It took me a while to pin down what felt so odd about
Vancouver for the first day or so, but I think I’ve worked it out- it was
everything being built on a grid. Somehow that made it feel not really like a
proper city for a while. An entirely unfair impression, but interesting that my
gut assessment of what constituted a ‘proper’ city was so closely related to
age and winding-ness of streets. The atmosphere seemingly saturated with
cannabis smoke and a faint air of greasiness didn’t really help, but once again
in fairness to Vancouver, I think the greasiness was as much to do with the
state that I was in after the long journey.
I’ll go into more detail on some of the more interesting
parts of Vancouver later, and just do an overview of the city for now.
One of the first things I did in Vancouver was to get comprehensively lost. Quite a feat in such an orderly city- I blame the jetlag and every street looking roughly the same for the first 48 hours or so. Which was also probably thanks to the jetlag. Either that or it took a while to adjust to the ambient fog of cannabis smoke. In any case, it lead directly to this rather lovely view:
Being the curious sort of chap that I am, I wandered down to the water's edge and was rewarded with an even more impressive panorama:
If I've worked it out right, this was the view from Coal Harbour Park. And just around the corner from that, I found a lovely little spot called Portal Park.
I've always had a fondness for these urban follies, or whatever else you may choose to call them, so this find was a particular treat for me. An interesting little spot- constructed above the north entrance to the Canadian Pacific Railway tunnel to mark a handover agreement between the CPR, B.C Transit and the city of Vancouver regarding the ownership of the tunnel. It also has a surprising cinematic pedigree, having been used in Arrow, The Flash, and iZombie, among others.
Stay tuned for more on the rest (well, more) of Vancouver!
No comments:
Post a Comment