Driving Westbound from Toronto (Spring 2018)
This morning, we drove to Grand Villa Casino in Delta, BC and spent about 30 minutes visiting the casino. Next, we drove to Kitsilano Beach and walked around the park and enjoyed lunch at a great restaurant called Local Kitsilano, where dad ordered a Veggie burger and I ordered fish tacos. We then spent half an hour cleaning and prepping the RV for return. From there, we drove to Cruise America to drop off the RV and took a cab to the airport.
This morning, we drove to Queen Elizabeth Park, a beautifully landscaped, hilly park in the suburbs of Vancouver. We parked and spent about an hour walking through the gardens. The gardens were landscaped with many different types of plants and trees that I’d never previously seen. At the end of the visit, Dad explained that this was one of his favorite attractions thus far, but the truth is that the only reason I decided to visit Queen Elizabeth Park is because we were running out of things to do in Vancouver.
After visiting Queen Elizabeth Park, we drove to the False Creak area and visited a beautiful indoor mall, City Square, which was an adaptive reuse of buildings that are over a hundred years old into what is today a mixed-use project consisting of office, retail, and more. My favorite part of the project was the glass atrium, which welcomed in so much natural light. Walking through this project, I realized that restored old buildings (such as the old post office in Reno and this mall) have something that newer buildings will seldom be able to replicate: character, charm, and history. Especially nowadays with real estate needing to be more experiential, this trait of restored old buildings is something worth taking into account.
After Queen Elizabeth Park, we drove to Granville Island and enjoyed sitting along False Creek. We shared a Coconut Cream Pie and also had beers and poutine from Granville Island brewery. We then drove back to Starbucks and worked for a few hours before driving back to the AirBnB for the night. At night, we watched a Netflix documentary on the Amanda Knox case.
