Driving from Seattle to Vancouver is less than a 3 hour drive. I was excited to visit one weekend, because I have always heard nice things about it. Approaching the city center of Vancouver sort of reminded me of Miami Beach. There were tons of sky scrapers but with a modern look, and soft tone turquoise colored glass. There were also tons of boats and yachts lined up by the docks. We pulled over to walk around Stanley Park. The weather was perfect – cool and breezy. It felt like a nice place to relax and relieve stress. Next we headed over to the Spanish Banks Beach. It’s really hard being open-minded about beaches when you are from Miami. It seemed like a nice option if I were to live in Vancouver. The water was definitely too cold for Floridians to swim in, but kayaking or boating would have been ideal.
Afterwards, we wanted to check out Chinatown. It seemed cleaner than the one in New York City. However, we stumbled upon this long road parallel to Chinatown that scared us half to death. I have never seen anything like it – and that says a lot considering I have been to Haiti dozens of times. I know large cities always have their pockets of homelessness. Yet, this was beyond just homelessness. It was the longest street ever of homeless people, piles of garbage and junk, it smelled horrific, and not to mention it was super crowded. We wanted to get out of there ASAP!
One cool thing about the Pacific Northwest in general, is seeing totem poles. I had never seen one previously in real life (my only memory of one is from watching Scooby-Doo as a kid). Totem poles are sculptures carved on poles or large trees by indigenous people. This is a picture of one from Vancouver:
My initial reaction was that Vancouver was a beautiful place upon arriving there. My thoughts after leaving were; I love the USA!
