of the sun when it shines through.
Much of it is that I didn't feel tied down to a car. Living in the DC area has seriously broken me of much desire to drive places. I want to be able to walk to where I want to go, or take transit if it's a bit further. The sprawl, the distance between people, is killing me. As is the constant sense of rushrushrush. I expect these things are connected.
I miss it.
(Trip part 2, and photos, to come later.)
Update: photos now available.
some random bits of responses
Date: 2009-04-08 03:40 pm (UTC)Looking at prices of things (housing and food, mainly), Vancouver doesn't seem any more expensive than the DC area. Not that I'd be able to live in downtown DC either, but, you know. It's potentially doable someday.
I may want to pick your brain (email, chat, sometime when you're around visiting) re immigration stuff at some point. It's not much of an issue for another year, since they tightened immigration restrictions in Feb '08, but I can still dream.
Cheers.
Re: some random bits of responses
Date: 2009-04-09 01:26 am (UTC)We are actually almost done with that, too. We've been on work permits since we got here in July 2007, and just got our passports with permanent resident visas in them, so this weekend we are going to drive to Niagara Falls, cross the border, and cross back and go through the remaining "landing" formalities and hopefully get our permanent residency cards in about a month.
Anyway, I'm happy to talk about that or general US/Canada differences any time. The health care system here is definitely better in terms of universal access, but it's not nirvana. New advances take longer to be accepted here - Health Canada approval (kind of the equivalent of FDA approval for new meds, etc) can be really slow because they are sometimes picky about studies being done on Canadian subjects. It's also a mixed system - doctors and hospitals are covered by the provincial health care plans, but prescriptions and some other things aren't. So most jobs come with supplemental health insurance - if you don't have a job with that coverage, there are provincial drug plans that you (the generic you, not you personally) may qualify for, but they are more limited in brands, etc., that they will cover. This may or may not make a difference to any individual person depending on their medical needs, but I have been frustrated by at least the first point. We have excellent supplemental coverage through our jobs, and after a long period of waiting for referrals, I've gotten into the care of the endocrinologist (diabetes doctor) who my amazing doctor in Seattle recommended. But I am frustrated by not having access to some new technology that is more widespread in the US.
I have heard (and hope to never find out) that they (the health care system in general) will move mountains to get you taken care of immediately if something dire happens. I've also heard that the wait times for "nonessential" things can be slow, and if you don't have the right supplemental coverage and are at the mercy of the province, getting something like cancer could be pretty bad because the latest drugs are not covered.
Anyway, I'm not trying dissaude you or anything - there are a lot of great things about Canada - but there are also things that the US does better, and some days one or the other is more apparent. As far as costs go, food is about the same, housing depends on location, and many other things cost more. Cross-border shopping helps - if you go back to the US for more than 2 days, you can bring back a fairly substantial amount of stuff without paying duty. But stuff like cell phones and cable are just more expensive,and some days that pisses me off. Online shopping here is totally hopeless, and that's one surprising thing that I miss more than I thought I would.
Anyway, it's still a great place, and Vancouver is definitely way better than Mississauga. We're here for at least the next 4-5 years, seeing as we are in the process of buying a house, but my hope is still to end up back on the west coast eventually.