Tag Archives: West End

Vancouver

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Take the most pristine alpine setting you can conjure up — mountains, blue sky, water on all sides. Add city. Stir.

The first time you see Vancouver, you may think your eyes are deceiving you. They’re not. This place rreally is as beautiful as it looks. A picture postcard on steroids.

Water is the element that dominates and defines Vancouver. Rivers, inlets and bays paint some part of the horizon a liquid blue in nearly every direction. Even the airport sits on an island.

Even if you’ve never set foot in Vancouver, you’ve already seen a lot of it. The city’s nickname is “Hollywood North.” One of the more prolific film producers and special effects houses, Lions Gate Entertainment, got their start here.

Film and video crews spend so much time “on location” in Vancouver, shooting everything from feature films and documentaries to TV series and commercials, that some hotels and restaurants use their popularity with the film-making caste as a selling point.

The one blight on the landscape is all the skyscrapers. Towering office and apartment high–rises fill the city center, as if all of Vancouver insisted on having a scenic view — and got it.

But honestly, can you blame them? I mean, really, when was the last time you could peer over a balcony — and look down on seagulls in flight?

And yeah, I’ve done that.

IF YOU GO
You can reach Vancouver by road, rail, air or cruise ship. The drive from Seattle is about two hours and change, a shade longer than it takes to drive between Los Angeles and San Diego. But that doesn’t count the wait time to cross the border, which can add an hour or more.

Vancouver is served by major U.S. airlines. The airport code for Vancouver is YVR. You can also take the Amtrak Cascades train. Several cruise lines sail into Vancouver, which also is a major starting point for cruises to Alaska.

To cross to/from Canada by land or sea, you’ll need either a U.S. passport or the newer PASScard. If you’re arriving by air , it’s passport only. The PASScard won’t work.

The currency is the Canadian dollar, but many Canadian business accept U.S. dollars.

My home base in Vancouver is a neighborhood known as the West End, which sits at the base of a small peninsula. The tip of that peninsula is taken up by the gorgeously green Stanley Park, whose perimeter you can walk around at water level.

Here, youth can be your calendar age or your outlook on life. Gay can be an alternate lifestyle or a joyful attitude a la the word’s original meaning. Turn down Denman Street or off Davie Street to English Bay and the smell of the sea engulfs you.

Even mundane sights take on a fascination, like the seaplanes that take off from and land on English Bay. I’ve yet to take one of those floating/flying tours around Vancouver, but you know it’s on my to-do list!

The West End, like most Vancouver neighborhoods, is rendered to a human scale. There are plenty of stores within an easy walk. Whole counties have been fatally “malled” in the States, but the corner grocery store is alive and doing business here.

Just on the other side of the West End is Granville Island. rundown industrial area on False Creek has been turned into something reminiscent of San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, with shops, restaurants and entertainment.

Actually, the music and nightlife scene is vibrant citywide.

But maybe the most beautiful thing about Vancouver is her people. The city has always had a large Asian population, which swelled even more in the years leading up to Britain’s return of Hong Kong to China. But the population here is diverse enough to make any visitor feel comfortable.

And if the human rainbow here doesn’t put you at ease, the residents themselves probably will.

This is the anti–New York. Folks here don’t rush, don’t push. There’s a mellowness among people here that seems to have nothing to do with the production and smoking of “BC Bud.”

Drivers are actually…polite. Perfect strangers may actually speak to you on the street — without an ulterior motive. Shopkeepers strike up conversations with you just for the hell of it. Cyclists and drivers actually seem to respect each other here.

Taken altogether, it’s mind-blowing, without the chemical enhancement.

Rudeness instantly marks you as an out–of–towner.

Driving here may take a different mindset from what you’re used to. Vancouver takes pride in its lack of freeways. This is not the place to try to get somewhere at the last minute, unless it’s within walking distance.

If you bring the Los Angeles mentality with you to British Columbia, you’re in for some serious culture shock.

Speaking of driving, the ferry run between the City of Vancouver and the island of the same name has got to be one of the world’s most beautiful commutes.

Up here, bald eagles aren’t on coins or patriotic advertisements. They’re perched in trees or soaring overhead, almost as common as sparrows.

It all makes for an atmosphere that’s more serene, more contemplative, than you usually find in North American cities.

At the outdoor cafe tables and on the giant logs that serve as beach benches on English Bay, the conversations run to art and music, philosophy and religion. You can go a whole week without hearing gangsta rap or the names Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan.

That alone is reason enough to adore Vancouver. And I do.

LONDON — A fever in the blood

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That’s how fast this city gets into your system.

It might happen the first time you walk along the Thames and catch a glimpse of the world-renowned silhouette of the Houses of Westminster and its clock tower, Big Ben, or the Tower Bridge or the Tower of London. It might happen when you first pull up to a pint in a warm, wood–paneled pub, or catch yourself looking the wrong way before crossing the street. It almost surely will happen the first time you board an Underground train and hear the stern, automated admonishment to “mind the gap!”

But it will happen. You will get caught up in the sights and rhythms of London…and that’s a good thing.

Aside from being one of the world’s great urban attractions in its own right, London is a great starting point for your first venture into international travel. Since the British speak English — at least in theory — you’ve got no language issues to jolt you out of your comfort zone on your very first venture away from American soil, as opposed to Tokyo or Cairo or Moscow.

At the same time, London — indeed, all of the United Kingdom — is just “foreign” enough to give you the sense that, like Toto, you are now a long way from Kansas.

London has five major airports. Your flight is likely to take you into either Heathrow or Gatwick. Getting out of the airport and into central London is the first place you’ll encounter the most important reality of visiting Britain: Their pound is worth a lot more than our dollar.

Unless you either own a bank or recently robbed one, do NOT plan on taking one of London’s famed black taxis into the city. The fare may send you into cardiac arrest.

It’s worth repeating: Everything is more expensive in London, but that’s doesn’t put it out of your reach. Save your coins, budget carefully and you’ll be fine.

Both Heathrow and Gatwick have express trains which will get into into one of central London’s train stations, from which you can make easy — and much cheaper — connections to where you’re staying. But Heathrow has an extra advantage for travelers, its own subway connection.

The Piccadilly line on the London Underground — also known to Londoners as “The Tube” — takes you straight from Heathrow airport into London’s South Kensington, just north of the Thames near the West End. Not as fast as a taxi, but almost as convenient and infinitely cheaper.

No one will mind if you get on the subway with your luggage; travelers do it all the time.

South Kensington is custom-made for first-time visitors to London, or first-time travelers in general. It’s got everything you need, and I do mean everything! It’s now my de facto London neighborhood. There are plenty of hotels, but I prefer short-stay apartments like the Oxbridge Apartments, right around the corner from Cromwell Road, sandwiched in an easy 10-minute walk between the Gloucester Road and Earls Court stations, and directly across the street from our favorite supermarket in all the world, Sainsbury’s.

Lemon curd, Irish oatmeal and clotted cream (don’t let the name trip you out; it’s actually quite good) for breakfast, Twinings teas any time of day, biscuits and Seriously Strong–brand cheddar cheese for late–night snacks while watching the BBC (it’s Scottish, delicious and totally lives up its name), and chicken tikka masala 24/7 from the deli.

You have to bag your own groceries in Europe, but who cares?

In the three blocks between the Gloucester Road subway stop and the apartment, i found:
* four hotels
* two supermarkets, Sainbury’s and Waitrose, and a small Tesco market
* a half-dozen great Italian, Indian and Thai restaurants
* a coin laundry
* an Internet cafe
* a bank with four ATMs outside
* a Post Office
* A tourist shop selling memory cards, camera batteries, phone cards, umbrellas, luggage and anything else you’re likely to have lost, forgot to pack or broke.

A turn up or down Gloucester Road will take you to more restos, pubs, bookstores and shops, not to mention Kensington Gardens, a beautiful, serenely green park that was home to Princess Diana until her death in 1997. The mountain of bouquets you saw on TV, piled up at the Kensington Palace gate by thousands of mourning Londoners, was here.

Three blocks to the east and you’re at the Gloucester Road stop for “The Tube.” Three blocks the other way and you’re Earl’s Court, with its own handy Tube stop. Between the two, navigating the whole of London is “easy-peasy!”

Interested in history? London is one of the European capitals that’s practically buried under it. At the feet of Edwardian and Elizabethan palaces and cathedrals are the foundations of buildings erected by the Romans. But this is the same city with ultra-modern architecture reaching to the sky, including the London Eye and a city hall that looks like a giant, precariously balanced glass egg.

It’s almost as if antiquity and modernity are forever jostling each other for elbow room.

A vibrant theater scene. A restaurant scene in constant motion that is busily erasing the memory of British food as the horror of Europe. A music scene more diverse than anything you will hear on American radio or MTV, and a club scene to match. If you’re fascinated by fashion, you’ll find yourself in one of its world capitals. And every race, nationality, culture and language is represented here…in abundance.

The British writer Samuel Johnson knew of what he spoke when he said, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” One way or another, London gets into your system and refuses to let go. Resistance is futile.

Plan on returning.