We took off from Albany a little after 6AM this morning on a tiny little 18 passenger Beech 1900D turbo prop.  No real issues as both our flight out of Albany and our flight into Vancouver pretty much arrived on time.

As is often the case with air travel, however, things turned out a bit less than perfect.  One of our bags hasn’t made it to Vancouver yet.  We also found out that we’d been moved to a downtown hotel because of a fairly large electrical fire underground in the waterfront district.

The hotel move turned out to be a blessing as it gave us an opportunity to explore downtown Vancouver.  I can’t say enough good things about the city of Vancouver.  It’s everything New Yorkers say there city is, but unlike New York, it actually is.

The weather is beautiful (so are the women).  The people as a whole are very friendly.  It’s clean.  There are no barricades.  No forceful police presence, and not a lot of horn blowing and other such big city nonsense.

What stands out most to me (apart from the narrow isles in the drug stores) is that there is genuine diversity.  Unlike New York where culture and language is often isolated by block or neighborhood from what I’ve seen there is much more intermingling, and what’s more, most everyone seems comfortable with it.  I feel very comfortable here.

We ate at a place called the Italian Kitchen.  The wife and I split an order of fresh mushroom bruschetta and an order of spaghetti with truffles and Kobe meatballs.  While the bruschetta was very good, the pasta was…well…the words don’t exist.  The meal was so far beyond any pasta dish I’ve ever had before I really don’t see the point in eating pasta again. There’s nowhere to go but down.  I’m totally Qwow’d.  We’re not even a full day into our trip and my wife is convinced she’s already had her best meal of the trip.

Tomorrow we take a tour of the city as we slowly meander to the port.

Here’s some pictures I took today, starting with the plane on which we started our journey.  The 2nd picture is Niagara Falls, which looks fairly insignificant from the sky.  The rest of some snaps of the Canadian Rockies I took as we were making our decent into Vancouver.  Absolutely awesome terrain and all without a road anywhere in sight.

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