I love the Pacific Northwest. However it’s been a while since I’ve had the privilege of visiting the Canadian portion of my great region. This past Labor Day weekend Tim and I hopped on the train and made our way up to one of the most beautiful–and delicious–cities in the world.
After getting over the initial sticker shock (our poor flaccid American dollars sure aren’t what they used to be) we toured and ate our way through the city.
The first night we met up with our friends Benson and Kel (who serendipitously not only happened to be in Vancouver at the same time we were but also were staying in the same hotel) to have dinner at the rather popular and packed Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie in Vancouver’s China Town district. While we were waiting for the boys I was a bit peckish so I decided to order the somewhat vague menu item “crunchy fish”. Apparently the menu wasn’t all that vague because that is exactly what was delivered to our table. Benson and Kel finally arrived and after a lovely dinner (everything tasted great) we headed out the door straight into China Town’s Saturday night market. This experience was somewhat reminiscent of London’s Portobello road but the actual products had some uncanny resemblance to the goods available in Los Angeles’s fashion district markets. After deciding that we were no tin need of any ground ginseng, battery operated barking dogs or flashing L.E.D. pins we headed out of the market to our next destination–dessert.
We literally stumbled upon Judas Goat Taberna which is located in the historically rather sinister Blood Alley. After a bottle of lovely Tempranillo, fig and goat cheeses, an amazing cherry goat cheesecake and some luscious truffles we waddled out the door, back to our hotel and called it a night.
On Sunday, after a gluttonous (especially considering our previous nights consumption) brunch at Medina Cafe, Tim and I took a monster stroll around the entire downtown peninsula to see as many sculptures from the Biennale as possible. It was a lovely morning and although I ended up wishing that I had brought along some hiking shoes it did wonders for ameliorating my guilt about my calorie consumption.
Sunday night we met up with Benson and Kel again at Salt and chatted about our collective adventures throughout the day. Salt is good–but the service is ridiculously slow. We essentially had a bottle of wine, and salami and cheese and it took almost 90 minutes before our food was delivered. Despite the agony of the relatively poor service, it was really fun to imagine all of the dramatic fits we could have as we stormed out. Overall it was another great evening.
On Monday, very luckily, Tim and I caught the last day of The Modern Woman exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The exhibit was all about drawings of women by some very famous painter. In particular I was fascinated with some pieces by Toulouse-Lautrec and Renoir. The exhibited drawings were much different from any of the other works by these artists that I have seen. I also enjoyed In Dialogue with Carr, a very interesting, albeit somewhat quirky, exhibit that combines the work of Emily Carr with contemporary British Columbian artists.
Technically our weekend was a belated birthday present for Tim but I felt a little guilty because I felt like the weekend was really a gift for me as well. Overall it was great fun squeezing the last little bit of fun out of a delicious summer.
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