First visited Canada - impressions of Vancouver

For a long time we were planning to go to Vancouver, but everyone was waiting for good weather. Impressions from Canada are just like from Texas: I expected that there would be more differences from Seattle, but there are almost none if you do not peer into the details. Even fruit and vegetables in the store are measured in pounds;)

My classmate, who is also named Andrei, lives next to Vancouver and thanks to whom I got an internship at BGSU 12 years ago (this was his head at St. Petersburg State University who sent students to the USA for the summer, and not mine), and therefore, I generally chose to go to the American graduate school, and not, for example, in German. And this time, Andrei and his wife, Katya, helped us a lot by booking a guest apartment for us in the house where they themselves rented accommodation. It turned out only 60 USD / night - very cheap for Vancouver, where I could not find anything cheaper than $ 100 / night in hotels.

The only minus in comparison with hotels is the lack of wi-fi, but even here Andrey shared with me a spare Canadian SIM card so that I could check the mail and the weather.

To Vancouver and back we rode the BoltBus bus, did not want to deal with parking for cars. Crossing the border passed without problems, but slowly. Perhaps affected Memorial Day weekend. According to the schedule, it takes 4 hours to go there, the bus was late for 15 minutes, back - 30 minutes. The first time I used an American passport (plastic card), received in March. My brother traveled with a Russian passport + green card.

In Vancouver, the first thing they bought was cards to travel by public transport. And we were going to ride it a lot. On Saturday and Sunday, they even bought day passes for 10 Canadian dollars (7.77 US dollars), which turned out to be beneficial for our number of trips. An American credit card (MasterCard from CapitalOne) has worked everywhere, and it does not have a foreign transaction fee, that is, everyone was withdrawn at the official rate, without additional fees from the bank. In terms of prices in Canada, of course, much cheaper, since the US dollar is now significantly higher than the Canadian. Skybridge between New Westminster and Surrey, along which SkyTrain automated trains run (every 3 minutes one way - in the USA, the intervals are usually much longer):

Traveling around the USA, I inevitably try on every city to ensure that I could live there. I can’t live in Vancouver, I don’t have a Canadian residence permit, but in terms of climate and opportunities for walking, the city is very similar to Seattle. And while we chose Seattle for life in the USA, if Vancouver were an American city, it would be a serious competitor to Seattle. There are even more promenades for walking along the "big water".

You can quickly get to the mountains by bus, which we did on Saturday morning.

And on the way there, we crossed the bay on a vessel called SeaBus. Seattle also has King County Water Taxi, which carries people between downtown and West Seattle, but in Seattle it looks more like tourist entertainment, and in Vancouver it is an important part of public transportation.

We did not climb into the completely snowy mountains, but went around the gorge on the Capilano River.

It is located downstream of the impressive Cleveland Dam.

In Vancouver itself there is a huge Stanley Park, which, as I heard, is very wild and wooded, if you wander inland, but we just walked around the perimeter, which is a seawall - a dam for protection from waves. And it took us at least 2 hours.

Heron in the photo noticed?

Downtown Vancouver is actively built up by similar high-rise buildings. Once upon a time, a lot of Chinese came from Hong Kong, and the construction is tailored to their Hong Kong taste. Unless the two houses around the edges are a little more interesting than the rest:

Some signs and inscriptions in Vancouver are duplicated in French, although Quebec is far away. It would be more relevant to duplicate in Chinese (though I don’t know which of the two is Traditional or Simplified). I read about such a city nickname as Wangkong;) But Asians are good, the future lies with them. They settle in glass high-rise buildings, and the homeless people populate the historic Chinatown.

The Vancouver library was designed by the Canadian architect of Israeli origin Moshe Safdi, who also built the library in Salt Lake City. As soon as we went inside, we noticed a striking similarity in the layout of the atrium.

Conference Center, aka Hotel, aka Cruise Ship Mooring - Canada Place:

A lot of ships are sailing around Vancouver. They look very cool while they are standing on the roads against the backdrop of the mountains:

And then, in turn, they sail under the Lions Gate bridge (built at the same time as the Golden Gate in the SF, but not so famous; it was necessary to paint in red; or in yellow):

And the building with a plate on the roof of the Harbor Center (exactly like that: both words in the British manner) constantly seems to me a parody of our Space Needle. There is also a restaurant and an observation deck, where we did not go up:

But in Vancouver they can parody themselves too. Here the Châteausque Hotel Vancouver (1939) is supposed to rhyme with the postmodern Cathedral Place (1991). And for my taste, a parody of medieval architecture outperforms a parody of a parody:

Of the buildings, one still has to notice the dome of Science World (1977), which was the center of Expo 86, and now it is a museum of science:

From the sculptures, the headless creatures of Magdalena Abakanovich near Vancouver City Hall were seen:

Well, and of course, totems are everywhere. They are much more here than in Seattle. At Stanley Park, an entire venue is dedicated to folk art:

There is something to see in Vancouver. Therefore, the probability that we will ever return there is very high.

Travel expenses: accommodation - $ 180; food - $ 140.23; BoltBus - $ 114; public transportation - $ 60.94; No paid museums or concerts were visited. Total: $ 495.17.