Headed Home – Episode 21

After four wonderful weeks living downtown Vancouver it was time to pack up and head home. It’s fair to say that we were both shocked at just how much we enjoyed our time in Vancouver. We knew we’d have a good time but we didn’t expect to both fall in love with the West coast of Canada. Looking back over the last four weeks it is easy to see what about Vancouver we fell for.

Episode 21: https://youtu.be/uriFH1MhMM0

There is so many things I could call out, but here are some general themes that give a small glimpse into why we loved our time in Vancouver so much.

Firstly it’s obvious that West coasters love the outdoors. There is such a great focus on getting outside and enjoying being healthy. The pace felt a little slower and it just seemed that enjoying life and the outdoors was a top priority for many people living out West. There was something special about walking out of the condo in downtown Vancouver and breathing in fresh air in the centre of a major city, and seeing the mountains as you look out past the buildings of the city. Nature felt integrated into your day in ways you don’t feel in Toronto.

Everywhere we went it felt airy, lots of trees and lots of parks. And seeing those mountains did not hurt. Having easy access to the wonderful Stanley Park was amazing. Back home we don’t live right downtown, and I’m sure some Torontonians would set us straight, but Toronto just doesn’t have that healthy outdoors vibe.

Secondly, the food scene was amazing, and I’m lumping in coffee here too! Toronto’s food scene is spectacular and I’m not going to compare the two. That’s not really the point. But we enjoyed all the food and coffee in Vancouver. Sometimes you go somewhere and there is an obvious lack of a diverse food scene, Vancouver is not one of them. And us being Japanese lovers were in heaven with all the options. There are lots of great ramen shops, but what really blew us away were all the amazing sushi restaurants. With direct access to super fresh fish you’d expect the sushi quality to be up there. And it definitely was, excellent sushi. What we didn’t expect though was the quantity. Every time we ordered sushi we were shocked at how massive all the pieces were. Extremely generous portions!

The coffee scene was exceptional. In Toronto I’d risk saying that it’s much more of an espresso scene, whereas in Vancouver every shop seemed to be offering pour overs of their spectacular beans. You could get your share of espresso as well, but I pretty much always opted for a fresh pour over. We hit many coffee shops during our stay, but our favourite was Rocanini Coffee, in large part because it was a 3 minute walk from our place. It became our local coffee hangout during our month in Vancouver.

The last thing I’ll call out was the proximity to incredibly beautiful and breathtaking scenery. On a few occasions we rented a car and in under 30 minutes we could be surrounded by mountains and scenery that would knock your socks off. Such easy access to such epic nature. I’ll always remember our visits to Whistler, Capilano Suspension Bridge and Grouse Mountain. We really enjoyed all the days we got to go explore the nature of BC.

And with that, our Vancouver series comes to an end. I hope you enjoyed following along and experiencing our Vancouver adventure with us.

Thank you so much for reading and watching, and stay tuned for our next series starting up very soon!

Locations

There were several locations featured in this episode

Thanks for watching/reading!

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