Day 1 Travel Day, Canada Place

Travel days can feel like running a marathon because of the need to jump through multiple hoops to catch the plane on time without leaving important things behind. Then there's the question of how much time to get to the airport ahead of the flight. 

The morning of the flight, within an hour of being picked up to go to the airport, I received a notice from my library that I needed to return my Vancouver travel guide because someone reserved it. Usually the library auto renews borrowed books unless someone's waiting for it. The book was due to be returned 2 days into my trip. That meant I needed to quickly return the book if I wanted to avoid any library fees. Thankfully, I had enough time to power walk over to the library to return the book before my ride. However, that was definitely a lesson learned if borrowing a travel guide from the library.

I made it to SFO on time and was impressed with the extra touches to make the airport more appealing to travelers despite all the construction that's going on. There were the sounds of SF in addition to a cute green parrot character that was shown doing stereotypically San Franciscan things like hanging off the side of a cable car and using chopsticks to eat noodles in Chinatown. Cute!

During the 2 hour flight to YVR, which is Vancouver's airport code, I watched Conclave. After taking the Skytrain into downtown Vancouver, I checked into my hotel and then went exploring a bit. The thing about taking the Skytrain is that I was able to use my credit/debit card to tag in and out. Since I wasn't planning to take their public transportation, it wasn't worth buying their transit card called Compass. The tagging in and out with a payment card was new to me.

The first stop during my city of Vancouver reconnaissance was to go to Urban Fare, a supermarket close to the hotel, in order to stock up on some essential food items. Then I headed along the Vancouver version of San Francisco's Embarcadero to walk along the harbor area towards Canada Place. Below are some pictures of the walk along the harbor and Canada Place with its unique sail-like architecture.

Further along in my walk, I reached Gastown with its famous steam clock pictured below. The clock dates from 1977. After visiting the steam clock, I stopped in a souvenir store to check out the prices and assortment of goods. Dinner was at placed called California sushi. I ordered combo rolls consisting of mostly California rolls, and some tuna and salmon rolls. The fish was minuscule in the rolls, but I still devoured them as I was hungry. 

Finally, the day wound down with figuring out how the shower in the hotel bathroom worked.  Thankfully the shower wasn't too complicated to operate. The high pressure shower head was a treat. And thus ended Day 1.