Canada deel 3!

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Op zondag 3 augustus 2008 21:33 schreef Inukshuk het volgende:

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Aha, bij de Watcom exit, toch? Kom d'r altijd langs als ik weer eens op bezoek ga naar de grote stad. Mis je ons hier niet een beetje?

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Op maandag 4 augustus 2008 06:45 schreef Inukshuk het volgende:

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Uhm toch niet Hasting I hope?

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Canada: Most liveable city also bright green
Google "the world's most liveable city" and Vancouver comes up. The city is also classed as one of the world's most sustainable. With four of the Hemingways either working in or studying urban design - and with yours truly being half-Canadian and only ever having visited there once before for a two-day stopover in Quebec - I thought it was about time we visited Vancouver.

When you start the descent in the plane, you see that Vancouver is blessed with snow-capped mountains, a massive river delta and huge coastal inlets. The airport is crisp and modern but not "up itself" like some of the architectural airport statements. You can travel to downtown within 20 minutes, passing through "liveable" suburbs of streets with trees, coffee shops, local retailers, green spaces ... nothing iconic, nothing that tries too hard, just good, old-fashioned, homely places.

Sometimes a destination just feels right, and in so many ways Vancouver felt right to us. The Hemingways like shopping: we like our vintage clothes, and our 70s and 80s vinyl soul music, and our furniture and interior products. We like the serendipity that enthusiastic and knowledgeable independent store owners bring to the shopping experience.

Most cities seem to think that if they can attract some international designer labels or a branch of some global chain store they have achieved urban regeneration. But isn't that another step towards wearing the badge of "clone town" unless it's mixed with serendipity? London, New York and Paris are great places to shop because they have retail areas that all have a different feel. And Vancouver does the same.

It isn't big as world cities go - population around 600,000 - but it still manages to provide variety and a whole series of areas to visit. And it's easy to get around; the city is compact, with a fantastic public transport system, from old-fashioned trolley buses to the retro-futuristic sky train.

But we walked. I love walkable cities. We walked from downtown, through Gastown, along Main St and Commercial Rd, finding vintage store after thrift store after vinyl record store. This is a wealthy city that enjoys thrift.

But Vancouver is not afraid to celebrate high-quality architecture and public spaces. Our first day was spent doing this in incessant rain, but it's a sign of a great city when the rain doesn't get you down (just as well because it rains a lot in Vancouver).

Walk around the wonderfully landscaped waterfronts, zig-zag across the harbour on the cute Aquabuses, marvel at the magnificent residential glass towers with their verdant roof gardens, terraces and green roofs, and hop off to visit the wonderful food markets of Granville Island and what must be the most mouth-watering supermarket in the world, Urban Fare, in the regenerated textile district of Yaletown.

Vancouver also has its gritty side. Scrape the laid-back San Francisco-style surface of its bohemian suburbs and there are potheads everywhere.

On one bus ride along Hastings Street, we seemed to pass through an Escape from New York film set of thousands of drug addicts and prostitutes.

But Vancouver never seems threatening. Get your map out and you can be sure that almost immediately someone will ask if you need help. If you take a taxi, the driver is invariably friendly and turns into a tour guide. This friendly, modern, hippie vibe is a very attractive element of Vancouver.

A highlight of our time in the city was riding bikes. (There are cycle hire outlets across Vancouver.) We cycled around Stanley Park and its city beaches, picnic, recreation and play areas and on to the beautiful and wild Wreck Beach by the lovely University of British Columbia. You can put your bikes on bike racks on the front of buses ... and the bus drivers help you to put them on. That's an integrated sustainable transport system.

Vancouver has the skiing facility of Grouse Mountain on its doorstep, but we chose to take the two-hour ski bus to North America's premier ski resort, Whistler.

The journey up was great and Whistler is a nice town.

Great skiing - so my kids tell me - by day, and an amazing selection of outdoor gear shops to browse in the late afternoon, and good-quality restaurants - and even a club with 80s old-school hip-hop icon Afrika Bambaataa performing while we were there - for the evening.

Vancouver is certainly sustainable. It has a climate change action plan with an aim to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent between 2004 and 2010. The newspapers are full of stories about plans to turn all the city's waste into power, and discussion about how to grow the city sustainably. On the streets, it seems as if every other car and taxi is a hybrid-fuel Toyota Prius.

But to me, Vancouver's sustainable strengths are the ability to walk it, cycle it, access great public transport, and that it understands and enjoys thrift.

Its council and architects pride themselves on building sustainability into the buildings (their green building strategy is to be applauded).

Unlike in many other cities, the high-density apartment blocks add to the city. This is a city where I could bring up a family and live within spitting distance of a downtown office. And Vancouver is also blessed with a great location.

Hiking, beach walks, stimulating cycling, skiing, access to wilderness, watersports, fly fishing for salmon and trout are all on the doorstep. Sustainability is intrinsically linked to liveability and happiness. Even as a visitor, I could see why Vancouver comes right on top of that pile.

- INDEPENDENT

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Op vrijdag 15 augustus 2008 16:37 schreef Sloffie het volgende:
Hoi!

Over precies 4 weken zit ik in het vliegtuig onderweg naar canada om daar voor een jaar te gaan werken. Werk, visum en onderdak allemaal gelukkig goed geregeld. Maar nog iemand tips van wat ik nog mee moet mee nemen om naar canada te gaan (denk hierbij aan stroom voorziening oid )
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Visum hier binnen een week binnen

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Op dinsdag 2 september 2008 08:36 schreef maartena het volgende:
Canada.... is dat niet dat land waar de Stanley Cup al sinds 1993 niet meer te vinden is?

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Op vrijdag 5 september 2008 16:40 schreef pietjekanarie het volgende:
Vanaf januari mag ik meepraten in dit topic, dan woon ik namelijk in Montréal! Wel erg koud zal dat worden...

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Op vrijdag 5 september 2008 17:27 schreef pietjekanarie het volgende:

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Haha, nou volgens mij is dat warmer maar relatief. In vergelijking met wat we in Nederland hebben vries ik sowieso dood. Maar ik heb er zin in!

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Op donderdag 11 september 2008 20:12 schreef LoggedIn het volgende:
Mogen mensen die tijdelijk in Canada wonen ook in dit topic komen?