Vancouver

I love Vancouver. Every time I am here I love it more.

Don't get me wrong, I love Seattle, too, but Vancouver has something to it that Seattle just doesn't. I'm sure part of it is where Scott and I are, anchored an easy dinghy ride from the Yaletown neighborhood. Yaletown is young, clean, and urban. The people, the buildings, and the parks are all beautiful. And Yaletown is probably the only place I've been in a couple of years that is pulling off what no other place seems to be capable of right now--prosperity. New condo high-rises have giant "SOLD OUT" banners across their billboards. Even with high-rises on every block, the building ordinances must allow the sun to reach the sidewalk. Most buildings are tiered back from the street and get narrower as they get higher. The mix of 3-4 story buildings mixed with 20+ story buildings is nice. Or one part of the building is only a few stories high (often on the street corners), then toward the center it climbs much higher. Either way, the effect is a dense, yet airy mixed-use city core. Actually, with Yaletown so vibrant and beautiful, it is no wonder the Olympic Village (across the water) is having a hard time filling up!

Transit here is efficient and easy to use, even for first-timers. No doubt a little familiarity with place names would make it easier for visitors, but it is like that in any metropolitan city. And it seems highly used by the locals.

The central library is spacious, and even non-citizens need only go to the service desk for a card for one year of public library Wifi. And, even though I can't check it out, they have a reference book here (two copies even!) that I really wanted to take a look at in Seattle. However, it was missing from the Seattle library's shelf. It wasn't checked out, and even after a thorough search by the librarian through all the possible hiding places, it was never found. I had hours of bliss yesterday afternoon getting so many answers from the book that had eluded me for many months. Before I left, I ordered myself a copy online. It was a somewhat expensive book, and I really wanted to take a look at it before buying it.

Canadian social service programs mean that I've only seen two homeless people so far in a stretch of time and distance that would have revealed at least a hundred in Seattle.

If I didn't love my life on the boat, and love Seattle so much, I could easily live here. As it is, I'll take in all I can in these brief visits.


:)
Mandy