VanCity

I meant to publish this post in September of 2023, but I guess now is probably better than never.

Apparently, citizens of Vancouver refer to their beloved city as VanCity. I know this because I came back from a trip there during the Labor Day weekend in September 2023. I met up with two of my high school girlfriends in Vancouver and we just did things for about five days. Now, I was very disappointing to one of my friends because I told them that I didn't really have any "high on my bucket list" activities that I wanted to do in Vancouver. Really, I didn't. I told them I just wanted to eat, walk, and talk with them. I wanted to be in their presence and just be together and get old together (even if it was only for five days) because I do not get a chance to do those things with them on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis. In fact, the last time we got together for a trip was about nine years ago (yes, 9 YEARS). For me, I didn't care as to what exactly we did, so long as we did it together.

Vancouver is beautiful. It reminds me of a very very clean New York City (granted, I have never been to NYC). Its weather is very much like the Pacific Northwest: sunny and cloudy with threats of a shower. Lucky for us, it didn't sprinkle until the last day we were together. Most of the time, it was cloudy or really sunny. It was clearly autumn and I felt the slight chill in the air, which made our travels very comfortable. We stayed in Vancouver's City Center and literally walked everywhere or took their light rail everywhere. I would highly recommend that visitors forego a car and just staying in its city center.

Now there was food everywhere. Every block we went down had at least one restaurant, one bakery, and/or one cafe. Seriously, there was so much food everywhere. If you're a lover of Asian cuisine, Vancouver definitely had very good Asian food and didn't disappoint. What I did find disappointing was that Vancouver's Chinatown was dying. At a festival, we ran into another Hmong person from Seattle (she was so happy to see another Hmong face) who told us that back in the 1990s -2000s, Vancouver's Chinatown was booming. However, due to Vancouver's rising real estate prices, many left and established themselves in Richmond, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. We did visit Richmond (an easy rail trip from Vancouver), which did indeed have a booming Chinese community and may be one of the biggest Chinese communities in British Columbia.

It was such a great trip and I was happy to be with my friends. We had our moments of irritability (how could we not, we are three very different people), but overall I'm so glad to have spent time with them. Of course, I was always happy to come home to my boys. I needed the time to rest and recharge, and when I get home, I can take on their craziness. 

Have you ever been to Van City? Let me know of your experiences there. If you've never been there, do you want to go?