So while indulging in drink at the bar of habit this evening, I was asked if I could come back after closing time and help decorate the bar, as they're redoing it.
Yes, I'm there enough that the staff wants ME to put marks on their bar that mean something to me.
Yes, I'm there enough that the staff wants ME to put marks on their bar that mean something to me.
I need a neighbourhood bar. Maybe when Andrew comes back in August we can find one. He's going to move downtown if he possibly can so we'll be in walking distance of each other.
OMG besties. :P
ETA: Incidentally, that "apparently" sounds kind of passive-aggressive but I swear I didn't mean it that way. It's late and I'm a little weird. :)
Edited at 2009-06-09 07:39 am (UTC)
Yet it's far more my bar than anything en route.
I just don't go drinking enough in my neighbourhood to have a local. Yet. :) (When I discovered cider, my going-out-drinking rate spiked alarmingly. Also Cosmos and Bellinis have had a pronounced effect.)
O HAI...
I've never been, and had an offer of a long weekend there in mid-July. Do you have any suggestions for entertainment for three queer women of a certain age? (No is an acceptable answer, btw...)
Re: O HAI...
Er, ahem. Sorry, excited.
I am a poor gauge of stuff people are likely to find interesting, but Vancouver is gorgeous and there's a lot of stuff to look at etc. For one, there is the aquarium which is chock-full of fun animals, including now two baby belugas. One's a year old and the other was born Sunday (my friend was there! He was quoted by the Sun as saying that it was both the most awesome and the grossest thing he'd ever seen!)). If you time it right you can see a dolphin show and sometimes a raptor show and it's very awesome. We also have Science World and a Planetarium although I think the Galileo show may not run in July; the website should say. The Vancouver Art Gallery (and yes, we call it the vag) is apparently nice (I'm going today so I can report back on that), and there's currently a Vermeer show running.
What else...oh, you can go to Grouse Mountain and ride the gondola up the mountain and have lunch and then come back down. If you like hiking, you can do the Grouse Grind, which is basically a set of steps cut into the mountain, and then ride the gondola down. Stanley Park (which is where the aquarium is) is awesome and if you are into walking, you can circumambulate the seawall and get the world's best view of the Lion's Gate Bridge as you come around the point. The park is a little over ten kilometres around and it's a beautiful walk.
We have a lot of beaches, including, out by my uni on the point, Wreck Beach which is a nude beach and very popular. Commercial Drive is fun to amble along, and there's a fry house there where you can get fifty kinds of poutine. Ooh, Granville Island is a must-see. And there's a Chinatown, and you might be interested to at least take the bus through Cracktown, which is going to present a problem for the city during the Olympics. We have the world's most fucked up light rail system as well (the Skytrain). If you care to venture into the burbs, there are amusingly Asian malls in Richmond (Aberdeen Centre springs effortlessly to mind, which has a Daiso, if you know what that is). There's a lot of shopping everywhere.
And, really, it is seriously the most beautiful city in North America. Bring your cameras.
Also, if you're staying in a hotel downtown, check it on bedbugregistry.com first. A word to the wise is sufficient.
Oh, and of course, the food. We have lots of Asian foods of all sorts. Our fish and chips is unparalleled, and Vancouverites like their desserts so there are a lot of awesome dessert places. Foods that should not be missed: eat a lot of sushi. We have the best sushi anywhere. You must try a BC roll, which you apparently can't get anywhere else (the incidental ingredients vary, but it must have crispy fried salmon skin in it. NOM.). The Eatery on Broadway is fun for weird sushi rolls. For straight sushi BC Sushi at Broadway and Arbutus is yummy, but you seriously can't swing a dead cat in Van without hitting someone who's currently making a salmon roll. You should go to The Naam on 4th, which was a vegetarian/vegan restaurant before they were cool. Save your pennies and eat on Granville Island (expensive but Bridges is very tasty) while you're there. Marble Slab ice cream is what Coldstone wishes it could be someday when it learns to make ice cream that doesn't taste like frozen algae. There are at least two True Confections locations, one at Broadway and Alma and one downtown on Denman a few blocks from Davie. Very tasty.
Oh, and White Spot is a BC tradition. (They have burgers, fish and chips, that kind of thing.)
I think you could probably fill up a long weekend just with eating alone, to be honest. Oh, and there's a sightseeing bus--in fact, I think there are two.
Re: O HAI...
I'm probably up for much more walking than they are and may have to do a solitary sushi run, but a lot of your suggestions sound like lovely entertainment for all three of us. (BELUGA! GONDOLA!!). It will be interesting to see just how jaded/spoiled I've become from two decades in San Francisco....
Re: O HAI...
I should also say, you can kill half a day getting to Grouse Mountain and doing stuff unless you have a car, because you have to take the seabus from downtown and then the bus to the foot of the mountain, but the seabus is really fun and if you're in a group, long bus rides are fun rather than tedious, at least for me. The aquarium will probably take you about four hours, and the Art Gallery ditto. (I went to the Vermeer yesterday and it is splendid. They also have this awesome interior design installation that must not be missed.) I don't know how interesting Chinatown is tourist-wise, but Commercial Drive is good for a couple of hours. We have a zoo too but I haven't been yet. I think that if you sightsee at a reasonable speed for three days there will almost certainly still be lots of stuff for your next visit (and you'll want to make another one, I think, once you've been here :).
The belugas are awesome. So awesome. The one-year-old baby likes to pose for pictures. She knows she's cute. Also, when I was walking on the seawall with a friend who's in from Toronto last week, the tide was in and we saw a seal, and my friend Daniel has seen sea otters in the water too.
I think that, even being from SF, you will be impressed by how awesome Van is. :)