These last few months I have been lucky enough to go to Lisbon a couple of times, with some time to wander around this city at the Tagus riverside, and full of history and life. The fact of having already been a tourist in this city allowed me the opportunity to enjoy it in smaller doses (my agenda did not allow me more, either, hehe).
I am sure I will be visiting it soon again, but for the time being, a short post with the pictures of Lisbon 2017/2018 visits, taken mostly during an early walk through the empty streets of the city in September, and a visit to the Cristo Rei, and to Caparica, in January.
When I was at college, I was about to go to a congress in Vancouver. It did not work out in the end, and ever since, Vancouver was somehow in my to-do list. Now, another conference had brought me there, and I have the impression that I would have seen a different city if I had come 15 years ago.
Canada in general, and Vancouver in particular, are going through a real estate bubble: plenty of new buildings are currently being built, and many others have been built in the last years. This is a bit surprising, as Canada is the second biggest country in extension in the world, and has less population than Spain. One would assume people do not need to live in skyscrapers in the city centre… but they do, and they pay for it. For instance, the whole waterfront, where the Congress Center, the cruise terminal and our hotel was, is less than 10 years old, and apartments prices there go up to one million USD.
People seem to be happy in general and, at least in August, they seem to have good quality of life, with mild temperatures, sunny days, and nature and sea really close by. You encounter plenty of good restaurants from all over the world, with a significant leadership of Asian ones. This brought my mouth and taste back to Japan a couple of times during our week in Vancouver.
Vancouver is not directly at the Ocean front, but in an inner bay, and that makes it a perfect host of several recreational ports, and water airports for the small planes flying to Vancouver Island. I could spend hours looking at the water aircrafts departing and landing, and it was quite entertaining to see the early morning docking activities when a big cruise arrived to the terminal, or how the pilot safely led these huge cruises into open waters, which is not an easy task due to the strong currents.
Once you leave the waterfront, all streets look very familiar: the typical appearance of North American cities. That look that we are tired to see in the movies: their particular signalling, the traffic lights after the crossings, wide lanes and big cars. The surge in prices have also created problems for many people, and the big number of homeless people is something that also strikes you when walking around the city.
When it comes to things to visit, there are not many “musts”, but you can be entertained for a few days easily. I would say Vancouver is a better place to live than to visit, or a nice complement when visiting other near nature destinations.
I was positively surprised by our first stop: Granville Island, a former industrial area which has been transformed into an entertainment area, with bars, restaurants, and a delicatessen market that makes you want to eat everything, from a piece of fruit to smoked fish.
Sunday was fully dedicated to tourism, and we spent the morning in the Anthropology Museum, which was in the opposite corner of the city, in the University. It is an interesting recommendation, as it mainly deals with the First Nations, i.e. the first inhabitants of that zone of the World before the Europeans arrived and changed everything. They are very present in the local culture (in the opening of our conference, for instance, there was a show by them) and they also seem to be protected by the law at some degree.
Other good spots are Stanley Park, a nice and convenient park in front of the waterfront area, or Chinatown, one of the most important ones in North America. As the main icon in the city, and a must for the tourists, Vancouver lists the Gastown Clock. This is a clock which runs with gas, and which whistles every hour in a very unique way.
In summary: not much to see, but lots to do, and a very comfortable atmosphere to chill out. That is Vancouver for me.
Vancouver Island is the perfect nature destination when visiting Vancouver area. It is one of the best examples for what the citizens in the British Columbia state have renamed their state to: Beautiful British Columbia, which is what the car plates in this state read. It has everything you need for holidays: beaches, good weather, nature, water activities, nice food… but not a lot of hotels. It is home of second residences for some rich people who live in Vancouver as it is easily reachable by ferry or airtaxi.
In this part of the trip I already met some of my Toastmasters colleagues, so they were more animated days to discover this treasure in British Columbia. As we only had a couple of days, we decided to stay in the Southern part of the Island, leaving the North for future visits. We also left any water activity aside, and after reading some reviews, we decided not to go for the whale watching for a future time, as summer is the lowest season as whales go out in the Ocean for colder waters.
We started our visit in the capital of the island, Victoria, which is also the biggest city there. It is a cozy medium-sized town, with a few impressive buildings, like the Government or the hotel Astoria. Life takes place around the harbour, with whale watching tours, and water air taxis, and plenty of restaurants with terraces under the sun.
After the city, on our way back to Sooke, our base in the island, we stopped at the Sooke Potholes. The river had created some formations where the water seemed not to move, and some sort of beaches had appeared. The water was not as freezing as one would expect in a river in Canada, and the ones used to swim in lakes and oceans (I am a Mediterranean guy) even dared to take a bath in a summer-like day. We ended the day, not far from there, following the recommendation of one of our AirBnB hosts in a wonderful restaurant (for Canadian standards) next to the ocean, seeing some people playing a sort of waterpolo, but with kayaks.
We devoted our second day to the roadtrip. There is a circular route that took us the whole day, and brought us to diverse landscapes of the island in just a single day. We left Sooke, and drove clockwise around the Southern part of the island. It was a foggy and rainy morning, which gave a special feeling to the beaches we stopped at: empty ones, with huge logs, near the forests, dark sand,… After leaving the coast, and having a traditional Canadian lunch in a movie-like coffee place, the sky opened, and the sun started shining. Our next stop, totally impromptu after checking the map, was Skutz Falls, where we enjoyed some relaxing time hearing the noise of the water.
After the short rest, we continued the tour, and arrived to Duncan, which had a wise idea to promote people spending time in their town: a totem exhibition which could be followed in a walking tour going through the commercial area. Totems are sacred for the First Nations, the people who already lived in this area before the Europeans arrived. Canada has acknowledged the importance of this heritage, and has filed a number of laws to protect them, and preserve their culture. The totems exhibition, with the different explanations, was time well spent, and the city town expectations (some shopping) was met by our group.
The next stop was something called Niagara Falls, but they were completely dry. This confirmed what we had been told: the draught was starting to affect the island. So we continued our way back to Sooke, but stopped in Sooke East to see the sunset from there. In our way there, we could see many deers, and stopped in the Anderson Cove, which seemed to me a paradisiac place to anchor. Fog seemed to be our travel companion that day, as the sunset was not “clean” due to its presence, but again, had a different taste. The good part is that it was shorter, as we were freezing.
The last day in Vancouver Island, we took it very easy. We visited one of the nearby beaches to enjoy the sunny day. The day was so clear, that we could see some mountains at the Washington state in the US at the other side of the channel, before we took the ferry back to Vancouver.
The ferry left Vancouver Island, and sailed among several islands which appeared to have no inhabitant, and almost no building in them. In a way, the area reminded me to the archipelago in Stockholm, although with less amount of islands. After 90 minutes, we arrived to the mainland, and one hour later we were in the centre of Vancouver, ready for a week of conference, and with some spare time to discover this city.
