BCYK: Vancouver & Squamish

I found myself back in Vancouver ten months after my previous trip (and a month before my next). We were here for a few days before heading up to Yukon, and I was excited to be back on the west coast less than a year after my last visit.

Squamish is undeniably beautiful but terribly touristy. I was looking forward to doing the Chief (link to the future!) this time, but unfortunately my hiking companions were not up for it.

Give me a name

I love naming and personalizing many of the mundane things in my life. I remember going to my friend's house when I was younger, and upon introduction to her favourite stuffed animal, I asked for its name... only to be told it did not have one. My seven-year old heart was truly stumped by this. Who could have a stuffed animal or toy and not name it? To be honest, it still stumps me a little to this day.

When the ability to name group chats and give nicknames to members came about, I went through my contact list and changed just about every single chat, to the displeasure of some. My favourite one has to be our pizza one though...


... I still have yet to name all my plants.

Introversion

I have grown up with the shy title given to me for the majority of my life. It was true for the most part; in new situations, when meeting new people, and when I was by myself, I was pretty quiet and sought comfort rather than challenge.

I have distinct memories of a summer camp when I was twelve; being the oldest one there, and always having been tall for my age, I was playing alone with the sand for the first day. It wasn't until later that I made friends with the other kids, and they commented that I was quite different from my first impression.

Growing up and working has definitely impacted my personality - I am generally less shy than before, but there is still a distinction between the person who operates when working and the one who is behind the daily me. The one who uses the self-checkout, who eats in front of the computer, who walks the store several times over to find an item, the one who sends customer service an email before deciding it would be best to call and then telling customer service on the phone to disregard said email.

Homebound

We began our journey home with a bit of luck - an actual overnight cart! Sadly, we were separated from some of our train buddies as they were stopping along the way and therefore placed in other carts.

A rush of adrenaline

If you ask Dan and I about a stand-out moment in Vancouver, I'm pretty sure we will both think of this day first.

We started the day off pretty easy. We didn't set any alarms and left our hostel at 10am. We decided to pay a visit to Finch's, a cute cafe we had passed by the other day.

Conquering the Chief

Stawamus Chief deserves a post of its own. I have been wanting to do this hike the last three times I was in BC, but things never worked out. We almost didn't make it here this time as well; it is difficult to visit Squamish without a car, but thankfully Ranee's roommate and Evo saved us!




The two more advanced hikers lost us pretty early on, and we started up the stairs and quickly realized we would need several breaks to get through this.

We hike to eat

We started the morning with a trip to Revolver Coffee, which was across our hostel in Gastown. We sat to write our postcards before venturing over to the post office.



We wandered over to Richmond to have dim sum with my aunt and uncle, and then went to pay Daiso a visit. There, we encountered the longest line I've ever seen on my life - it looped the entirety of Aberdeen Centre. When we asked a man in line what it was for, he said they were trading regular toonies for a limited edition Canada 150 one.

After spending a shocking amount at a "dollar store", we met up with Ran and took the bus to Lighthouse Park.

Back to the west coast

This is the dearly delayed post of last year's VIA Rail adventures.

The very first thing we did when we got off the train was book it to our hostel. After we remedied the 4 days of no showering, we headed out for brunch at the nearby Catch 122 Cafe Bistro.




We also lived by JJ Bean, and paid it our first visit of many.

The rest of the day was spent leisurely walking around downtown, picking up some Dollarama items for our room, stumbling across more bears, and ended with super indulgent ice cream and Messenger video chats.