A perfect unplanned day

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023 / Greg / Leave a comment

Anyone who tried to travel by air in the summer of 2022 in Canada will have some sort of horror story to tell. The day before our planned trip to Vancouver Island I received the dreaded text message from Air Canada with a flight cancelation for our flight the next day. In the end, we lost the first day we were scheduled to spend in Victoria, but on the positive side, we at least arrived just in advance of the airport’s rental car location closing so we could snag our car for an extra late night drive to our downtown hotel.

We woke up fresh the next morning, but quite hungry as the previous day’s delays and flight changes left us woefully little time to actually eat en route to Victoria. My wife had picked out John’s Place, a diner a block from our hotel that had an extensive list of gluten-free goodies (waffles!) and while she had done significant research on this place, I knew nothing about it…. until we walked in and I was greeted by this sign. Instantly, I knew this was a good omen for a great day ahead.

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When a plan comes together

October 10, 2022October 10, 2022 / Greg / 1 Comment

Through the pandemic a group of our friends started a zoom-hosted wine club where one of us would pick two wines, a few recipes that would pair well, and then we’d get together to eat and drink and stare at the little electronic rectangles of our respective likenesses on our screens as we caught up and laughed. Laughed a lot. During a few of those get togethers, we chatted (as one is apt to do) about doing a real-life wine tasting trip when it was safe to do so again. Fast forward to this May when those wine-soaked plans turned real and landed us in Vancouver to attend the Vancouver International Wine Festival.

My wife and I built a fun and relaxed Vancouver itinerary around the large wine tasting we we all going to. For me, any trip to Vancouver needs to start with a hike around Stanley Park.

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Making the most of it

November 15, 2020November 9, 2020 / Greg / 3 Comments

Our “big trip” in 2020 was in many respects not as big as previous years. The ongoing pandemic narrowed our travel radius to driving distance of home rather than flight distance. Luckily for us, there are some amazing sights to see if you entertain a few eight hour road trip days. We planned a week away in Alberta split between its mountains and its prairie, and for everything that 2020 has thrown at us, I think we engineered a pretty impressive and needed vacation away.

After driving from Saskatoon to Banff where we made our home for three nights, an ominous longer-range forecast offered a glimmer of hope that we pounced on for a driving exploration of the Rocky Mountains. We started from Banff early in the morning and made our first stop at Lake Louise. I had been here a couple of times before, once with my Dad and another time with my wife, but never with the lake unencumbered by snow and ice. There is a reason many, including me, consider this the most beautiful place in Canada.

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Vancouver for the holidays

August 21, 2020August 19, 2020 / Greg / Leave a comment

Almost eight months later, I have a vivid, yet simple memory. My wife and I were in the Calgary airport on Christmas night enroute to Vancouver for a short vacation. We were happy to be getting away to a favourite city for a few days and to be able to exchange our Saskatoon parkas for lighter rain jackets as we escaped from a prairie winter. My memory now of that night, through a prism of a pandemic that has grounded my traveling in 2020, is just of the simple, unadulterated happiness I get from traveling. As we sat waiting for our flight on to Vancouver, sharing a snack to tide us over before a very late night McDonalds run after we landed, I remember feeling at peace. And I wonder when I’ll be able to enjoy sitting in an airport again.

More than just sitting in an airport, I’m looking forward to eating and drinking in public establishments around the world again. On Boxing Day morning, as soon as it opened, I wandered into La Taqueria Pinche Taco Shop, one of a number of “must visit” places every time I’m in Vancouver.

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O Canada

June 17, 2018June 11, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Favourite 2018 photos. Vancouver, BC. February 2018.

A respectable crawl

June 11, 2018June 9, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Here’s how my first hours of every trip to Vancouver go down. Drop my bags at the hotel. Go to my favourite taco place (La Taqueria Pinche… best tacos I’ve had outside of Mexico or San Diego). Make a beeline to one of the ever growing list of solid craft brewery taprooms. Enjoy that one, then head to the next taproom that is always less than three blocks away. Vancouver visits always get off on the right foot. In fact, this is a pattern that can repeat every day of a Vancouver trip. On my most recent trip to one of my favourite cities in the world, I designed a respectable four day craft beer crawl.

With a belly full of tacos I hopped a bus to East Van a couple hours after touching down in Vancouver and settled into the beautiful taproom at Andina Brewing Company. This is a really unique place with most of the beers made with obvious influences from South America. After being stuck in the depths of winter in Saskatoon, sitting in the sun coming through a window felt downright summery, even in February.

These beers were all thirst quenching, with the Lulo Sour my favourite. I also loved that cassava chips came with the tasting flight. Solid start to my Vancouver tastings in a beautiful setting.

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A day away from winter

May 20, 2018May 20, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

In February I traded in the bitterly cold temperatures of a Saskatoon winter for a colder than normal four days in Vancouver. Colder than normal still meant it was the first time in months that I could walk around outside without gloves on. It’s really all about small victories in surviving winter on the prairies. And while for most of the trip I had to carry around an umbrella to stay dry, I did get one nice day to leave the raincoat at the hotel and breathe in the fresh west coast air along the seawall.

I took a bus from downtown to Kitsilano Beach to start a hike along the seawall. My one nice day in Vancouver was actually a perfect February day in Vancouver. Seeing blue skies and water made my coastal, now landlocked heart, very happy.

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Travel memories through wine

May 5, 2018May 5, 2018 / Greg / 1 Comment

I like to consider myself a fairly advanced travel planner, but sometimes you just need to tip your cap to serendipity. A week or two after booking my flight to Vancouver for a short winter vacation in February, I came to learn I’d be in the city at the same time as an international wine festival. Quickly scanning the festival schedule, I bought a ticket for a wine tasting event downtown. Three hours, a world’s worth of wines, and now, me.

Before the wine tasting kicked off and after polishing off a very large early dinner to fortify me, I went through the tasting program to find the wines I was most interested in trying. In that process I realized I was going to be taking a trip down taste memory lane from many of my past travels. Wine moreso than food or other drinks can bring my mind right back to a specific place and time.

Like a lot of other attendees, I circled one wine in particular – the Laurent-Perrier Grand Siecle Champagne. Since coming back from France last spring and a magnificent trip to Reims, I have been more opportunistic in trying champagnes. Pushing close to $200 a bottle, there was a lineup for this wine most of the night. Anytime there was a break in the crowd I popped in for a sample. It was delicious on the first, second, third, fourth and I won’t say how many more tastings.

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New and old favourites

April 14, 2018April 14, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Vancouver has become a favourite city of mine, especially now that it is a relatively painless direct flight away. A number of trips there over the past few years created an interesting, and delicious dilemma for my most recent visit – do I retrace my past steps for favourite foods or do I explore some new restaurants and tastes in hopes of adding to my list of favourites? Of course, balance is everything, so in the spirit of “a little from column A and a little from column B” I did both.

There was no doubt that a visit to Vancouver would have to include some seafood, and in particular, sushi. There are a couple of reasonable sushi places in Saskatoon, but arriving at Sushi Itoga on Robson Street reminded me just how amazing truly great sushi can be. I placed my order at the counter, sat down at one of the long communal tables, and a few minutes later, this amazing spread was placed in front of me.

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An overtime thriller

March 27, 2018March 25, 2018 / Greg / Leave a comment

Standing outside the Rogers Arena waiting for the doors to open, huddled with maybe twenty people under an awning to stay as dry as possible during a downpour, I wasn’t too hopeful for the hockey game ahead. The Canucks and Rangers were, in late February, for all intents and purposes outside the playoff race and already thinking of next year. Damp from the walk to the arena and impatient to get inside, I remembered something my wife is fond of saying when we’re watching a football game between two bad teams… sometimes two bad teams can play an exciting game. Little did I know what kind of fun I was in for on this night.

One of my favourite things about going to games is the first view you get of the arena after walking in. I still remember my first view of the Colisée in Quebec City when I went to my first NHL game in the early 90s. Maybe more accurately, I remember the feeling. Walking from the concourse to the seating bowl through a corridor and seeing the entirety of the arena open up to my eyes – bright and clean, with seats stretching at a violent angle to the rafters. Even if today’s arenas are all somewhat generic, there’s an element of that same feeling for each and every new one I get to visit.