Vancouver: City of Me Not Getting It

Vancouver is widely considered to be an interesting and vibrant city, with attractions in abundance. So why didn’t I care about it at all? Maybe my timing was just wrong- because of the unintuitive way that the ViaRail system works, I had to get on my first train on the same day I arrived in the city, leaving an awkwardly shaped space in my day- too long to do nothing and too short to do anything. As a result, I spent my time in the city exploring a few downtown neighborhood- china town and the gas lamp district.

Here are some of my impressions of Vancouver, unfair and limited as they may be. Plus there are pretty pictures, so who are you to complain?

This place was predictably weird. But at least it had a ghost.

I first walked though China town and got a distinct feeling of 'who cares?' Billed in my guide book as ‘the continent’s third largest’ (we’re number 3!), it just seemed underwhelming. Maybe a few years ago vaguely Chinese looking buildings and mandarin street signs would have been fascinating to me, but I’ve been living in the bay area (which I would guess takes the 2^nd place spot in that ‘list of china-towns by size’). Not that it wasn’t ‘nice’, but I certainly don’t think it was any more than that. 

SunYat Sen Garden was easily the coolest thing in Chinatown

 The Gaslamp held slightly more interest, with the main points of interests being a statue of a famous early Vancouverite named 'Gassy Jack' and something called a Steam Clock. The statue pictured him standing on a whiskey barrel. This is a man who was apparently instrumental in the founding of the city, by the way. The clock was really interesting looking until my guidebook deflatingly informed me that it was powered by electricity. This is the kind of information I think I would have been ok not knowing.

It was a nice place to take a walk, with cobbled streets, old architecture, good statues, and cool graffiti. Again though, my feeling was of someplace that doesn't set itself apart from other cities.

Oh, and there's literally the Space Needle, to make matters worse.

There were also a lot of strange people there, but not only strange in the positive way and interesting way. Strange in the mentally ill and addicted to drugs while simultaneously also just being strange kind of way. The only other place I’ve seen such self-assured crazy people was back when I was living in San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin.

These sentiments made me wonder if maybe living in the Bay Area has ruined traveling for me. Whenever I would travel from Florida I was invariably find myself someplace better. Now that I've lived someplace truly great, can a trip end up disappointing? Sobering thoughts for someone planning to spend a month in a place.

NB- These posts were written some time ago, so their tone may not convey how things are going now, only how they were going. The trip is turning out great, more soonish.