Vancouver!

My Vancouver experience in a nutshell: beautiful mountains, pizza with sesame-seed crusts, crazy blinking-green trafflic lights (what the hell does that mean -- jump to warp speed?), the smell of marijuana on downtown street corners, good vegetarian food, over-eager little men walking over-eager little yappy dogs, the nicest homeless guys in the world, the meanest homeless guys in the world, and bars with TVs on the outside so smokers don't miss any second of the hockey game. (Hockey-mad Canadians.)

I really liked Vancouver. I hadn't been there since I was five years old and allegedly harrassed my mother non-stop on our trip to the 1986 World's Fair there. (I can neither confirm nor deny this because I have since blocked out any memories of possible misbehavior on my part. I was the perfect child.)

Vancouver's about three hours from Seattle, and I took a nice long scenic route via historic Port Townsend and Deception Pass. (Mostly because "Deception Pass" sounds wicked cool.) Crossing into Canada was actually pretty painless, and even though the weather was terrible the first day of my visit, I got to spend the second day in Chinatown -- one of the many highlights of my trip.

Chinatown Vancouver is massive. It's the biggest Chinatown in Canada and one of the biggest in the world. I walked around kitschy Chinese import shops; browsed through T&T Supermarket, a really interesting Asian grocery store; sampled some really good food; and finally found peace and quiet in the amazingly beautiful Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden.

Really, the Chinese Garden might have been the highlight of my entire Vancouver trip, it's that cool. It's named for the first president of the Republic of China, who spent lots of time in Vancouver. It's the only full-sized traditional Chinese garden outside of China, whatever that means. It's beautiful and very peaceful and I highly recommend it if you're ever in Vancouver.

Pictures of Port Townsend:






Pictures of Deception Pass & Bridge:










Pictures of the Chinese Garden in Vancouver: