Monday (30/4) kind of became the left-over day of my Vancouver visit. The one big thing that I hadn’t seen yet was Stanley Park – this big city park that the Vancouverites are so proud of.
It is located on the tip of the headland that makes up downtown Vancouver. There are dozens of trails in the forest, and the trail that follows the water all the way around the park from one side to the other is almost ten kilometers. So, the park is quite big. And full of joggers, bikers, dog walkers and tourists.
I’ve been in quite a few city parks before, but what’s special about this park is that it still feels so wild. I’m pretty sure it’s the temperate rainforest vegetation – it grows so thick and lush and green, so that you actually can’t see further than the closest group of trees. Which means, that you can’t see the other trail that is just twenty meters from the one you’re walking on. And the noise from the highway that runs right through the park is easily drowned in the sound from the wind in the trees.
I really liked Stanley Park. I was walking around there for more than three hours and just couldn’t get enough of these huge trees. The Vancouverites are really lucky to be living next to this place of moss and ferns.
But I couldn’t stay all day. You see, Frida, Karin and Marit were coming, flying in from Edmonton where they had just finished university. So when I got the text that they had landed in Vancouver, I reluctantly walked out of the rainforest and into the glass skyscraper jungle.
But, on the way to their hostel, I happened upon a peculiar block among all the huge buildings. Instead of skyscrapers, it had a couple of small wooden houses with cute gardens around them. In the middle was this green, beautiful building, which turned out to be the Roedde House, a museum of a late nineteenth century home. Unfortunately, as it was Monday, the museum was closed. But as I was standing there reading the sign in front of the house, an older man came out of the house and told me that they were closed, but if I wanted to, he could show me around in the rooms on the first floor. Turns out, he was the vice president of the organisation that ran the museum and today they were having a dinner party in the house. He was there to oversee the preparations, but wasn’t doing anything special at the moment. And oh, was he sweet. He ended up giving me a private tour of the whole house, with it’s beautiful furniture and textiles and photos. I guess he enjoyed talking about the place, and I was all ears. He knew so many stories, of the family who built the house and of the time when it was built, and you know me, I love a good story. It was evident that he was really passionate about the place, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I had to leave. He was the sweetest and the museum was beautiful.
So, I ended up being late to my meeting with Frida and the gals. But they didn’t mind. I found them eating wraps at a fast food restaurant next door to the hostel. Oh, it was so great to see them again. Especially Frida.
We went to Chinatown. Apparently, Vancouver has the third largest population of Chinese people outside of China. And it was a typical Chinatown, I would say, a lot of red, shops with strange, dried sea creatures on display and all the signs written in Chinese.
But it was also kind of rough and run down. Later that day, when I returned to my Kitsilano couch, I was told that that’s a rough part of town where you don’t want to go after dark. And I can see that. Many dark corners and strange-looking alleys.
By seven, we were starving. Conveniently enough, we were just about to meet up with a Norwegian friend of Marit’s, an exchange student at UBC, and she took us to a Japanese tapas restaurant. (British Columbia has a big eastern Asian population in general, not only Chinese. There are plenty of Japanese and Koreans and Taiwanese too.) Honestly, that might have been one of the best meals that I’ve ever had. It wasn’t Spanish in the least, the tapas thing in the description was just because the menu was made out of many small dishes and we ordered a whole bunch and shared – just as in a real tapas restaurant. But the dishes themselves were all Japanese fusion – strange fish and sea weed and rice and tofu. And it was amazing. Really. So many new and exciting flavours. So much more than sushi. Then and there, I decided that I have to take advantage of the fact that my cousin Ellen got married to a Japanese guy a couple of years ago. My next trip will have to be to Japan. Japanese restaurants in Sweden are a joke compared to what you get here – and, I presume, what you get in the country itself.
When dinner was eaten and payed for (and it wasn’t expensive either. I payed 14 bucks, which would be about 90 kronor. Where can you eat your fill of real gourmet ethnic food plus desert for less than a hundred kronor in Sweden?), I walked back with the girls to their hostel on Granville Street, said good night, admired the night neon lights while waiting for the bus, and returned to Kits.
There, they were watching Community, playing games and going to a night open coffee shop to buy cake. I didn’t get to sleep until after two. (Which seems to be kind of what I do these days. Go to bed late and rise early. I’ll be so sleepdeprived when I return back home that I’ll probably have to sleep for an entire week straight. But it’s worth it. I’m here to experience. Not to get a good nights rest every night.)
My four days in Vancouver were over. But I’ll definitely want to come back, some day.
Katja Malmborg 