(Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
I certainly hadn’t planned to visit Vancouver in late October. However, that is precisely where we found ourselves for an extended, and exhausting, 8-day visit.
Around the time that I wrote my previous blog post, my wife and I entered the Provincial Indoor Singles lawn bowling playdowns. To our mutual surprise and delight, we both ended up qualifying to represent Ontario at the National Indoor Singles championship. It was being held at the Pacific Indoor Bowls Club in Vancouver, B.C., so that’s where we found ourselves just 4 weeks later!
The Pacific IBC is located in the Little Mountain neighbourhood. There weren’t any hotels around, so we decided to take a leap of faith and book an AirBnB for the very first time. We found a choice property that was only a 15-minute walk from the club, which took a lot of stress out of getting to/from the competition every day. And we had an entire floor to ourselves, so we had plenty of space to recover from the long days of competition. For a longer stay like this one, it was much better than being cooped up in a hotel room.
The club was located in a nice recreational cluster. There was a baseball stadium next door, as well as a huge swimming/skating complex. This being the mildest part of Canada, soccer was still being played outdoors too (despite all the rain). My favourite part, however, was the stretch of Main Street near our accommodations.
The Sawasdee Thai Restaurant had superb Tom Kha Gai soup, and was just one of a collection of appealing restaurants within two minutes of “our” place. Other good dining experiences included some very rich Indian cuisine and a restaurant featuring various “Silk Road” cuisines (from Persian to Tibetan). As regular readers of this blog will know, I automatically increase a neighbourhood’s rating when it has a strong independent record store. In this case, that store was Red Cat Records (see photo at the very top of this post).
The competition itself was pretty intense, as it should be at a national event. There are many reasons for this but, in a nutshell, the indoor game is much more challenging for those of us who usually play outdoors. However, our play (and results) improved through the week. We were both quite happy with how we played over the last couple of days, and we hope to compete at this level again soon!
As we might start practicing as early as 7:30 a.m. each day, and games continued past 6:00 p.m., we didn’t have much left in the tank at the end of the day. The circumstances forced us to eat, shop, and entertain ourselves in Little Mountain. But this had its upside: we developed some familiarity with our favourite stores, and began to feel at home in our little corner of Vancouver.
Bottom line: with appropriate research, an AirBnB can be a superb replacement for poorly sited hotels…especially in a city with high prices and with the price of hotels spiraling ever upward. Just like I thought I’d never go on a group tour, I thought I’d never use this kind of accommodation. But it definitely has its place, and I wouldn’t hesitate to go this route again.