Vancouver

As part of my trip to Calgary, I had the opportunity to visit the (in)famously beautiful and expensive Canadian city known as Vancouver. Luckily for me, I had some very good friends who housed me for most of my stay.

My first encounter with the high prices in Vancouver was the ride from the airport to downtown: a $9 ticket. Perhaps I’m just a cheap mofo, but $9 is quite a bit for just a one-way trip, considering Calgary forces you spend $8.50 to get downtown, but that at least gets you a day pass. Transit in general was ok, since you can for the most part use the Skytrain for free. However, I must admit that I was pretty disappointed with the Skytrain; when I first heard about it, I had conjured up these images of a futuristic glass-laden series of trains that carted people across Vancouver like a ski tram, but I was sorely mistaken. For all my qualms with the public transit in Vancouver, I still enjoyed the city for what it was: a beautiful oasis away from the cold that is the rest of Canada.