Vancouver 2016 Day 2: Kits and Miku

10/15/2016
Vancouver 2016 Day 2: Kits and Miku

Day 2 in Van started out early, as my old buddy Jeremy Keays had a couple hours in the earlier morning to hang out so he kindly picked me up and we headed on over to a great spot called Edible Canada on Granville Island for some early brunch. It was super tasty, I had the parfait with some of their very rich-but-good duck fat smashed potatoes on the side. Very good!

We had a great catchup and then Jeremy dropped me off in Kitsilano afterwards, the super nice district west of Granville Island. I started on the Kitsilano Beach (and was glad I brought an umbrella from the hotel). It was coming down a fair bit, but there was obviously nothing going to stop me from exploring all the great things there were to see in this glorious place.

I took a nice wander, despite the grey weather, and came across a hilarious poem carved into a rock, about exactly what was going on.

Vancouver public poetry: "This one time I almost felt sorta negative, but then I quickly reminded myself that everything is awesome" #canada

Beautiful neighbourhood

I took a nice wander through Kits, checking out some shops, unsuccessfully trying to pick up some Swiss Chalet Sauce-flavoured Lays Chips to take home, and dodging the rain. At one point I stepped into the Whole Foods to get out of the rain for a bit and grabbed a Kombucha (mmm).

I also went into a few cellphone shops to ask about Canadian SIM cards for my visit and eventually made a decision on which one to get.

Yay, an Arc'teryx store!!

And then I got this awesome merino wool beanie for biking to work with.

After a LOT of rain and having somewhat damp pants and needing to sit down for a bit, I headed over to the Lucky's Doughnuts at 49th Parallel for a glorious obsessively-created coffee and a similarly obsessed-over doughnut. Yay!! As you can tell from my previous Portland blog, I clearly have a type of activity I love doing :)

Jaffa orange chocolate doughnut!

This was supppper tasty and a total win, and also a nice break from the rain and blergh. It was nice to take off my damp coat and sweater for a bit too. Whew!

Living in San Francisco and participating directly in the revolution brought on my Lyft and Uber has made me basically reliant on car-sharing apps. It was very odd, then, to arrive in Vancouver and learn that neither Lyft nor Uber are allowed to currently operate in Vancouver due to some fight with the government. It was pretty odd for a city like this not to have ride-sharing, so I was like.... um.... how do I get around?! Cabs are expensive as usual, and buses looked fine but it was pouring and I didn't have any of the route info. Time was also of the essence on this short trip, so I wanted to make the most of everything... so direct A to B would be better. How to do it? Well, turns out that Car2Go is in Vancouver! This is an epic one-way car rental service that Matt used in Toronto a lot and is STILL not in SF, even though it is so awesome (due to a fight with the government here!) I had the foresight to sign up for one of these Car2Go memberships anyway a while back, "just in case". Since I signed up it seemed that some care required a smartphone app (not just the membership card) to rent, so I finally decided which Canadian SIM card to get, and got it figured out much more easily with consistent data service and Google Maps. This was fun, and I drove myself back to my hotel to change and relax for a bit.

After some relaxation time, I headed out on another walk to the big downtown street, now much easier to fine-tune where I was planning to visit now that I had Google Maps available on my phone. I headed to the Vans store to check out their new Toy Story shoe collection (I bought the Buzz Lightyear ones already!) and wander some more.

After some good wandering, I had seen my 700th Donair shop in Vancouver and finally decided just to buy one. As always, it was insanely tasty and very filling after a long day of walking with no real lunch. This was a well-needed addition to the day!

Also, I saw a Nando's-- the crazy South African chicken place I went to in London!

After a long walk, it was definitely time to go back to the hotel and relax for a few hours. At some point I considered just going to bed, but when I called Michal and was at a bit of a loss for what to do next, she encouraged me to go check out the legendary sushi place called Miku on the waterfront. They were open late, so I went to go check it out. I had a stellar Chef's choice aburi sushi and Darjeeling tea-infused Japanese umeshu plum wine which was SO good!!!!!!!!!

The "aburi"-style sushi I believe was created in Vancouver. Sauces/wasabi are painted onto the sushi and then the fish is added and flame-throwered to give it that lightly baked texture. It aws very good!

A really fantastic time in Vancouver... and at this point I had only been there for 24 hours!!!!!!! So much more to do and see... that had to wait for another day. :)