Present Imperfect

The World Next Door | July 07, 2004

Eric and I spent a patriotic Fourth of July weekend in Canada. What did we learn?

1. Vancouver is a beautiful city with the second-best park in North America. (Sorry, but I still like Central Park in June...how 'bout yoooooou?)

2. Despite its beauty, Vancouver is also host to what seems like the largest per-capita population of crazy heroin addicts. Seriously. Unlike, say, San Francisco, where the crazy heroin addicts are either concentrated in one easily avoidable neighborhood or scattered in ones and twos throughout the city, Vancouver features scores of them staggering around between point A (where you are) and point B (where you are going). Walking the four blocks from Gastown (boo!) to Chinatown (classical Chinese garden=yay! Night market=boo!) was like a junky obstacle course. Also, in my admittedly limited experience, Vancouver has the best self-talkers. Case in point, the gentleman who wandered around shouting the following to nobody in particular: "My son, the light of Jupiter, will NEVER be born human! He will be born an ANGEL!"

3. You should not take the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria. You have to get on a crappy tour bus and it takes three hours, whereas the same trip from Seattle takes about half the time and you go from city center to city center.

4. Speaking of Victoria, we did not wind up having tea at the Empress Hotel. We were told that this was a Disneyland-esque experience, but we made reservations anyway because of our deep, abiding love of afternoon tea, only to balk at the long lines of shorts-wearing, video camera-toting, visor-wearing visitors being corralled unceremoniously into the tea room. Instead, we went to the Blue Fox Cafe (based on a recommendation from Our Favorite Waiter in L.A.), which was pretty good.

5. Flying to Canada is dumb. Between the bastard people at the Harmony Airlines desk at LAX who made us check our bags (which we NEVER have to check; we purchased them specifically because they comply to practically everybody's carry-on guidelines...everybody, that is, except Harmony Airways out of LAX) to the bastard people at Vancouver airport who took Eric's can of spray starch away (What? He likes to iron.), never mind the customs forms and passport checks, it was probably much more trouble than flying to Seattle and catching a ferry. This time, it just happened to be the cheapest option. Next time, by golly, we're crossing the border by boat.

6. I need a new digital camera. After taking a handful of pictures, one of an unintentionally funny song display on our iPod, three of a sailboat called the "Bilbo B" and four of wee train dioramas, the thing locked up and started sputtering out strange error messages. Now the lens won't retract and no amount of angry button-pushing or dial-turning fixes it. The majesty of the Pacific Northwest must remain only in my memory, as I have no photographic evidence of visiting it. Sigh.