I had plans for this jaunt through Canada. Visit friends, museums, maybe a boat tour or hanging out in a few parks. And I flew into Vancouver and made it into the city and just … didn’t. I haven’t done much of anything.

It’s just been kind of a brutal week leading up to this one. And none of my friends got back to me, and I realized rather belatedly that much of what I had planned in Vancouver I had already done, a long time ago.¹ Add in another slightly botched travel booking² and I ended up sitting in my room a lot, catching up on TV.³

Call it a wasted opportunity, I suppose. I think we discount the value of wasting opportunity, though. There’s a special value in doing nothing when you could or should be doing something. Anyone can waste time if they have nothing better to do. But there’s that existential layer of meaning when you have a choice, when you actively decide what you’re going to do, that makes it more valuable. I could be that person who always forces themselves out and around town, no matter the weather, no matter how they’re feeling that day, always needing to see one more landmark or vista or local masterwork.

I not infrequently am that person. But not this week.

It’s not like I didn’t do anything all week. I went to brunch at some very nice restaurants⁴ in Vancouver, and spent rather a lot of time hiking around the city getting from one part to another. I saw the Steam Clock. I rode FlyOver Canada.⁵ I took the ferry to Granville Island Public Market and glutted myself on free pickles.⁶

So I got to see a lot of the city, both the Gastown area and some of the broader city south of that. And it’s a weird place. There’s a lot of new skyscrapers,⁷ and at night when everything’s lit up in neon it’s not the worst real-world stand-in for Blade Runner that I’ve seen. But walking around at street level you suddenly realize exactly how much concrete is poured everywhere. The city had the misfortune of expanding at the height of brutalism,⁸ and is littered with these inhuman hulks of buildings both large and small.

So walking around is a bit surreal. You’ll be strolling past some gorgeous waterfront, then find yourself directed over a massive mile-long six-lane bridge across the river; make it to the other side and pass through some parks and streetlife only to find yourself trapped along the underside of an oversized stadium among the concrete pillars and metal loading docks. The city feels divided between the vision it had forty years ago and the vision it has today. You need to escape to all those quaint Victorians in the Gaslight District for a breath of fresh air.

I did eventually make it to Toronto, for a mere couple of days before heading off to New York City.⁹ But before that, having discovered I needed a room for Sunday night,¹⁰ I figured fuck it and splurged on one of the nicer hotels by the airport. I rarely stay at these places; they’re too expensive to make a habit of. But I was already feeling beat up with my mistake in booking places, and I just wanted someplace I didn’t have to think about.

And I’ll be honest, it was great. Huge, comfortable bed with fresh linens and giant pillows,¹¹ thoughtfully positioned electrical plugs,¹² comfortable side chair with a lamp for reading. I laid myself out spreadeagled on the bed and just stared at the ceiling for about an hour. Eventually I went down to the pool for a swim, got a bite to eat at the restaurant downstairs, and curled back up in bed. It was just what I needed.

It’s a reminder of other ways to travel, as well as what money (or the lack of it) does to your options. I could just drop three times my budget on a night in a fancy hotel, not worry about where to find food or how to get to the airport the next morning. I certainly can’t afford that all that often. And you’re not exactly going to be getting any local flavor; I’d be reenacting my own personal Overlook Hotel within a week. But if all you need is to drop out of the world, seal yourself away antiseptically for 24 hours, it’s very, very good to have the option.

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Prev: San Francisco (SFO) to Vancouver (YVR)

Footnotes

¹ This marks the third time I’ve actually visited Vancouver, both earlier times as part of (different) Alaskan cruises with my father. And while one I am absolutely sure the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden is well worth another visit, particularly on a nice sunny day, I just lacked the motivation.

² I had a flight booked on Monday but a room booked for Sunday.

³ Mostly The Good Place, although I was utterly delighted to discover Rick and Morty’s season premiere was available for streaming over a US-based VPN.

⁴ Brunch is kind of a hit-or-miss proposition outside the United States. Canada and the UK seem to do all right, if you’re a little careful, but most other places seem to feel like you can get by with a few pastries or tea cakes.

⁵ Expensive, but kind of cool. If you’re the sort of person that’s comfortable dropping $40 on an 8-minute ride, I’d recommend it, but it’s far from essential.

⁶ Kaylin & Hobbs Pickles has a mustard pickle that made me seriously debate whether I should buy a pint of them and attempt to finish it in the 12 hours before my flight left.

⁷ Including the just-finished Vancouver House, which I had the terrifying experience of discovering while walking across the Granville Bridge and suddenly spotting a building on the verge of collapsing right on top of me. I’m not all that squeamish about those kind of things, but I’m not sure I could bring myself to go into the lobby let alone spend time on one of the upper floors.

⁸ Apparently this is something Vancouver is known for. I don’t necessarily dislike brutalism — Vancouver’s own Museum of Anthropology is a good example — but a lot of lousy architects designed a lot of ugly, cheap, massive blocks of concrete and called it art.

⁹ I did manage to see the Art Gallery of Ontario while I was there, which had on display Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room — Let’s Survive Forever and a really great collection of contemporary indigenous art.

¹⁰ If you accidentally book your flight for a day later than your hotel, that’ll happen.

¹¹ It was the sort of bed that really wanted glamorous people to be rolling around on it in a music video, and I vaguely considered finding some and letting them have at it for about an hour while I got a drink at the bar downstairs.

¹² Having wrenched my back once or twice trying to find an outlet behind a headboard, I am super interested in this amenity.