So here we are at the airport again, this time for a little vacation to Vancouver for a few days; I had never been to Vancouver and neither had my sister. So why not, let’s go to Vancouver, but this time we bringing our mom since she wants to go somewhere too, so this is a good chance.

We arrived at Pearson pretty early, just before 6am. Our flight is at 9am so we have lots of time but the airport is as busy I’ve ever seen it, wow.

After searching for some food, we arrived at a restaurant owned by mill street brewery, interesting.

My standard full breakfast, pretty standard indeed. About $20, expensive but what do you expect I guess for airport.

My mom and sister got eggs benedict, bout the same price too, $21. Overpriced but it was solid I guess they said.

We chilled in our terminal for awhile but they changed our gate so we had to move far to another gate which was a bit of a pain but we got there without incident. We had the cheapest tier tickets for our flight, basic with air canada that does not allow carry on luggage, just personal item. When we got on, me and my sister noticed that there was space for our bags up above and we decided to put our bags up there anyways. When I moved to put my bag in the above storage space, my water bottle fell out of my backpack and hit this guy on the head. It was full of water and metal and I’m sure it hurt bad. I apologized profusely asking if he was ok and he said he was, “I think I am ok…for now I guess..” but man, he definitely wasn’t expecting to get hit on the head with a heavy metal water bottle in the morning. I felt pretty bad but shit happens I guess, hope he’s ok.

We arrived in Vancouver without further incident. The flight itself was just over 4 hours, much faster than I was expecting. They also didn’t give any any food or meals which was to be expected for the cheapest flight I suppose, just juice and some drinks. The airport has some nice shit around like this, it’s nice.

Proof of transportation existence. Much like in London, we have learned the ways of using public train transit if possible. This ‘Canada’ line train from the airport goes directly into the city which is great, built for the Olympics, this is the way.

After a short walk from getting off the train/subway light rail Canada line we get to our hotel, the Sutton place. Pretty fancy. We were quite early for check in at around 12pm-ish but said to come back in an hour or so as then our room might be ready then.

We left our luggage and walked a few meters away this Japadog stand, that famous trendy Japanese hotdog chains/stands that got famous/popular in the city and has expanded elsewhere.

A fair large selection of dogs. Quite expensive however for a hotdog I must say tho.

I can’t remember what we all got but I think 4, 8, 12 and a bag of butter shoyu shaker fries and a can of pop. In total it all cost like $40. Very expensive but it was worth a try, pretty good but I think I could have got a better dog, I got basically a chili cheese dog so I wished I had a more fancy one, maybe another time.

There was an IGA super close to our hotel, like just one street over and it has all the things you would expect or need for travelers, like bottles of water. We did not get these particular bottles of water but I appreciate that they exist.

When I see cold pre-made sandwiches like these now all I can think of ‘meal deal’ like in my London trip. Man, meal deal truly was a good deal I think.

We had killed a sufficent amount of time eating lunch at Japadog and IGA so our hotel room was about ready. Nice bathroom.

Pretty solid clean room with two double queen beds, good shit. Looks like I get a bed all for my self. They have a mini fridge but it’s a mini bar, one of those ones where you get charged if you move or take anything out from it, so basically, it’s wasted. Too bad.

After resting and cleaning up a bit we decided to head out and explore the city. Our first stop is this funny looking tower that is not CN tower the smaller.

We arrive in the building, the name itself I forgot already but we are here for the Vancouver Lookout, an observation deck to get a sky high view of the city.

Proof of The Lookout existence, triple pose attack. Not bad.

The views from The Lookout are pretty good, not amazing as it is not an open air observation deck but one behind glass and such. Regardless you still can take some pretty good photos of the city and it’s surrounding areas green space.

Vancouver even when from the air from the plane I could already tell it’s a city with lots of green, like trees and mountains and green shit. Shit looks pretty nice I guess, especially with the boats and water mountains.

Noice view, I find it interesting how there is like so much smaller buildings in an area and green then further in the distance there is like pockets of very tall buildings and sky scrapers, like, why are these particular pockets so popular? Not sure.

Some gift store we went into which was pretty good. Fancy inside and nice props. There was a lot of Japanese tourists shopping for shit too like maple cookies and the like, I could hear them, lots school kids in large groups and families I think.

Made a quick stop by ‘Gas town’ which I am not entirely sure why it’s called that. Maybe because they used to have a lot of gas industry or transport gas whatever. For some reason, this clock is their main shit, it’s like steam powered, or at least looks as if it’s steam powered and plays a jingle every 15 minutes or so, it’s a thing. Kinda like hachiko in shibuya.

Proof of clock gas town existence. Clock is cool but I find it a bit strange how thing kinda became a thing. People and tourism I guess.

At this time, my mom was beginning to get tired and began to sit down a lot more than usual. I guess today’s long travel day and our inherent mad lad pace began to catch up already.

Walking by the Vancouver Convention Center, we are reminded that we fucked up and were supposed to go to AniRevo and attend a hololive world tour concert here a week earlier but we fucked up the dates and got everything booked a week later. While it is entirely our bad and dumb fail, I partly blame the website, it wasn’t up to date fully when tickets were available so yea, we got confused. Maybe another time…

Nice sitting pose picture, proof of something I guess.

Proof of Olympic flame torch that is, yea that ice thing that broke initially many years ago.

Proof of resting existence, Olympic flame sitting alone time passing me by while resting edition.

From the last pic we decided to take quick Uber ride to our dinner location, we could have walked it but I thought it was quite a distance, considering some of our wavering stamina after a long day of travel. Let’s go to Sushi Aboard, bullet train bootleg Japan type edition.

The restaurant itself is quite small but as you can guess, it’s main gimmick is that it’s just like the ones in Japan from Sushiro/Kura and other formerly conveyor belt sushi where you have sushi arrive on a little rail bullet train system.

And just like in Japan and elsewhere you order on this mounted Ipad, not bad. The bottom left counts your total costs. The price is per item and the quality varies quite a bit.

One of the more expensive items is this torched sockeye salmon nigiri, shit is like $7 for just these two pieces but I think it’s absolutely worth it. Probably the best salmon sushi I’ve ever had, even better than the ones in Japan, probably due to the fact that salmon is BC/Vancouver’s main shit and is super fresh. Good shit.

A more value choice is the sockeye salmon maki rolls, only $6 and you got that nice rice to fill you up, pretty solid and freshly made.

Gotta have that fried chicken kaarage tho man, pretty good.

Salted torched saba nigiri, pretty good shit. Probably the best saba sushi i’ve ever had. Also like $7-8 dollars I think. We had alot more other sushi and dishes we tried but some were mid while others were better than others, the ones picctured are the best I think. Overall a pretty good nice gimmick sushi experience, kind of pricey, our meal in total cost about $125 and after tax/tip, $150 so not that cheap, but not to bad when you think that it’s like the same cost of $50 AYCE sushi but not really but much higher quality. Overall very good, it also helps that the owners/shop keepers were also real Japanese people too, not Chinese or Koreans like we have in Toronto that run all sushi places.

After walking back to get back to our hotel from sushi, we saw this aussie pie place that my mom/sister knew about so decided to get one for later tonight late snack. Sure. Got chunky steak and mushroom as per recommendation of the shop keeper.

Vancouver is a nice city from what I’ve seen so far, this area feels alot like danforth but more asian and Japanese food but cleaner and better. Nice building in the back too. Alot of places like Captains boil and Uncle tetsu apparently started in Vancouver so I can see why they have so much good asian food places and even ramen.

They even have a nice Japanese style kobini run by Japanese people, not bad, lots of imported goods and food here. It was pretty busy inside but the one in London was much better as they had fresh food and other hot food available, this place, just ice cream and crepes I think.

Very steep incline, Vancouver is a city on a slight hill, so you are always slightly going up or down a hill, not much but it’s noticeable. We had to take quite a few stops for rest on this walk back home stretch.

My share of the late night aussie pie. Pretty good shit actually, not too salty but well seasoned, would be better fresh and with mash and gravy but it’s kinda expensive too, good shit tho. However, do you know what can make this better? If they made it into a McDouble! Yea!!

And that wraps up our first day 0 in Vancouver. It’s been pretty successful so far but I think our mom’s stamina is waning a bit already, her feet hurts alot so let’s see if we can fix or remedy that, we just got here after all. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.