Granville Island is a major tourist attraction, which we quite liked. We had to cross a huge ten lane bridge then walk another twenty minutes to get there, and to make matters worse, when we got there Somchai remembered he had left his wallet and watch on the table in the hotel and was worried someone would steal it. So he walked all the way back to the hotel, then back again, while I lazily waited at Granville Island for a couple of hours while he crisscrossed the city. At its heart it's a farmers market, surrounded by dozens of other shops selling tourist trinkets, and some decent restaurants as well. It looks like there are lots of other harbor activities like cruises etc that depart from here during the summer.

Just some more views from our walk around Stanley Park. The city is smack dab between the mountains and the ocean, so you couldn't ask for a more picturesque location, I think they just need a bit more planning and zoning control since it looks like the developers have run amok here.

The apartment towers come to an abrupt end at Stanley Park, a huge, forested park jutting into the Pacific. It's got a great jogging path circling the park, some totem poles and huge evergreens. It's very tranquil, especially in the dead of winter. It started to rain while we were walking around, so we ducked into the aquarium in the middle of the park. As it turned out that didn't help much since the aquarium is mostly outdoors, but it was still pretty enjoyable. We spent almost one whole day walking around the entire park, and rarely saw anybody, probably because they weren't idiots and stayed indoors.

Vancouver was pretty much invented by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which wanted to build a transcontinental railroad but didn't have anywhere to end it, since the West was empty. So they randomly chose this place and a city developed around the railroad terminal. The oldest part of the city is Gastown, which has some old buildings, tourist shops etc. as well as Vancouver's famous drug addicts.



I realize I'm being fairly negative about Vancouver, so I should back up. As you probably know, it's regularly voted one of the top ten cities in the world, and we have lots of friends there so we had a very nice time. But we were there for a week because it was Christmas/New Years and all the Cathay flights back to Asia were full. So we had to stay much longer than needed to see the city, especially because it was of course bitter cold so we didn't really have the stamina for lots of walking around. So we mostly played with our friends or stayed in our hotel room, being warmed by the fire, watching our naked neighbors and waiting for our flight home.

106. Vancouver

For our final stop on this trip, we spent a week in Vancouver, staying at the Opus Hotel. Vancouver seems to suffer from the same set of bland hotels as Sydney does, so the Opus is a breath of fresh air. The city's only boutique hotel, it's a bit spoiled from the lack of competition. The lobby is a pretty halfhearted attempt at urban cool, some interesting furniture pieces scattered around what looks to be the lobby of a B class office building, with a humdrum reception desk tucked in the back. Amazingly, this furniture in an office lobby does indeed attract a big drinking crowd, but I didn't like the feel of the place at all. It's also got a restaurant tacked onto the lobby, incongrously a traditional French bistro.



We had booked the penthouse, which was a really nice room. Furnishings were witty, and the place felt really spacious, probably because it was spacious and surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. The fireplace in the middle of the room and flat screen tv's on both sides of the centerpiece dividing the bedroom from the living room were nice touches, and overall very happy with the room. (Room: 8, Facilities: 5, Service: 6, Overall: 6)

103. New York

We flew to New York via Hong Kong and Vancouver on Cathay Pacific, which was very good flight except for the stop n Vancouver. From the plane Vancouver looked like a rainy, dreary place, which was depressing since we'd be spending a week there on the return journey. I had to work a couple days in New York, which meant staying at a hotel on our corporate list, which is usually a bad idea. This trip proved no exception, as we stayed at the W Hotel, which should be avoided at all costs. There are three W hotels in New York, but we stayed at the original (and worst) of the bunch. It used to be an undistinguished old hotel on Lexington Avenue, perhaps New York's ugliest avenue. It got tarted up in the usual W way, but as the old saying goes, it's like putting lipstick on a pig. The lobby is dark, and music thumping, hence establishing its street cred, and it had the usual absence of service. One oddity is that what few people they did have standing around and not providing service were old and unattractive, the type you'd find in KMart rather than a hip hotel. Usually staff at these types of hotels are models and actors so they at least contribute to the ambience, but here they clashed. Room was standard and on the fourth floor so you could practically see into the Lexington Avenue buses as they noisily chugged past. (Room: 4, Facilities: 5, Service: 3, Overall: 4).





We had dinner at the Heartbreak restaurant at the hotel, which wasn't bad, had a bit of design to it, though again, very "experienced" servers. And Somchai proclaimed his risotto to be the saltiest thing he has ever eaten, including salt. (Food: 10, Decor: 16, Service: 12).