I HAD to start the day in Kamloops with breakfast at Passek’s Classics where I had the Pulled Pork Skillet, while Brian made me feel guilty by looking at me gorging myself while he made do with a cup of coffee! To be fair, it was only half past nine in the morning and I was stuffing myself with lots of meat and fried potatoes! Breakfast was lovely though, and well worth trying out (they do lunch as well).
Kamloops to Vancouver is a slightly longer drive than the previous two days, but still not what South Africans would call a long drive at all! Vancouver is of course a big city and as is usual with big cities, accommodation can be cripplingly expensive, but we found a very cheap hotel and decided to stay for two nights to give ourselves a bit of a break again. I read a lot of reviews on the hotel, the Patricia Hotel, in East Hastings Street, and the vast majority of the reviews were positive about the hotel, but warned that the area is pretty shoddy and full of dodgy characters. We drove down the street and up to the hotel and remarked to each other that it really didn’t seem that bad, and no worse than parts of central London in terms of homeless and dodgy people hanging about. We checked in and got a small room on the 5th floor, which was good as it is the top floor so no noise from above at least!
I’d read up about Vancouver a bit so we had a route planned out and we set out walking after checking in. We walked through China Town and through the Chinese Classical Garden of Dr Sun Yat-Sen, which was very pretty even though we didn’t pay to see the whole garden. We then walked past the BC Place Stadium, where some of the games of the Women’s Football World Cup are being played. After getting a little bit lost and a friendly man showing us the way we made our way up Robson Street, to Granville where we turned left and walked around a bit of Yaletown. Robson Street is FULL of restaurants, though the one that I found most fascinating is Japadog. The clue is clearly in the title as they make hotdogs with a Japanese theme, i.e. the Yakisoba which contains noodles and Japanese arabiki sausage. I am absolutely gutted that I didn’t get one of their dogs, but I just couldn’t eat at that point (due to Passek’s!!!) I see they have carts in LA and Santa Monica so I may well have to seek one out!
We walked around town some more and eventually made our way down to the waterfront, and back to our hotel via Water Street in the Gastown area, which is also full of bars and restaurants and some nice shops. We had a Happy Hour beer at The Irish Heather off Water Street before going on to Pat’s Pub, which is in the hotel. They had some music on and they brew their own lager and the place filled up as it got a bit later. Best of all – hotel guests get 20% off food, though I only had room for some chicken wings, which weren’t great. As we were walking up to the hotel we got more of a taste of why people say the area is dodgy, with homeless and clearly drugged up people walking or hanging around everywhere. Still, we didn’t feel threatened, but the scale of it is mind blowing.
Things I learned today: Maybe pulled pork for breakfast isn’t something to repeat!
Biltong and Burger 