Am I Moving to Vancouver?

First, our Airbnb is lovely. We are in the basement apartment of a two level house, which Zillow tells me is valued between 2 and 3 million. So apparently, housing affordability has a bit of a problem for the Canadians as well. 

Todd and I rose early and immediately determined that a two block jaunt to an organic coffee shop was what we needed. The neighborhood is absolutely stunning with cute gardens and amazing plants in everyone’s yard. Many of the houses appear to have multiple units like the Victorians in San Francisco that have been divided into two or three apartments.

One of the benefits of staying in Airbnbs is that we are able to make our own breakfast. With a fancy coffee in Todd’s hand and a delicious muffin in mine, we set out for the IGA grocery store for breakfast fixings. 

Emily cooked up some egg, cheese, and Canadian bacon sandwiches before we ordered up a Lyft ride to a local park. The weather is stunning guys. 

They played golf. I walked and took photos of the greenery. The houses around this park are in the 3 to 4 million range. 😮 There were a ton of Japanese Maple trees in this park which seemed funny to me because when was the last time you saw a ton Japanese Maple trees in a public park? That’s an investment!

Two funny things from our visit. The park had a “caretakers” residence which was a normal looking house with a garage and mailbox. That seemed that a cool idea have someone live on site to care for the park! And this guy with the dogs, he is clearly making some money but boy did he seem to be in way over his head with this crew of dogs. 

I also did a little geo caching and while one search turned up nothing, I did find this gem hidden in a fallen tree. If you’ve never heard of GeoCaching, it’s like a scavenger hunt all over the world. And it’s free! https://www.geocaching.com/play

After 18 holes and a chat with a few locals about the other courses, we checked online for a lunch spot. Italian pizza was calling our names. We found a great place just a short half mile uphill walk from the Quilchina Park. Bufala might mean buffalo in Italian, but today it meant good pizza! 

We devoured a kale salad and three pizzas. The salad? Like, what is up with these amazing salads? Day two and this kale caesar was delicious…I was sad we ordered one to share and I couldn’t eat it all myself :/ Adding freshly shredded mozzarella to a salad just makes it so much better. 

Todd and I caught an Uber back to the AirBnB to shower and rest. Emily and Jacob walked the 3 miles back to get some exercise and take in more sights. The walk was pretty much through all multi-million dollar homes. We are outside of downtown Vancouver and had no idea there were such large rich suburbs out here. To give you an idea of the size of Vancouver, here is a map with the arrow pointing to where we are staying and the circle showing the downtown area. The drive from the airport to our AirBnB was 25 minutes to give you an idea of the scale of the area.

So the NBA finals are on and we wanted to watch the game from the comfort of our couch but after struggling with the TV subscriptions and the Canadian rules with our YouTubeTV, we gave up and went for a walk to find sushi. We had an amazing meal and enjoyed another stellar salad. This had shredded fried beets on top and it was a shareable feast. Other delights were rolls and some sake. 

Afterwards we began the stroll back to our place when we saw a sign for a pub. We figured we would see if they had the NBA game on and lo and behold!!!! 

So here we are enjoying the game - which looked to be a blow out. Ouch! Behind us the entire bar was gearing up for trivia night! Sooooo we stayed!!! The four of us played, sans Katie and Stephen (read yesterday’s post). It was fun and we laughed. Which I honestly don’t do enough. All the things we should be doing to destress and relax while on vacation. ❤️ 

And then we walked home. The homes in this area are bursting with flowers and glorious gardens. Their beauty made us want to run home, after the cruise of course, and rip out our grassy front yard and plant bunches upon bunches of flowering plants. It’s gorgeous here in Vancouver. If the homes on Zillow were so pricey, I might be looking to relocate. Wish you were here…