I never did write about my trip to Vancouver, and I promised...someone (I forget who) that I would. So I'm going to do that today. Or at least until it's time for me to go to work.
Back one day in June I was over in the fiction aisle helping someone find a book. She was off to Europe on vacation and wanted a book to take with her. She told me she liked to read depressing stories that were about something. Which was fine, I dug deep and ended up talking her into Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes. Don't look at me like that, I did explain that it was somewhat funny, but still about a drug addict. The drug addict part caught her attention apparently. Anyway, while I was over there trying to tell her about the book my boss came over and interrupted me saying that there was a phone call for me. Generally that's not something that's done, so I was sort of curious as to what the reason could possibly be. And of course I panicked that something was wrong.
As it turns out it was a lady from Random House, calling to tell me that I'd won a contest. I of course was shocked, and my manager was all excited, and I basically floated around the store for the rest of the day.
There were a couple of restrictions on the trip. Nothing too serious. It had to be taken between July 1 2003 and July 1 2004, and couldn't be taken at 'peak' flying times. I assume that meant long weekends, Christmas, Spring Break....stuff like that. My biggest problem with that was that I was going to have to wait till after July 1st to go, naturally I wanted to go immediately.
We planned the trip for the 8th, 9th and 10th of August. The lady from Random House explained that the prize included airfare for two, two night accomodations and $1000. All expenses while in the city were to be paid for with that money, and getting to and from the airport in both cities was my own responsiblity. Not so bad, right?
I found out much later that she'd booked us into the Four Seasons. Which was really exciting of course. I've stayed in some really nice hotels before, but they've never been the Four Seasons. Admittedly the Carmina Plaza where I stayed last time I was in Vancouver was absolutely fantastic, but this one was just a tiny bit more wonderful. Which probably has something to do with the cute doormen who always held the door open for me? It was expensive though, I looked through the room service menu when I first got there and decided very quickly that we'd just have to go out to eat. I can't imagine paying $15 plus tax and gratuity for 3 cups of coffee. That's just insane. You can get 10 cups of coffee for that much at Tim Hortons! (or so I'm told, I don't actually drink coffee) Despite the prices for the food, the room was really nice, and I've never slept in a more comfortable bed than the one I had there.
So, we arrived in Vancouver on Friday at about noon local time. The hotel doesn't have an airport shuttle, which surprised me at first until I remembered that there is a company that runs one. It's a bus that'll pick you up at the airport and makes several stops around the city at various hotels eventually ending up back at the airport. I'd used it the last time I was there to get back to the airport (my aunts had it all sussed out and used it both ways, but I arrived mid-week and ended up taking a taxi to my hotel (which probably put me in the poor house)). So we caught that for a measly $18 each and were on our way.
Because we were both already exhausted we decided that we'd like to just go for a walk and not do anything too ambitious that day. There was this really cool trip up one of the mountains that we were going to do, but the girl selling tickets for the tour discouraged us because she said it was too hazy and that we wouldn't be able to see anything by the time we got up there anyway. So, no big deal. On the way to the hotel in the Airporter, we passed Canada Place, which I now know (a million times over) was Canada's pavillion at Expo (the year escapes me at the moment) when it was in Vancouver. Now the cruise ships come into port there. It wasn't too far away so we walked back there and took a bunch of pictures. While we were there this guy came up to us and said "Excuse me, I don't normally do this, but...oh, you're not from here either. I'm from Halifax, Nova Scotia and I'm trying to raise $18 to stay in a hostel tonight. Could you help?" Don't normally do this? Yeah, ok. At any rate, my mother quickly said (and she wasn't lying) that she'd come out without her wallet, I echoed that (for the record, I was lying).
That was the first of our encounters with people asking for money. It didn't bother me quite as much as it did my mom. Well, I'm not sure if it was that it bothered her or if it shocked her. It's different out here. We live deep in suburbia and rarely ever run across anyone asking us for money, however, from what I've noticed in Toronto, the guys there don't actually stop you and ask you for money, they just sit pitifully on the side of the road hoping that you'll stop and give them something. In Vancouver, they'll interrupt you while you're eating dinner to ask(this is a true story, though it was the last time I was there).
After we took copious pictures of Canada Place (at least mom did she had the digital camera so she could take as many as she wanted, I was limited by how many rolls of film I had), we wandered down into Gastown. Gastown is sort of the historical section of town I guess. I don't actually know how old it is, but it's certainly made up to look old. The passengers have the right of way, if you even look like you're going to want to cross the road, the cars almost immediately come to a screeching stop to let you pass. The roads are all cobblestones and the buildings have that old, downtown sort of feel to them. My favourite part of Gastown is the Olde Spaghetti Factory. :)
Gastown apparently is so named because there used to be a guy there who either owned most of the area or was the mayor or something, who liked to tell tall tales. (Or so the tour guides story goes) Therefore they nicknamed him 'Gassy Jack', and apparently that's how the area got it's name. It seems unlikely, but then, who knows? Probably if I'd bothered to read the plaque on the bottom of the statue of him, I'd know if it was true or not. As it is, I didn't. Gastown also has this really neat Steam Clock which was donated by...someone. It's neat because it's driven on steam, and apparently took forever to build. It goes off once an hour on the hour and has quite a musical song it plays through the whistle at the top. It's actually really quite fascinating.
So by this time it had started to rain (typical, didn't I say it was going to rain?) so we decided we'd best go back to the hotel and get out of it. On the way into gastown I mentioned to my mom that we absolutely wanted to retrace our steps exactly on the way out, but for some reason I guess she didn't believe me, so she dragged me off in another direction, which of course happened to be the type of area that you absolutely don't want to go into....unless of course you're a heroin addict. We got out of there ASAP, back down to the road we'd walked down on, and the one I said we'd best stick with. (I'd made the same mistake the last time I was there, so I knew what was going to happen if we strayed off the beaten path)
We went back to the hotel and waited for the rain to stop before going back out to have dinner. Of course, we were starving by then because all of our other meals that day had been served on EST and so at 3pm PST it seemed like it should be dinner time to us. We eventually wandered out, and arrived at a deli at just about 5pm and had some sandwiches for dinner. And then just went back to the hotel and watched some TV till it was late enough (well, not quite) to go to sleep.
Posted by Michelle at August 18, 2003 06:39 PM
