My first weekend...

I live in a basement on West 10th, which is just off Broadway (in Vancouver). How cool is that!? It sounds very Manhattan.

On Saturday, I took my first walk with Nathan down Broadway. Much of Broadway is lined with little boutique-type shops, cafes and food-markets. There's Greek food, French breads and pastries, sushi, noodle houses, grills, coffee houses galore. With food and drink from every nation so readily available it's gastric heaven!

Our first stop was a place called Kidsbooks, a bookshop solely for children and teens. It had a mind-boggling range of books and spin-off merchandise (for example, they had Horrible Histories/Science kits). I saw some fantastic titles by authors I had never come across before and was sad that I hadn't brought my notebook with me to take down some of these titles. Never mind, I'll be back.

For morning coffee, we stopped off at Calhouns, a place that is popular with the local students as it is open 24 hours. As I've mentioned previously, they have not heard of a flat white here so I had to make do with a latte. After that, it was off to Safeway, the supermarket where customers are "clients for life". Supermarket shopping is an interesting experience when you don't know 90% of the brands.

That afternoon, Nathan and I walked to Jericho Beach and Spanish Banks. From Jericho Beach you look across English Bay to downtown Vancouver and North Vancouver. The view of downtown Vancouver is quite similar to the one across Wellington Harbour - very picturesque. Sadly, we couldn't see the mountains behind North Vancouver as they were obscured by cloud.

In the evening, Nathan, myself and six of Nathan's college friends went to a performance of Messiah given by the Vancouver Bach Choir at the Orpheum Theatre. The theatre was very palatial and the performance beautiful. It probably warrants a whole post in itself!

Sunday morning was church - quite liturgical and 'Anglican' (which has been a first in a wee while for me). Bronwyn has been toiling away on her last assignment over the past couple of days and she needed some more space to concentrate so Nathan and I spent the afternoon going to the matinee session at a quaint cinema on Broadway, called Hollywood. There, for the sum of $6.00CA, we watched Becoming Jane and Nanny Diaries, these being the two films on offer this week.

I already feel like I've seen so much, but that I'm missing out on a number of the cultural nuances that makes Vancouver so fascinating. Therefore, next post I'll endeavour to share about Loonies and Toonies, or some other cultural tidbit.

Ciao for now!