Frances and Graydon have been tireless, fabulous hosts. Today we went on a walk through the beautiful Stanley Park, home to very large trees and a captivating sea wall. You might remember Stanley Park from my last trip to Vancouver. I mean, you might remember it if I’d written about it, or you had eaten a delicious fish dinner there with us, or had been the taxi driver that took us there. But I digress.
Prior to our ambulatory adventures, they showed me the more pedestrian — and more delightful — side of Vancouver’s sushi scene. A meal that would have cost me more than thirty United States of America dollars in Boston was deposited into my sushi hole for approximately ten Canada dollars, and was arguably more fresh and delicious. The sushi market in Vancouver appears to be so choked with competition that the slighest hint of weakness or inferiority in a given restaurant is immediately exploited, the victim swept under the tide of establishments which require superlatives as yet undiscovered.
Fresh on the heels of my invigorating afternoon constitutional, I took in the auditory stylings of Swift Band, The Jimmy. After tonight’s show, however, we remarked that it had been a long, tiring weekend, and since I have to fly to Portland, and they have to drive across the whole of BC, we decided to retire early like responsible adults.
Hahaha. Of course we didn’t do that.
Somewhere along the way, the bar decided that they had stayed open long enough for five guys who aren’t even paying for their drinks in the first place, and we had to leave. I think this is where somebody talked us into going to some sort of folk festival after-party — all I know is that we were promised excellent music and delicious beverages until the rising of the sun, neither of which turned out to be true. They closed the bar — which served only the most disgusting of beers from squat kegs with “REJECT” stenciled on the side — approximately four minutes after we arrived. We called a taxi.
This being precisely the sort of emergency for which I always carry a bottle of single-malt scotch, we somehow managed to pass the time in a hotel room of some variety. It’s a little bit fuzzy.
Because breakfast is the most important thing (of the things you eat), I went with Aaron to the closest approximation of food in the vicinity, which turned out to be Denny’s. Just as we were finishing up, we saw a truck make a bit of a sharp turn and desposit a case of bottled water onto the street. We ran out, and the truck never stopped, so we decided that this was fortune smiling upon us, and we spent the next couple hours trying to give away water to anyone who would take it.
“A bit manic” would probably have been an apt description of our mental states by that point, and maybe we didn’t smell very good, it’s not clear. At any rate, it’s not a very normal thing to do, and it became clear that we would have the most luck giving it away to homeless people, which is fair, because they’re probably the ones who need clean water most anyways.
I have a few pictures somewhere, particularly of the guy who played us some harmonica songs in return. Remind me to dig them up and post them when it’s not my bed time.
