We arrived in Vancouver around 8PM and after picking up our car made it to Richmond around 9 for dinner. I had a map of the Greater Vancouver area and Pauline picked up a visitors guide with several maps. The visitor guide turned out to be more useful than having a real map. It also came in handy, because from the airport I never got my bearings and went too far south. Eventually we made it to Aberdeen Centre. Unfortunately it was closed so Pauline couldn’t see how cool it was. But the restaurants were still open so we had a bit of food at Tropika, a Malaysian cuisine chain. Ironically I later found out that there was another franchise just down the street from our hotel, which is where we went after “dinner” (to check in I mean).

Pauline’s conference didn’t start till the afternoon so the next morning we went to the Vancouver Aquarium as it was raining cats and dogs. The last time I went to the aquarium, we showed up an hour before it closed and so there was free admission. This time, I also got a discount because I brought my student card with me! We only had a couple of hours but the place really isn’t that big. The best exhibits were the ones were the animals weren’t caged. In the Graham Amazon Gallery, there was an open exhibit with pink birds (not flamingos) flying around. They would arbitrary pose and then fly around your head. There were also the live demonstrations, which were harder to view because of the rain; although we still saw the belugas and the dolphins. The dolphin show seemed to be cut short because one of the dolphins tried to bite one of the trainers’ hands and so they didn’t get anymore fish.

After dropping Pauline off at the conference centre, I decided to take a road trip towards the border for the purpose of seeing some of the Smallville filming locations. The rain really put a damper on things because I didn’t know what to do (since most of what I wanted to do involved walking around). Anyways, I drove over to Cloverdale and saw the storefront which is converted into The Talon, and then a little further to a farm which acts as the the Kent Farm. “The Talon” wasn’t really that impressive or recognizable, but the Kent Farm really did look like the farm in the TV show. It even had a Kent Farm sign out front. For future reference, it’s at the intersection of 248^th St and 8^th Ave.

I came back from my trek to pick up Pauline at 7 and then went over to Granville Island to have dinner at the Afghan Horseman with Mana. We shared a combination appetizer (“A plate of Humus, Sabzi Mast, Salata with Feta Cheese & Pakawra, all served with pita”) and I had a Karahi which is apparently an authentic Afghan dish and a Granville Island Pale Ale. Pakawra was like hashbrown’d chips and the Karahi was tasty. The place looked authentically decorated, although the food took forever to arrive (apparently there was a group of 30 that ordered at the same time). Afterwards we went over to Mana’s apartment and looked up random people from high school on Facebook before going back to the hotel.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: smallville, travelling, vancouver