Old and new favourites

March 24, 2026March 24, 2026 / Greg / Leave a comment

I have written more than a few times of my love for Vancouver. It really is one of my most favourite cities in the entire world and I’m very lucky to now have lived a quick direct flight away from it for the past decade. Arriving in Vancouver for a short vacation always feels a bit like coming back home even though I have never lived there. I have this selection of favourite places that I have accumulated over the years to go with the excitement of trying new things in a city that keeps evolving. Day one of any solo trip is now a well rehearsed practice – early morning flight, Skytrain from the airport to my hotel, drop my bags at a very early hour, find good coffee, then if the weather is great – Stanley Park for a hike around the seawall or if the weather is sketchy, head further afield for some craft beer tasting in Port Moody or Burnaby (or both!!!). With clouds threatening rain on my arrival in late August last year, I hopped on a train to Port Moody and enjoyed tastings at Twin Sails and Yellow Dog breweries followed by another tasting at Dageraad in Burnaby. My Vancouver vacation was off to a great start!

Beer tasting at Twin Sails in Port Moody, BC

Beer tasting at Yellow Dog in Port Moody, BC

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Wine group on the road

March 30, 2025March 30, 2025 / Greg / 1 Comment

Over the course of living in Saskatoon, we have become part of a great group of friends who take pleasure in wine tasting. That’s a fancy way of saying a group of us gets together a few times a year to enjoy wine, usually with food, sometimes on someone’s patio and sometimes in a favourite wine store in Saskatoon. We open a few bottles, then a few more, and the laughs begin to flow. Over the pandemic, we turned our group virtual for a spell and those zoom wine tasting nights felt like nights out and kept us going until things returned to normal. In those zoom wine tastings, we talked a lot about wine travel and as a group have now attended the international wine festival in Vancouver on two occasions including last year.

For this most recent wine trip, my wife and I headed to Vancouver a day before our group activities started for a bit of “us” time. On a cold, rainy night, we tucked into the cozy Chickadee Room cocktail bar for a couple of happy hour drinks and the free gluten free fried chicken that comes along with your order. This was a great first stop – excellent cocktails, tender juicy chicken all in a retro vibes bar that warmed us up.

Cocktails at the Chickadee Room in Vancouver

Juke Fried Chicken at the Chickadee Room

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A neighbourhood approach

August 8, 2023 / Greg / Leave a comment

Across a few trips to Vancouver last summer and fall I sampled the bounty that is that city’s craft beer scene. Vancouver is a favourite city of mine for a number of reasons – the direct flight from where I live, the ability to see mountains and water in the same place, the varied food scene, and definitely the abundance of craft beer.

Using a neighbourhood approach to exploration, I got one day kicked off in West Van at the earliest to open patio at Parallel 49. I created a tasting flight of a selection of hazy IPAs from that brewery and also from a couple of guest taps they had of Superflux. Luckily I was doing this neighbourhood tour by public transit and by foot, because these were all potent (and delicious!).