Category: Vancouver

Escape Vancouver Completely (by way of North Vancouver) Without Touching a Car Part 1 of 5 – The Vancouver Art Gallery This year my wife and I were celebrating a significant wedding anniversary and decided to get away from it all and actually relax. As you might imagine, children complicate matters; we could not go far for long. I devised an escape that would let us feel like we got away from it all while still maintaining a reasonable distance in case of an emergency. My second objective was to be able avoid having to use a car. We like […]

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The Museum of Vancouver (MOV) is located in Vancouver‘s Kitsilano neighbourhood at 1100 Chestnut St with its staple crap sculpture and fountain out front. The building connects two museums the MOV and the H. R. McMillan Space Center. They are separate museums and have separate entry fees. During spring break my brother and I visited the Museum of Vancouver and it was a lovely trip. We live in Kitsilano, so getting to the museum was not a challenge. The total entry fee for the both of us was eighteen dollars. The museum has six permanent galleries and one ever changing […]

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The Vancouver Aquarium is in Stanley Park located at 845 Avison Way. My brother and I (my brother is nine) went for a visit during March break for a little day to ourselves. We arrived by bus from Vancouver‘s Kitsilano neighbourhood, and it took two busses and about forty minutes to get there. Both bus rides were mediocre, not much walking time in between, however there was a ten-minute wait for the second bus. Which isn’t that long, but in the cold and rain of the day it felt longer. The line up for the Aquarium wasn’t long, and fortunately […]

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We were driving out of Vancouver on a weekday morning and wanted to have breakfast out and avoid rush hour traffic. Because I can’t make waffles to save my life, I looked for a waffle place. We found Yolks on West Broadway between Ash and Cambie. Around mid-morning on a weekday, it was pretty busy. There wasn’t a wait for a table but it was full. We were driving and managed to find street parking, but it’s a short walk from the Cambie Skytrain station, making it easy to reach from downtown Vancouver. Waffles, pancakes and granola were the choices […]

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When I lived in Toronto in the 80s, there were a ton of places where you could get desserts late at night and really hammer that glycemic index. When I moved to Vancouver, the overall tone was either more about fitness or more about how you looked and, either way, there were fewer super powered dessert places. However, True Confections at Broadway and Alma, which is in the very western edge of Kitsilano, is a wonderfully high calorie place to truly shove one’s diet and health plans down the drain. We were there on a rainy Tuesday around 8:30 and […]

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The Teahouse in Stanley Park is a stunning location for a fancy brunch, lunch or dinner. It’s located on the west side of Stanley Park off of Stanley Park Drive. Assuming you aren’t visiting on the swampy day we visited, the views from the restaurant and the grounds are spectacular. The restaurant itself has that English country style to it and looks festive at Christmas time. We attended at brunch to celebrate a birthday. There’s a large wine list, which we did not take from (we need to sun to be a bit more over the yardarm than that). I […]

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Joe Fortes Seafood and Chop House on Thurlow Street in downtown Vancouver is a rare downtown eatery that combines a decent lunch special with a cool venue. It was a slow Friday where a bunch of us decided to go out for lunch and catch up. A co-worker suggested Joe Fortes because of their Blue Plate Lunch specials for $9.95. On this particular November day they were offering any of their blue plate specials. This meant that you weren’t stuck with the Tuesday Thai BBQ Chicken special if it were Tuesday. You could have it on Friday. We were seated […]

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Yes…just like the Beatles song, this restaurant will take your taste buds under the sea! This little place is an awe-inspiring, intimate sushi restaurant in the heart of the Kitsilano neighbourhood in Vancouver. The Head Chef, Sada, hails from Japan and the freshness of his ingredients and his presentation skills are unparalleled. This little gem is our favourite sushi spot. With dishes like “iron show” sizzling tuna or wagyu beef, spot prawns, lobster, an excellent array of sashimi/nigiri, tempura, broths, or vegetarian options/rolls, and a wonderful sake/wine selection, the scintillating flavours are for everyone! We highly recommend calling ahead, and […]

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Urban Fare is an upscale grocery store in Vancouver with many extras. There are four locations in Vancouver: 177 Davie St. (Yaletown), 1133 Alberni St. (downtown beside the Shangri-La hotel), 305 Bute St. (Coal Harbour), 1688 Salt St. (Olympic Village). The chain is an offshoot of the more aggressively priced Save-On Foods. But Urban Fare is not the place you go for grocery deals. What it does have is higher quality products than you might see elsewhere. It’s definitely the emergency “Honey get me something on the way home from work I’m making pasta sauce” destination. However, at lunch time […]

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Each year the miniature train in Vancouver‘s Stanley Park puts on a ride through the woods where they make a family friendly spooky adventure. This year’s theme is Alien Invasion, which gives nods to all the famous alien abduction themes from the 1950s to the X-Files. The train itself is a small sized replica (hard for my tall body to squeeze into) of Canadian Pacific Railway Engine #374. This is the first engine to arrive in Vancouver and the original full-sized engine is on display at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre in Yaletown. But the fun is the […]

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