Travel Day 843 – Vancouver, CANADA
It was already my last day in Vancouver and since I had by now given up on this city, I rather decided to make the best use of this day while considering it a Travel Sunday…
Steam Clock in Gastown, Vancouver
Ever since I had left New York, I had quite a big issue. Actually, I rather had a heavy issue because I had decided to leave with my Tabla in the backpack. Unfortunately it came with a lot of equipment and also unfortunately I still had way too many warm clothes with me. Yes, I needed all my warm clothes so far and yes, I really needed my good raincoat as well, but from now on I would hopefully travel again in warmer weather and avoid the rain altogether…
So I ended up spending the entire morning with some creative packing, organizing and purging of my Backpack. Even if this was already my third world trip, I still managed to leave home with too many things on me and I still needed these kinds of Travel Sundays to evaluate and reassess. Including backup DVDs, I ended up packing a parcel of 2kg and posting it home. Great, even if I still had the heavy Tabla on my for my stay in India, at least losing 2kg out of my backpack seemed like a great achievement for this day… : )
Old Brick Warehouses in Gastown
As an added bonus, when I left the post office the rain had actually stopped and I could go for a little walk. Finally I was able to reach the original settlement, Gastown, as well as Chinatown. While Chinatown was just an area with Chinese shops and restaurants, as it was to be expected, Gastown was actually quite a nice place. It covered only a small area, basically just spanning between two streets, but at least the old brick buildings and the gas lamps gave everything a little bit of an actual city feel. In the middle of it all was a famous landmark, the steam clock, but unfortunately it was a recent invention rather than a historic landmark…
The buildings around were mostly converted warehouses with either restaurants, bars, or shops on the first floor. Everything seemed a bit like a tourist area, but that couldn’t really bother me as I was happy to have found a piece of city heritage in this otherwise quite faceless town. The unfortunate thing was that the access to the waterfront was cut off from Gastown by the many railroad tracks passing by. Also the view to the right hand side was only to a container ship harbour with many cranes. But the view in the background with the mountains seemed like it had some potential in good weather. Who knows, maybe I would come back here at some point, but I would definitely make sure that it would be in the summertime… : )
Find all Vancouver photos here.
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