Vancouver – Bye bye Canada. We’ll miss you.

After driving over the TransCanada Highway which is the world’s longest national highway (8030 km) and one with nice views of mountains, rivers and waterfalls, we arrived for a short visit in Vancouver. Everybody that we met on the way and who has been in Vancouver before told us that it’s a very nice city but really have to be lucky with the weather because it rains most of the year. And we were lucky as we had two nice sunny days. In Vancouver we were hosted by Charley which was recommended to us by Sarah, our CS host in Calgary. Charley was really cool, he recommended us nice things to do in Vancouver, great dishes to try and he probably makes the best Tom Yam soup ever.

Vancouver is very multicultural. You have a big variety of cuisines from all over the world starting with many Asian ones, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and so on and continuing with European ones. Here we tried probably the best pizza so far and the Vancouver Special Pizza which is a cold pizza with salmon. In Vancouver you get very good fish and seafood. Another specialty we tried was Ramen from the Japanese cuisine which is a noodle soup with different flavors. I tried the Spicy Garlic Ramen which had a garlic ball the size of a meatball which was almost only pressed garlic (see the pictures). I love garlic and it was very delicious but I had the taste of garlic for almost 2 days in my mouth.

On the first day in Vancouver we rented bicycles and rode around the Stanley Park near the ocean which was very nice as you can feel the ocean breeze. We also walked through Gastown, a very fancy area in Vancouver and downtown which has a lot of nice bars and cafes. In the evening we went to Granville Island which has a nice public market with lots of food you can choose from and you can sit near the ocean and listen to live music. On the second day we went to the campus of the University of British Columbia which is really nice and also has some nice beaches to the ocean. Then we went to the Capilano Park which is famous for a very long suspended bridge where your knees start shivering when walking over as the bridge is moving a lot (see the pictures). Here you can also walk on the Treetop path which is on small bridges that connect the tree houses.

One amazing thing we’ve seen or done

It’s more sad than amazing but unfortunately Vancouver has the poorest street in whole North America, the East Hastings Street. Homeless people from all over Canada gather here because it’s the only big city in Canada where people are allowed to live and sleep on the streets. It’s really shocking to see a lot of homeless people, sleeping on the street, drug addicted and shops were they can get their daily doses in a legal and supervised manner. The picture of all these “living ghosts” is something we will not forget very soon. And more amazing is that everything is just 100 meters from Vancouver’s fanciest neighborhood, Gastown, where you have to pay 20-30 dollars for a lunch. It’s unbelievable how both worlds live peaceful just one street far from each other. I didn’t take any pictures of the Hastings Street because I found it unfair to take photos of someone else’s nightmare.