After 10 months of waiting, it's finally here. I even made a fancy logo for it~!
So before I start let me tell to you some things:
First off, I can type like 100 words a minute and I totally intend to take advantage of that ability by throwing more text than photos at you.
I won't be offended if you ignore the words, since I usually forget what I wrote immediately after writing it anyway.
B: The photos look like they were taken 10 years ago because the camera I took them with was made 10 years ago. I was poor at the time and only
had access to ancient technology, forgive me. When I go back to Vancouver in ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓, I will have a better camera. Promise!
Also, the program that I used to watermark them seems to have compressed them to the point that I might as well have not watermarked them at
all.
Oops.
Secondlastly, all the photos were hosted on
Flickr. I'm required by the site's TOS to tell you this.
Lastly, I have over 240 photos to share with you, which means I am uploading them in several parts as I am no longer able to spend 18 hours in
a single day playing around with photos. (Today was a rare exception.)
Oh, and one more thing...
Hahah the anticipation is probably going to have been better than the photos in the end.
Enjoy.
So to start off I actually had to
get to Vancouver. I spent an extra $50 to get window seats on all four flights there and back. We
stopped in Winnipeg for three hours on the way, because that always makes sense. Here are some photos I took from the plane. It was my first
flight in a commercial jet. WestJet is like Greyhound, except with leather seats and shittier snack options.
The intersection of the the Trans-Canada Highway and Manitoba Highway 12. The village in the centre is Ste-Anne, and it's located on the Dawson
Road which has connected Thunder Bay and Winnipeg since the 1880s.
These last two were Diefenbaker Lake in Saskatchewan, the province's largest waterbody.
South Saskatchewan River, a bit west of Swift Current.
Flying over the mountains was cool. We went directly over Calgary but it was covered in clouds.
Vernon, BC and area.
So after all this I landed in Vancouver and holy fuck does it hurt your ears when you're descending to sea level. I didn't have any issue when
taking off or landing in Thunder Bay and Winnipeg so I was expecting just more of the same. Nope. And it even happens when you go up hills in
Vancouver, it's terrible. I don't know how people manage.
I stayed with my aunt in Surrey because if I had to get a hotel this would have been the "Vid spent $600 to go to Vancouver for an afternoon
because he can't afford a hotel".
Surrey reminded me of only the worst parts of Thunder Bay. Yeah.
Scott Road (aka 120th Street) has a really delightful mix of 50 incarnations of the same 3 businesses in every building style that shouldn't
have been popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Some pretty good food though. Thai by Thai near the intersection of Scott and 92nd is really good, I
spent over $60 dollars there. For two people. (15 of those dollars went towards Thai ice teas.)
It actually wasn't too bad, the Central City part has some nice bits. I didn't get any photos around the bus terminal at Central City, though.
What a shithole that is. After coming in from the airport we got off at Surrey Central to get the bus to my aunt's house and the entire
terminal smelled like rotten fish. Half the stores in the strip mall across the street were different than what was there when she left to
visit us four months earlier. It was certainly interesting. And on a later day during my trip we actually walked through there around 1am after
dinner at my cousins house and boy was that a weird experience. I felt exactly the same way I do when I walk alone at night in Thunder Bay:
cautious of my surroundings.
Surrey Memorial Hospital
This is probably from whatever decade The Jetson's aired in.
These towers are pretty imposing from street level.
OK so let me tell you about this building: It's the Surrey Tax Centre, and if you take photos of it a securty guard will come running out of
the building and tell you to stop. But he won't get to you in time and you'll have finished taking photos before he tells you this. Dear
terrists please don't use this photo to attack the Surrey Tax Centre it's very important to us thank you.
I waited 15 minutes for this one. Worth it!
I joined SSP not long after Central City was completed, so it's part of my earliest memories of the site.
Aaand with this we're out of Surrey. Though I probably spent half of my time there, sleeping, I only took photos of it once.
Now that we've got all that out of the way, here is the first photo I took in Vancouver itself:
Much urban. Such composition. Very people. Wow!!
BTW, the Skytrain is awesome. The sound it made when it was going around a curve reminded me of the sound the fridge at my local deli makes
when its compressor starts up, it's so cool.
$18.95 to park all day. You know what it costs to park all day in Thunder Bay? Two dollars.
This is what bike lanes should be like. If you city can't do them like this (mine can't) then it shouldn't be doing them at all.
One of the attractions we had planned to visit but didn't.
Granville Street has a lot of really interesting stuff. (I go on about Surrey Central and all I have to say about Granville is "it's
interesting".) If I ever refer to it as Grenville Street, that's because Thunder Bay has a Grenville Street.
I bet a lot of really interesting stuff happens here.
This is one of my favourite photos from the trip. It almost looks like it was taken by a professional. Thanks to Bulliver for selling me a
better lens and polarizer earlier in the summer!
In both Winnipeg and Vancouver I found it kind of weird to see street front locations of stores that we only have in shopping malls and power
centres here in Thunder Bay.
My mom told me not to go to East Hastings so naturally... This isn't even East Hastings, it's Pender. I didn't take many photos around here
regardless. It was basically a part of Winnipeg that moved out to the west coast because it's wanted by the police back home and I try not to
hang around with those types.
I actually called her and told her "Guess where I am!"
You can never have enough photos of the Dominion Building.
This arch reminded me of something you'd see in Winnipeg's exchange district. I found it sort of out of place because in spite of Vancouver's
age (it's pretty much just as old as Winnipeg and Thunder Bay) the entire city felt very new and clean to me.
According to Google, this is low cost apartments for formerly homeless people.
This shot reminded me of Thunder Bay. The buildings are bigger but the general idea is the same.
So after walking down East Hastings for a bit I caught one of the electric trolley buses and went all the way through downtown to the
other side of False Creek, then walked back over the bridge.
Part two will be posted next weekend. Probably. It will feature what my map calls "Mount Pleasant", as well as Stanley Park
and English Bay.