As Jean and I are wont to do, we took advantage of a Travelzoo deal and booked another overnight in Vancouver. My goal was to eventually visit every “cool” (read: expensive-ish) hotel in Vancouver and while that probably won’t happen while looking on Travelzoo, I can check another off the list with our visit to the Moda Hotel. Girls weekend, whaaaaaat.
SEND OUT THE WELCOME PARTY!
Mmmm, pillow.
We started the visit off right with a trip to the Canucks store at Rogers Arena, to pick up my fixed-up jersey (way to sew a patch on crooked, Reebok). Oddly, they hadn’t fixed it, so they gave me a different one. Once back at the hotel, I tried the new one on and the crest was all lumpy, so we went back again and I rifled through the racks myself to find the perfect jersey. I don’t spend $120 for a lumpy shirt, so I wasn’t too concerned about crazy-anal I must have looked.
Of course, it being March and all, the city was beginning to feel like spring (and it being 2012, using Hipstamatic was still cool.)
Of course, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up some essentials:
(Royale is kind of a big deal in the TP world, so…)
We knew the hotel was kind of hip because they have very clean/coherent graffiti on either side of the building. No big deal.
We spent the afternoon in Yaletown, so upon recommendation of a greasy-spoon type restaurant nearby, we had dinner at PHAT (which just sounded like “FAT”, when the shopgirl recommended it. Think about it – a restaurant called “FAT”. Would you go?)
Whatever the restaurant is called (be it “FAT” or whatever), you can’t go wrong with garlic French fries and a hot dog.
It was hockey night, which meant that I forced Jean to watch a game with me. She was instead interested in sleeping (or at least trying to.) Until I invented…THE PILLOW-COPTER. It is just how it sounds – assault with a pillow in each hand, arms above your head in a circling motion. There are sadly no photos of this because I had a pillow in each hand.
Those hipstamatic filters are really something else.
For brunch the following morning (yeah, that was it – hockey and then bed), we decided to get cultural. Obvio, Vancouver is a ramen mecca (at least, in comparison with many other Canadian cities), so we decided to try Ramen Santouka.
(Had enough of the blurry hipstamatic photos yet?)
Verdict: It was aiet. Broth was very rich, but the noodles just didn’t capture me. And naruto (swirly thing fish cake) always tastes like the ocean to me.
After ramen-ing, we headed over to Gastown because we are out-of-towners and this is what we do. We had coffee at Trees Organic on Water Street and talked about how we both hoped to live in Vancouver and what the future was going to look like. Generation of dreamers – they ain’t kdding.
After buying some amazing candles at Nouvelle Nouvelle (GET THOSE TALL VANILLA SEA MONSTER CANDLES BACK IN STOCK!), we headed for home. Little did I know that in three short months, I would be moving right into the neighbourhood….
Read more...
