passions

Vancouverites are passionate about food....the city is drowning in plush and interesting, little restaurants....none more so than in the gastown district which is a hop, step and jump from our hotel....so when we met our old school friend, Layne, for dinner on Saturday night we only had to wander down a couple of streets to find a modern irish gastro pub serving the kind of food we've been craving....bangers and mash...fish and chips....pies with lashings of gravy....There's something special about meeting up with childhood friends - sometimes it can seem as if you only met up yesterday, and as we reminisced with Layne about the old school days and mutual friends we felt so lucky to have dear old friends dotted around the globe...

it's refreshing, when you're visiting a new city to have the opportunity to hang out with locals who are passionate about their country and their city and are keen to show how beautiful, how wonderful, the place is...somehow they manage to infuse you with the same passion and, by the end of the day, you love their city too.

John, Jorden and Marty took to their roles as our vancouverite tour guides like ducks to water on Sunday....taking us first to the famous Granville island, we visited a microbrewery and downed a beer that tasted like chocolate (seriously) before heading to the 'sandbar', a waterfront seafood restaurant where Christine works...delicious, succulent, fresh crabs are their specialty and i enjoyed mine on a 'benny' (benedict)....mmmm....

piling back into the tour bus (!) we headed next to Stanley park...a large and lush parkland filled with autumnal trees, picnic areas, beaches (1st beach, 2nd beach and 3rd beach...these vancouverites prove themselves very creative beach namers!!), an aquarium, a golf course and spectacular views....the park is so huge we felt as if we were driving around it for hours...

John, like many canadians it seems, is a passionate ice hockey player and we were were excited to end the afternoon by watching him and his team chasing a 'little black thing' around the ice...eventually winning in a nail biting finish...

now and then, in life, one is lucky enough to stumble across kindred spirits...people who share the same passions, and often, similar goals in life. In our case, it seems we share with john and jorden a passion for food and a passion for travel....preferably both at the same time....and so we decided to indulge ourselves by ending our perfect day at their favourite restaurant, Guu...modern japanese cuisine served with a bite of humour and a ladle-full of loud and eclectic atmosphere, we enjoyed strange and wonderful 'japanese tapas' ...a little bit of this and a little bit of that....and by the end we were full as guu and rather happy on some sort of bubble-gum flavoured, vodka laced beverage.

What a perfect day in Vancouver...thank you so much to our vancouverite tour guides....we love your city.

xx