Alright let’s do this, we are in the home stretch of this trip now, the last full day in Vancouver before we go back home tomorrow, let’s make it count. We have some pretty solid bait things to see today and some bonus stuff so let’s see how that goes.

We start our day with some breakfast, we have a decently long day today so we need some food in our bellies to start the day, especially so after our fail Mexican food yesterday. I suppose this place is ‘basic’ being called basic, so let’s see.

We had a few breakfast places in mind but this one was selected because it was ‘basic’. It’s pretty base inside I guess so they got that right.

My sister ordered a breakfast bagel that comes with home fries. It was pretty base.

My mom got corn beef and hash with home fries. It was not base, it was below average she said, the beef was tasteless, can make better herself at home she said. Base below.

I got ‘the brit’ which is there own take on a full english breakfast. It’s alright, it’s by no means anywhere near as good and either of the breakfasts I had in London but for the price that was just over $20, I can’t really complain. Missing mushrooms and some other stuff but sure.

Overall this breakfast place ‘the basic’ is pretty base, or rather, pretty mid. I would give it a 6/10, I am fed but nothing special at all about it.

From ‘the basic’ we called for an Uber to our next destination. After a short wait our Uber driver came and for once they were quite talkative for some reason; my mom, being herself engaged in the chatter with ‘Doug Ford’ as she commented that our driver looked like Doug Ford. Mannn, why are you even saying that lol. “Doug” gave some useful advice for our trip for today and answered some questions from us common folks about travel within Vancouver and the such, it was decent since the ride wasn’t that long but yea, I personally would have rather Uber drivers be silent.

After we greeted ‘Doug Ford’ our Uber driver off, we arrive at our first place today; the Stanley park Aquarium. Nice statue of some native shit, we see alot of that stuff here.

Takopii nooo, he’s so pure, he didn’t know. Not bad octopus mugs tho.

Once we get inside we immediately already know that this is better than the Ripley’s aquarium we have in Toronto, I mean, almost every aquarium is better than ours, it’s just the way.

While nowhere as big as the largest aquarium in North America, the Atlanta one, it’s a decently big size. At least it’s not linear path like in Toronto’s Ripleys. I don’t know why but my sister still books to go to these Aquariums for all of our trips if they are around, loves fish I guess.

Baller mini starfish, he knows what’s up.

Those Japanese garden eels that we see everywhere now, not exclusive in Japan but for some reason, only in Japan they are big and have merch of.

Jellyfish are always cool to look at. Even better for photos if you have some small kid looking in wonder at them. A+ shit aww yea boi.

Baller boi diving head first into the water.

Proof of baller sea existence, jellyfish man edition.

Despite being a Monday, it’s quite busy with families with small children, even with strollers and shit. I can hear that alot of these guys have accents, either British or Australian I think.

Some other kind of jellyfish, this one is funded by BMO tank or some shit. My sister said this place is for profit so I have no idea where money comes from other than merch and admissions, which is more expensive than usual for something like this.

Sea anemones I think, these green things. It really shows the superiority of my camera, back before my camera was really shit in low light and darker area; not anymore, good shit s24, you don’t good work.

Patrick don’t give a shit, why should you?

I don’t quite understand the wall advertisement but I find it funny this girl is just chilling/almost sleeping already on this bench, this is at like 9:30am, it’s too early to rest man, you just got in.

I dunno about you but do you want some piranha pockets? Totally not just regular Taiyaki fish, they are special, just this time.

Frogs Forever? The area had lots of frogs and shit talking about how they are doomed and are a good indicator of the world environment’s health. Things not doing so good I guess.

Look at this nice yellow frog, nice camera s24, doing your thing.

Even better job s24, capture that lizard bitch ah yea!

For some reason or another I find myself sitting waiting to watch some sea lions get fed and do tricks and shit. Proof of waiting for sea lion shoe, unsure mood.

Look at this absolute unit, holy shit this boi is big, what a fat ass. He did the most tricks and shit so he gets the most fish from the trainers. No wonder he’s so fat, he’s so good and doing tricks.

We are like sitting right in front of the action, in front of the announcer host guy who does his best effort but he knows that 50% of the audience doesn’t give a shit and is not paying attention. True baller, does his shit, don’t care if people pay attention or not, just another routine job I suppose.

If there is one thing you know that aquariums will be on point with is their gift shop game. They have so much shit and it’s all unique and interesting, I mean, how can you not make fish and sea creature merch not interesting, maybe this is why my sister likes going to aquariums, they have good merch and good plushie game. Probably.

The aquarium has lots of shit for axolotls, they went really hard on them as you can see. However, I could not find any in the area they are supposed to be so I think they died and they haven’t had the chance to replace them yet. Man, pretty bad.

The place also pushes these bitches quite a bit too, sea otters, which are like sea squirrels or beavers in my opinion but whatever. We also saw some 4d salmon run planet earth thing where they spray water and shit at you for effect, it was alright, not pictured.

After a pretty decent aquarium experience, better than I expected we leave to explore for a bit and see some of Stanley park sights. The view is great.

The tide is down now in the afternoon and all the rocks are green and shit, nice. Nice mountains too and water.

There is some thing about Japanese empress boat or something, I didn’t pay too much attention but it’s there, not bad. Nice view.

They have that iconic women in swimsuit statue on a rock on the path, it looks pretty nice, especially when tide is down, kinda jokes.

S24 doing it’s magic, pretty good zoom ability and shit. Nice rocks and statue man. We had brought some chinese buns from that New Town chinese bakery from yesterday here for a quick lunch and ate it at this point. Let’s just say that the buns were super mid, nothing to get excited about at all. You can get way better buns and cheaper buns pretty much elsewhere, even in Toronto.

We eventually get to the central east of Stanley park that has real totem poles for show, noice. Proof of totem pole out in the wild, not a museum edition.

From what I understand most of these were created for Stanley park back in the day/taken from one native artist, one that was featured in the MOA that we saw yesterday. They moved one of them back there I think, ok sure.

Everyone just standing around, just looking at them. I mean, it’s one of the main things to see here at Stanley park. Being free and all which is understandable. They even have a gift shop and shit for this spot, which is kind of incredible really since it’s just these poles but yea, gotta make money somewhere I guess.

Another top spot people go to in Stanley park is this square looking light house. Not exactly what I had in mind for a lighthouse but it works I guess. My sister doing her ultraman beam shit move, not bad. Sky so blue, pretty good shit.

From the upper stairs of the lighthouse elevation, looking good here.

Proof of lighthouse visit point view existence NPC wave move real time attack.

Another angle from the top, good shit. Shortly after this, me and my sister walk back to the central totem pole visitors center area to collect our mom, who had been resting there, she was here before so didn’t want to see it again, sure.

We were able to call a Uber from the Totem pole place which is kind of amazing and began the next section of our journey/plan.

After a 20 minute Uber ride, we reach our destination, the other side of the view, to North Vancouver to see some stuff. From this point on, everything is just ‘bonus’ attraction since the main points of today were the aquarium and Stanley park.

While it is not exactly granville island, this area known as Quayside and it’s associated market tries it’s best to do it’s thing. Although it is indeed somewhat underpopulated and lacking.

We walk out to one of the piers and they have people putting locks and shit on the wall, sure people, sure.

Proof from the other side, NPC wave ocean edition, getting tired debuff.

We go inside the main place where people go here for, Lonsdale Quay Market, a baby small version of granville public market that honestly doesn’t live up to the former in the slightest filled with shops, food and artists shit. While is seems grand, it can be cleared in like 10-15 minutes, it’s not big at all.

It becomes apparent then that unless more people take notice and visit this place, this market could very well die if it doesn’t attract enough visitors. We could be seeing the beginning of another Chinatown mall with abandonment and empty units unless something is done to revitalize this place, hopefully not but you never know.

We exit the market and go into what is called the ‘inuit art gallery’ which despite it’s name, is not a musuem, it’s a place where you can go and actually buy inuit native art like he ones above. Wow, shit is pretty expensive, costing like hundreds and thousands of dollars. Shit’s real.

In the area they also have these artist alley like stores, even here, outside Richmond Chinese malls this shit is popular.

There is another pier with a nice view out to the water, we go there.

We reach the end, pretty solid. Even with the kid, actually better with the kid.

A few others managed to make the trek here, it’s the least people can do since this area isn’t that popular compared to other tourist attractions.

We go back to the market and get some ice cream and gelato since, that’s what we seem to do on this trip when we experience dissapointment. The ice cream place lost power and only accepted cash, which we had, sure. The owners were Japanese, I can tell/hear them.

The gelato and ice cream itself was pretty solid good shit. I got the raspberry sherbert and my sister got double chocolate and white chocolate with raspberry. Pretty noice.

When we had enough of North Vancouver, we decided to go back to our hotel the locals way, using the SeaBus, a ferry that takes you directly back to the main DT Vancouver city area. Must faster and cheaper than Uber. This is the plan, this is de wey.

Quite impressive really. The SeaBus is part of the metro transit system, the same system as the Canada train line so you can just tap your credit card to enter and exist. It’s surprisingly fast, in just less than 10 minutes you are on the other side of the water. Wow, good shit.

We got off the SeaBus and get on the Canada line to travel back one stop to get closer to our hotel to rest. Even tho it’s just one extra stop, it saves us like 20-30 minutes of walking and reduces our walk from the station to like 5 minutes. Gud shit.

We rest in the hotel and clean up before our final dinner in Vancouver which is an hour or so away. We walk by this alley everyday and it’s worth taking a photo of because it’s cool.

And so here we are, our last dinner in Vancouver is none other than Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ, the same chain of bbq restaurant that me and my sister had on our last night in Japan 2 years ago. They have a location in Toronto I know but it’s downtown near the waterfront, when am I ever going to try it then? Probably never. So let’s try this one in Vancouver as my sister suggested.

They have seasonal menu for summer and specials huh, nice. Wagyu is nice.

Unlike what we are used to, they do NOT have all you can eat bbq, you have to select a set course of meat/set. That is somewhat unfortunate because as far as I remember, even in Japan GyuKaku had AYCE option. I wonder why they don’t here, I wonder about the Toronto location here too. We ended up getting the Meat Variety set and added a lot of other apps and other shit which increases the price considerably, so it’s not just 130

Final seating, up thumbs means of bbq approval edition proof of existence slightly tired edition.

Echo back, we made it bbq food proof of existence GyuKaku meat ready edition pose.

It was happy hour, for Monday which is basically all the time so I got a Sapporo. Some items were slightly discounted 10% not bad.

Our set had some interesting shit like corn and sirloin seared beef sushi, not bad.

Miso soup for 3 and salade. We also ordered some crunchy garlic cabbage, it’s good palate cleansers.

Added garlic Edamame, not bad but too much garlic. Only I mainly ate this.

Also ordered karrage and another fried squid because we are dumb. We didn’t notice/read that our set already had it on the menu, so we asked our server for another order. She warned us that it’s two, we just nodded without realizing our mistake, I thought she meant that it’s for two or there is two squid in the dish, not two separate orders, ahwell lol.

Salt pepper chicken wings. I thought they would be grilled. I was wrong, they are fried, opps ahwell. Thought they were Nagayoa style wings but ah well.

After we cleared our table of most of the apps we ordered and in the set, our server, Erika told us to call her when we were ready to get meat to grill. We did and she gave us these cuts, which I think is pork toro and beef thin cut, probably toro too.

Grilling that nice beef, nice and quick only a few seconds on each side. Dis is de way.

We also ordered the seasonal special of Australian Wagyu sirloin steak to grill, pretty nice looking and marbling. This is outside our set for sure.

Nice marbling and pre cut which is nice, look at the fat go. Good shit. It’s not as good as real Japanese Wagyu A5 but it’s still pretty damn good and expensive. Not bad.

Some hiramaki i think or skirt steak marinated. I didn’t really like it honestly, too much grisle and fibers in the pieces I ate. The entire piece was a big steak, giving us a knife a fork to cut ourselves. I would have rather them cut it up for us instead, not great although my sister and mom liked it alot.

Can’t remember the cut but I think maybe ribs? Forgot alright, it was alright.

Garlic peso chicken with cheese fondue which you have to melt with mushroom in tin foil. I personally though it was alright but my mom and sister did not like the peso chicken at all. We had no choice since this is a set meal so whatever, had to eat it. The cheese fondue is not good, it didn’t melt and it’s made of cheddar cheese, should be mozzarella if they wanted to be Italian style. The mushrooms were alright, just button mushrooms in butter and soy I think.

There was a few other cuts I left out due to time and same look ish but our meal ended with them giving us smores, or rather the tools to make our own smores. Uh, kinda weird and cheap in my opinion but yea, not my thing. Super white people shit here so I dunno. I would much rather icecream or some other dessert instead.

So then, does GyuKaku outside of Japan stack up compared to other BBQ options? It’s solid but in my opinion the Japan experience is way way better than here which is unfortunate.

Make no mistake, the food and cuts of meat are very good, very tasty and delicious but I have to order a set or a la carte item individually, not AYCE, meaning some of the items in our set we did not like. The atmosphere is top notch though and all the side dishes an apps are very affordable which is a plus, plus the bonus happy hour discount which helps.

But no AYCE? How can they compete with others in Canada and elsewhere that do offer that? Especially Korean bbq? The real authentic level of GyuKaku in Vancouver is off the charts however, almost all of the employees are Japanese and or spoke Japanese in some capacity which was interesting. Our server, Erika was Japanese no doubt, and even saw a white waiter guy who also spoke with them in Japanese, interesting hmm.

All in all, while it was a good last meal, it falls shorts considerably in the wonderful BBQ experiences available elsewhere in the world, from London, America and Japan, the quality is there but the value is not when they do not have an AYCE option. The fact that OG GyuKaku in Japan that I had was AYCE was available and here they do not, it is hard to not compare the experiences. 7/10.

With that, our last full day in Vancouver is done. We saw and ate alot of shit today and had a good time but it’s time to go back home tomorrow. Hope our travel day goes smoothly.