day 28

A whole heckin’ day in Vancouver

Started out the day by grabbing coffee and a variety of pastries at Purebread bakery - a cheese and pepper scone, a ham and cheese croissant, and a slice of passionfruit tea cake. We walked around town, got pretty lost, got found, kept walking around. Did a little shopping including an incredible book store called the Paper Hound Book Shop where books were organized by themes like Getting High, Books with Bears, or Nonsense.

Drove to a different part of town to do some thrifting, had a table full of amazing sushi at Sushi Kaido and an amazing cup of coffee at Modus

Really wanted to get some nice views of the water so we went over to English Bay, walked around the waterfront, and grabbed some margeritas and ceviche at Cactus Club Cafe.

Went to the hotel to change and headed over to Lunch Lady for an incredible Vietnamese dinner. We ordered:
• beef carpaccio with peanuts, crispy shallots, thai basil, mint, perilla, and lime viniagrette
• crispy soft shell crab served with lettuce, herbs, and green chili aioli
• garlic fried noodles with xo butter, aged parmigiano, and a slow poached egg
• pandan sticky rice cake with coconut condensed milk gelato, strawberry red bean puree, and mung bean streusel (absolutely INSANE)

Afterward we decided to check out two bars. The first was Key Party - a dark cocktail bar hidden behind a door in what appears to be a bookkeeping office.

The second was Narrow bar - a very narrow bar that is just completely hidden. Can’t believe we found it.

day 27

Revelstoke to Vancouver

Got up bright an early to start the 7 hour drive to Vancouver. Finished up Page Boy and started The Sicilian Inheritance and listened to some Vagabon, Boygenius and Beach House.

I decided before leaving to grab some breakfast in Kamloops at a place called Hello Toast. It was raining and cold for most of the drive which was torture as I was passing so. many. beautiful. SWIMMABLE. lakes. At least I was feeling pretty cozy.

Made it into the Victorian hotel (really small room, super comfy bed, large shared bathrooms) where the concierge was kind enough to help me empty the car. I had some time to kill since Thea’s flight was delayed. I took the opportunity to go for a jog along the water, which made for a great little intro to the area.

Thea, bless her heart had done some really good research and restaurants and bars for us. For night one we went to Pizza Coming Soon, an extremely cool Japanese spot with great art, orange pendant lights and booths, infinite kit-cat clocks, amazing food, and a killer highball.

We ordered:
• Japanese cukes with a sesame miso sauce
• An heirloom tomato salad with yuzu kosho whipped ricotta, impossibly delicious pickled onions, and sunflower seed pesto
• The smallest chicken wings I’ve ever eaten with yuzu garlic butter
• Fried rice with veggies and bamboo shoots
• Yuzu panacotta with milk crumble

We decided to walk back to the hotel with hopes of finding a place to have one more bevvie on the way home, but it wasn’t quite the neighborhood for that. We made it back to hotel safe and passed the heck out!