Historically it hasn’t been my jam but the dominance of the USWNT has gotten me very invested in the current World Cup. I didn’t think it possible but the Canadians seem to be even less interested in soccer than Americans. After much Facebook searching I found a pub way to the south that was going to be showing the game.

After working and working out in the morning I grabbed one of the bike share bikes that litter the city and headed that way. Vancouver may be tough to get around given the absence of transportation options that most cities have but these bikes are so cheap and ubiquitous that they make up for a lot of it. Oddly I never see anyone using them…

I rode all the way out to the suburbs to this pub only to arrive to find that it had literally burned down or something! Luckily I got there early. But now I was too far out to make it anywhere else and as I was in the suburbs there were no cabs. I once again frantically searched to see if they had any sort of Uber equivalent. Luckily I found Kater which had just launched. But they only had one driver and he had to come all the way from the city to get me.

I rolled the dice and told him to take me to the first Irish Pub I was able to look up. His response “Are you sure you want to go to that part of town?” Looking back on my history I had an internal laugh at this. Got him to take me out there and arrived at The Blarney Stone only four minutes into the game.

Those who know me know that Irish Pub’s are one of my great passions in life. This is the Pub I’ve been missing in Denver. If you’re ever trying to find me on the streets of Van this is probably where I’ll be.

After watching the US defeat England I had to head home to make some work calls. Productivity was flagging after that and I still had things to do so I headed down to Trees Organic Coffee. This is a decent little coffee shop which has the distinction of being one of the few downtown that’s open late. They also apparently have been voted as having the best Cheesecake in Vancouver, though I’ve not tried it (yet). They also roast the beans right in the front room there which is both neat and distracting.

Worked there for a while and then home and to sleep.

I learned the day prior that today was Canada Day which is, apparently, some sort of sad attempt to compete with the real Independence Day taking place immediately to the South shortly. But, many of the festivities for this were happening right around my place so I decided to check it out.

I had to work through the morning and, after two months of slacking off, really needed to workout as well. It was a gorgeous day but it was hot and humid to be walking through giant crowds. Near as I could tell Canada Day is a holiday mostly celebrated by tourists visiting from Asia…

However, I did managed to pickup a new rain jacket which is going to go down as one of my best recent purchases.

I went to the other celebration down at Canada Place and had a wildly over priced… Toronto style smoked meat sandwich. Turns out this is just roast beef. I was still feeling oddly run down and all the walking around in the hit wasn’t helping so I headed back after this and passed out.

Vancouver is crazy over-regulated so my AirBNB hostess had to come back around this morning so we could sign several reams of paper governing short-term leases or something.

I’d gotten a little behind on work in the run-up to my departure so I had to work for the rest of the morning before I could embark on my traditional aimless wandering all over the city to get my bearings and see what’s what.

From my place I walked down to Canada Place which is the major port for the cruise ships that stop by. Having never done a cruise I found it rather interesting to watch the clip with which these things came and went. There were four docked when I went down and when I was passing back later in the day some had already changed out and others were leaving.

From there I walked down through Gastown and had lunch at this cafe Birds & The Beets. Everyone raves about this place but I didn’t really get what the hype was about. It was a pretty standard cafe. It seems their claim to fame was really just taking every ingredient that hipsters are all about these days and tossing them all into a variety of dishes. It was fine but… not sure I’ll be heading back there.

From there I looped through the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. This is supposed to be some sort of significant Asian Garden but once again I was underwhelmed. (Uh oh, I hope I’m not becoming too jaded from all my travels).

From there I rolled through Yaletown and back up to my place. I worked at home for the rest of the day and then went to sleep early. I’ve been unusually tired and had a headache for much of my early days on this trip. I think all the looking down at the laptop is giving me a tension headaches. I may need to create a “Tierney-Style” standing desk for myself.

Jeez, I can’t believe that I’d previously managed to do this every single day for a year. Barely a week on the road so far and I’m already playing catch up. And last time I had all these lead up posts too.

Having done this so much now I’ve stopped feeling much need to worry or prepare in advance of these trips. My first stop on this go around is Vancouver as well which is basically America so that makes it easy as well.

Normally I start out in Europe so my flight is at least a bit of a journey. The flight to Vancouver is easier than the flight to New York. I headed to the airport on Saturday afternoon and posted up at one of my two DIA standbys, The Chop House. Not as good as Elway’s but all the international flights leave out of Concourse A so…

I had a video conference to attend which I did at the bar using this new app Krisp which I can’t say enough good things about. This app strips out all the background noise on your end of a call. It’s like noise canceling headphones for your mic. I was sitting in a crowded airport bar and joined this video conference and the first thing someone says to me is “Wow, Ben your audio sounds amazing.”

Wrapped that up and took the easy flight up to Vancouver. I always forget there’s no ride hailing apps in Vancouver and I just missed the train out of the airport which put me in a foul mood. I had to resort to taking a taxi which was just fine I suppose. I later learned that Vancouver JUST got a ride hailing app called Kater which I’ve since used. It works fine but it literally just rolled out in the past month so they don’t have great coverage yet.

Got to my AirBNB and got settled in. It’s certainly one of the nicer ones that I’ve stayed during my travels. It was late by that point so I just passed out.