Saturday, 9/6 - Vancouver

Day 12

We got up early to take Dan to the airport for his India/Nepal trip around 6am, then hit the road for Vancouver. The drive up was beautiful, overcast much of the way. After a while we got within range of Canadian radio and instantly heard a string of Canadian bands - Our Lady Peace, Sloan, Stars... somehow I wound up hearing Elvis Costello's "Veronica" twice that day in different locations by pure coincidence.

We waited in a line of cars at the border for about 15-20 minutes only to get singled out for interrogation. They asked a lot more questions than we expected going over to the Canadian side - where we were from, where we were going and why, what we do for a living, how much money we had, where we were staying.. none of which seemed at all unusual to us until having to explain it to authorities. But I suppose both being unemployed with no residence, no place to stay planned, and all our luggage for just an overnight stay would've sounded fishy to anyone.

Among the first things we noticed on our drive into the city was that there was an overabundance of pet stores and animal hospitals..
We found our way downtown, but with no idea of what to do or where to go. So we parked and ate at a mediocre crepe place while we looked through some free newspapers for ideas. They didn't help.
We sat at one of the restaurant's outdoor tables, and as we lamented the system for not providing decent jobs for the college-educated, a couple of middle-aged guys at the next table overheard us talking. One of them interjected, "It's really a shame, eh?" and thus struck up a conversation about careers, Dead Man (the Johnny Depp movie that somewhat paralleled Lisa's situation), politics, and stuff to do in Vancouver. Despite being older, one guy, Rico, seemed like a cool guy - into Hank III and punk rock, knew about a lot of good places to see - Gastown, Commercial Drive, a nude beach and a scenic hill we didn't make it to. We felt slightly bad for not taking him up on his offer to show us around later, but despite being a seemingly harmless Canadian, we suspected he might've wanted to hit on us. However, much of his advice turned out to be quite useful, so we saw it as a serendipitous meeting.

Downtown seemed pretty average, and it was the only part of the city I remembered from the one time I spend a day here several years ago. It was mostly just big stores, most of which you could find anywhere. So we grabbed some maps out of a phone book (which ended up being useless) and took off in search of the scenic mountain Rico had told us about. We never found it and just wasted some time sitting in traffic. So we just spun through Stanley Park briefly, took a few pictures, and headed back to the art museum we passed earlier. It was the last day for a cool exhibit on cartoons, comics, and anime, so despite a pricey admission charge we sucked it up, went, and enjoyed it.

Next essential stop was the tourist info center to pick up some much-needed maps and city guides. We headed next to Commercial Drive, taking Hastings Street on the way, which to our surprise was almost completely vacant of businesses, run down, and full of bums. Maybe it just seemed like there were a lot of them since they were all concentrated in one area, but this was not the Canada I knew. We later found out there was a methadone clinic nearby.

Commercial Drive was a cool strip full of independent businesses, vintage clothing shops, little cafes and restaurants, hippie organic markets and such. It seemed like literally every other place we passes had a help wanted sign in the window. We were baffled at the amount of jobs compared to the amount of homeless people..
After walking around a while, we sat in a nearby park, smoked, and talked about life plans until the sun went down and we worked up our appetites. We found a lot of good places to potentially eat but decided to hold out for a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant we read about in the paper.
The place, Bo Kong, was delicious. Without realizing it we ordered a dish with pineapple and another with coconut, which I suppose reflects my inner Hawaiian. Both were amazing and made a tasty combination. Unfortunately we got there pretty late so didn't have much time to eat, and had to take most of it with us. Sadly it wasn't nearly as good in the form of unrefrigerated leftovers.

After dinner we passed through Mount Pleasant, another cool neighborhood we didn't have time to explore. We had the idea of going to the gay district on Davie Street to find a bar, but got a bit turned around on our way back downtown. As we sat at a stop sign looking over the map in the car, a woman walking her dog knocked on the window and asked us if we needed directions. She even went so far as to give us alternate routes and happened to suggest a specific bar on the very street we were looking for before we even told her that's where we were headed. Yet another serendipitous moment. We theorized that this kind woman might have been our sage, guiding us needy aimless travelers in the right direction. Perhaps there was something waiting for us at that bar, like someone that knew a place we could stay. But in any case, we decided at this point that Canadians are awesome. Had this incident happened a mere 30 miles south on the opposite side of the border, either the woman would've ignored us or we would've been paranoid about a car jacking.

When we made it to Davie Street we stopped off at a coffee shop first for my necessary dose of caffeine, then stopped in the seediest sex toy shop I'd seen yet on the trip. Unlike others that seemed to be run by and for women, and were thus relatively tasteful and almost sophisticated, this one had bright florescent lights, tacky packaging, porno mags, and made you feel dirty by proximity alone. Clearly run by men.
We walked up and down the street and decided the bars looked lame, expensive, predominantly male, were blaring unappealing generic techno music, so we headed back towards Gastown in search of some other bars we read about. We parked near the Scientology center, gawked at that for a while wondering what goes on behind those doors, then happened to stumble across a hostel with a busy bar underneath, probably full of hostelers. We stopped for a moment to take pictures of an awesome classic car that was parked out front - one of many we kept seeing around the city, probably for some convention in town. At this point a young Australian guy started talking to us and among other things, warned us not to leave valuables in our car since break-ins were common in this area. We were near ghetto Hastings Street, so this wasn't surprising. Apparently he lived there and offered us a place to crash when we told him we had none. In the few minutes we knew him he seemed like a decent enough guy. - most of his friends were female at least - but we opted to sleep in the car as we'd originally planned.
After he went back into the bar we went in search of the bar we were originally looking for, but got lazy and decided against going through the trouble of getting out cash to pay the $5 cover. The bar beneath the hostel looked cool, but we didn't want to run into the Ozzie if we weren't gonna take him up on his offer. We were suddenly feeling lazy anyway. Instead we walked over to a 24-hour coffee shop with wifi, went online a bit, and took advantage of their bathroom to get ready for "bed."

Back in Mount Pleasant we found a school in a quiet residential area that looked safe and parked, setting up a sort of makeshift bed in the back and blocking out the windows with our sweaters. Maybe not worth the $40 we saved on the hostel beds in retrospect, but cheapness = adventure, right?