A day out in the city
Posted in Commentary on July 23rd, 2010 by Sacha PeterI have had the rarest of luxuries today, a day out by myself in the city. I really love the concept of the “tourist in your own city”, and I was in the Vancouver area for the day. Some thoughts that went through in my head:
0. The sunny, but not overwhelmingly hot weather in Vancouver is really, really nice. There is also a nice breeze.
1. Translink day-passes are $9 and is a good bargain for those that do not extensively use the transit system. A couple one-zone passes are $2.50 and two-zoners are $3.75 so it doesn’t take long to make the day pass worthwhile.
2. I was having coffee with a friend in downtown near the waterfront station and when we were sitting on one of those cement chairs around a dry fountain, a seagull pooped from up above, narrowly missing my friend and myself. He got a little bit of white splatter on the top of his hand, which was nothing compared to the brown soupy goo that was on the concrete below us. Probably the closest “bird strike” call I’ve had in my life.
3. Mobile technology is interesting – for example, I am writing this from a Starbucks near the Olympic Village Canada Line station. I was intending on doing some much-needed park board work, but the weather and environment make it far too distracting to get anything real done. This location, in particular, has really good natural light coming in and by virtue of its sub-optimal location, is not too densely populated.
4. I went to the Lonsdale Quay and resisted the myriad of goodies that were on sale there (especially the bakery – I love bakeries). I picked up some Tuscan soup thingy and it came with a bun. I forgot what the soup place was called at the Quay but it was quite tasty soup. The soup chef there said he has been making soup for 15 years. I am starting to restrain myself from eating excessive amounts of goodies since my metabolism is no longer as effective at shedding the calories, but man, looking at the stuff is mouth watering.
5. I walked around Ambleside park. Lots of dogs there. I noticed how they divided the park into an off-leash area and a leashed area. Very smart of them.
6. Park Royal South, what was interesting was that three tables in the mall had people playing chess against each other. Otherwise the air-conditioned mall felt quite sterile. The entire corridor between the Quay and Park Royal is being “spruced up”, I hardly recognize it anymore – not that go to North or West Vancouver very often.
7. The bus from West Vancouver to downtown Vancouver was much quicker getting through traffic than the cars, by virtue of having the bus lane bypass. There is so much of a crunch of cars trying to get on the Lion’s Gate Bridge – it makes you wonder if the city planners that originally conceived of the bridge would still think over 70 years later that it would be handling much, much, much more traffic but still have three lanes.
8. The Canada Line at the downtown Vancouver location headed south was packed. It is clear that they are going to have to figure out a way to increase rush hour capacity.
9. They were giving out free samples at Starbucks of their sandwiches, and they were very recently heated up. I took two samples, and they were quite good. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to order them, I could see why others would – they had the right amount of “crunch” and taste.
Now back to my boring work!