Vancouver is amazing!

Vancouver is an absolutely fantastic city! Even if the internship thing doesn't turn out to be my dream job, I would absolutely love to live here! This city has it all - nature, culture, food, and incredibly friendly people.

This weekend Alicia came to visit me from Hawaii - she's generally following me around the world these days as she's moving to Barcelona in October. The first day, we explored Stanley Park, which was absolutely beautiful. We started off in the forest along what I guess you could call a VERY easy hiking trail and ended up at Beaver Lake:

We kept on in the general direction of the beach and although we got lost a couple of times, we finally did make it there and had a delicious overprice drink and snack at the Teahouse Restaurant.

We then took a VERY long walk along the beach and the Seawall and all the way through Yaletown - I think we walked for a grand total of three hours that day. 

That night, after some failed attempts at hitting up the party scene in this town (I'll be sure to make more) we ended up in an amazing bar called The Pourhouse where we proceeded to spend the next 3 evenings. The bar tenders are super knowledgeable about alcohol and the entire 1920's culture of speak easys and prohibition. I've literally never learned so much in a bar in my entire life.

The next day we went to Granville Island, where I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven. This place has it all - art, music, alcohol, and most importantly - FOOD! We started off by strolling through the market where we were AMAZED by all the different goods and goodies on sale. Then we went to find the last performance of the Jazz Festival that was taking place in the city that week. On the way back to get some food, we checked out all the jewelry makers and stopped by the Granville Brewing Co to do some beer tasting:

We them sampled all the fares of the market - well, not all, but plenty. I clearly bought too much food because as I was sitting and enjoying my dessert - a white chocolate blueberry roll - it fell out of my hand and was DEVOURE by a seagull, despite the fact that the roll was 3 times as wide as this things beak. Definite highlight. We then stumbled upon a random circus act performed on a sail boat by two random French people (its not the best picture):

At the end of the day we came back to the Pourhouse to listen to some live jazz and get some more lessons in  1920's alcohol culture. Apparently there are all kinds of crazy alcohol laws in Vancouver, including not being able to serve people who are standing up. We ended up there the next night too! On Alicia's last night we went out in Kits and found a place that was serving 50 cent chicken wings with some very friendly foresters. Apparently, forrestry is the big industry in this "province". Guess that makes sense!