How to Spend One Night in Vancouver

The Gastown steam clock.

Yoselin from 6 Mono Media recently married me. To celebrate, we took a trip to Asia that started with an overnight layover in Vancouver.

Vancouver is a cool town. For one thing, it literally is quite cool. We had to pack sweaters and jackets for just a single day’s use, since Asia would already be very hot and muggy at this time of year.

With only one night to spend, we consulted the almighty Google and decided that the “Gastown” district was the place to hit up. So we walked to the subway station near our hotel and took the train there.

We visited the main tourist attraction in the area, the Gastown Steam Clock. It has glass panels that let you see the strange mechanics humming around inside.

The internals of the steam clock in Gastown. It’s one of the landmarks of the city. Not entirely sure how it works.

There was also an abundance of neat little shops, bars, and  restaurants. One of these shops that we visited was Fluevog Shoes, which attracted us with its outlandishly colorful designs and huge, industrial store space.

These are nowhere near the strangest-looking shoes at the store.

The highlight of the evening, though, was our dinner at this restaurant called Tuc Craft Kitchen. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of it because I was too busy enjoying one of the best meals of my life. No exaggeration.

We found it on Yelp and selected it because we wanted to eat Canadian food. I don’t even remember exactly which dish I had other than it was a bowl full of chunks of beef and lamb. Yoselin had something similar except it was salmon and clams.

OH MY GOSH. It was amazing. First of all the ambiance was super cool; friendly, attentive service, fun decor (very industrial); busy, but not too crowded – we could talk normally without having to shout over the background noise (something I hate doing during a meal).

But the food. What an experience. The dish was loaded with flavor and prime awesome-stuff. The servings were not that huge, but we left full and satisfied because unlike other restaurants that pack their dishes with filler like pasta, bread, and steamed vegetables, Tuc jammed these bowls literally full of meat and just the right amount sauce and peas and EVERYTHING ELSE to make it magically delicious. WOW, it was incredible. If you go to Vancouver you HAVE to go there.

Beautiful city. I would have loved to stick around, but Asia was calling our names.

It was a wonderful start to our trip. More coming soon!

Gastown is a neat little area – a bit antique-y and old-fashioned. Busy, but in an early-1900s sort of way that doesn’t evoke endless halls of concrete and towering, sterile skyscrapers.
The Steam Clock at night.

 

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