Marilyn Anderson & Dennis Lanning’s
ROMANCE ON THE ROAD
VANCOUVER, British Columbia
Where to Stay:
Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites
The Coast Plaza is a great hotel choice for three main reasons: location, location, location. Not as new as some other hotels around town, the Coast Plaza has so many positive features you will leave it loving it, as we did.
Coast Plaza’s rooms are spacious. Many are suites, and if you’re on the higher floors, you get a million dollar view of the mountains and bay. Lucky us, we were on the 33rd floor! It was breathtaking and enlightening to witness the weather changing, to watch sea vessels coming and going, and to gaze out at the miraculous sunsets. These moments were made even better as we shared a cheese plate and bottle of champagne from the hotel’s excellent room service.
Our one-bedroom suite had a roomy living room with a big comfy couch and two large armchairs, a desk, TV, and small dining table, as well as a full kitchen, stocked with plates and utensils. Oh, and they provide complimentary wireless, which would definitely cost you more at most other hotels. They also have a free shuttle that takes guests to the town center so you needn’t take a cab.
For convenience, you can’t beat the shopping mall on the bottom floors with a market, and yes, even several movie theaters. There are a pool, sauna, and health
club. They have two restaurants and banquet facilities that hosted a wedding while we were there.
The best part of staying here, though, is that you are in a real neighborhood. Walk out on Denman Street and find yourself surrounded with shops and restaurants of all kinds. You’re a local, not a tourist, in this part of the city.
Entrance to Stanley Park is a couple of blocks from the hotel. Do not fail to stroll, take a trolley tour, a horse and carriage ride, or rent a bike to see this large and wondrous park. Continue on down Denman and you run into Robson Street, Vancouver’s main street.
The Coast Plaza Hotel is a terrific, no-compromise pick for a Vancouver holiday. 
Experts at making you feel at home, they provide all the amenities expected of a top-flight hotel.
Coast Plaza Hotel & Suites
1763 Comox Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6G 1P6
800.716.6199
www.coasthotels.com/hotels/canada/bc/vancouver/coast_plaza/overview
Where to Eat:
Vancouver is a “food city.” There are so many great places in every neighborhood that finding a satisfying meal is easy. We discovered some absolute gems.
Salt Tasting Room
This unique charcuterie in Gastown is located on a street called “Blood Alley.” That alone should make it worth visiting. Once inside, you realize you have found a place unlike any other.
The Salt Tasting Room doesn’t have an actual kitchen. Instead, all cheeses and meats are sliced at the front of the bar with a hand-slicer. There is a good reason for this lo-tech approach; it’s not a retro-trendy thing. Because their meats are cured, an electric slicer would heat up the meat as it was being sliced─in effect, “cooking” it─and alter the taste.
Their menu is listed on a chalkboard taking up the entire back wall. This makes it easy to change the enumerable daily selections of cheeses, cured meats, condiments, and wine options. It took us quite awhile just to “digest” all the selections and variations.
Ultimately, we left it up to our waitperson, Taryn, to make suggestions, based on our likes and dislikes. This is done willingly and almost lovingly as you sense the enthusiasm she has for the Salt Tasting Room and making her customers happy. She was thoroughly knowledgeable about the source, style, and manufacture of their meats and cheeses, explaining each of them and the kind of tasting experience we could expect.
Our choices of meats included wine-drenched prosciutto, smoked pork tenderloin, smoked beef tenderloin, and Italian country salami. Our cheeses were La Rippelle, a local artisanal goat, and a rich cheddar. Our condiments included roasted plums, cornichons, raw hazelnuts, quince paste, balsamic cabernet reduction, apricot-onion chutney, and concord grapes─all accompanied by a huge pile of light crusted white bread.
If you’re at all like us and want to recall what you ate at the Salt Tasting Room, they make it easy for you. When the waitstaff serves the food, they place a chart next to your plate, listing everything you ordered, so you know which delicious morsel you are eating, and you can remember it later on.
Instead of ordering the individual glass of wine (or two) that usually carries us through a meal, we opted for the wine tasters. This is six 2-oz. portions of different wines specially selected to be paired with each meat or cheese. We each drank 3 samplers.
The Salt Tasting Room isn’t just eating─it’s an experience─and definitely a fun and delectable one! It’s an opportunity to taste new foods in a truly fun way. The couple at the next table was equally delighted with their selections, and we ended up making friends and sharing some of each other’s dishes and wine, too!
We were thrilled with the Salt Tasting Room─and left full and extremely happy! It’s that kind of place─friendly with food extraordinaire!
Salt Tasting Room
45 Blood Alley, Gastown
Vancouver, BC V6B 1C7
604.633.1912
www.salttastingroom.com
Capones Restaurant & Live Jazz Club
Capones was the first restaurant in Yaletown. When they opened in 1993, the area was empty industrial buildings and warehouses. Now it’s one of Vancouver’s coolest neighborhoods, with apartments, restaurants, shops, and throngs of people lining the streets. Capones is the place to go to listen to music while you dine.
Capones is a long narrow restaurant with the feel of a New York cabaret. Extraordinary mural lined walls, mirrors and a brick bar contribute to a warm ambience, ideal for casual dining. A tiny kitchen pokes out of one wall only a few feet from where you’re eating and offers many delectable and unusual selections.
Musicians perform at the end of the room, in another alcove with tables in front. You can opt to be close in, club-style, or farther away, where you still enjoy the music in the background. We chose a spot near the kitchen where we could watch the band as we ate our dinner. We enthusiastically devoured both the music and our dinner!
The menu had many unique choices. Our seared calamari appetizer, prepared in oyster sauce and served with a cucumber wrap, was unusual and tasty. The house salad was a bountiful bouquet of fresh greens topped with cashews, strawberries, goat cheese, and grapefruit vinaigrette.
For entrees, Dennis selected the beef tenderloin with roasted vegetables, and I had the seafood medley over Algerian couscous. I especially loved the couscous. Need I say, no doggy bags were needed.
Dessert anyone? Well, let’s just say Capones has the richest chocolate combo of mousse, truffles, and brownie we’ve ever tasted, along with a light raspberry mousse and, of course, a scoop of chocolate ice cream on the side. Dennis, a devout chocolate lover, was in heaven, and I felt good because, since I’m not a chocolate lover, I could finally save a few calories!
Capones feels good, sounds better, and tastes great. A winning combination, further complemented by an accommodating and professional staff. The food, ambiance, and music served up at Capones made for one exceptionally enjoyable and relaxing evening. Try it. You’ll agree!
Capones Restaurant & Live Jazz Club
On our last night in Vancouver, it was raining hard. But we couldn’t let that stop us from going out for a romantic dinner at La Terrazza Restaurant, located in Yaletown. The complimentary valet made it easier, providing an umbrella to walk us to the door from our car.
The simple exterior of the building belies what’s waiting inside. You are immediately struck by the elegance of the room, which has been decorated like an opulent Italian Villa.
Thirty-foot high ceilings soar up to paintings of cherubs cavorting in the sky, creating a humorous and apocryphal effect over the restaurant. Below, diners are seated in a spacious dining area filled with white linen-covered tables, containing the most sparkling glass goblets and silverware we’ve ever seen. Place settings for each person included five glasses of various sizes and a ransom’s worth of silver. Question: Where is Amy Vanderbilt when you need her?The three owners pride themselves in each area of their expertise, and the wine, food, and management of the restaurant reflect the highest level of professionalism.
There is an ample selection of wine displayed and racked all around the restaurant, providing only a hint of the restaurant’s impressive 1500 item wine list.
Upon sitting, we chose a Chianti Classico to warm things up, and then feasted our eyes on their menu.
suggestions from our server, Gina, who is the sister of the chef/owner, Gennaro Iorio. Who should know better what to expect from the kitchen, other than, perhaps, his wife? We opted for lighter dinner choices, having eaten our way through Vancouver in the previous three days.
Our appetizer was a shared portion of imported Buffalo mozzarella cheese resting comfortably on locally grown heirloom tomatoes and splashed with Gennaro’s special salad dressing. Whoever invented these beauties belongs in the food hall of fame. This fruit is truly nectar from the food gods.
We ordered fish and fowl entrees. The locally caught trout was sautéed and draped in a sauce of roasted cherry tomatoes, complemented by sautéed spinach and roasted baby vegetables. The Cornish hen came dressed with a balsamic reduction and adorned with roasted baby vegetables. Both preparations were exceptional and cooked to perfection, giving us the indelible sensation of pleasure and contentment on a cold and dreary night.
Our waitress, Gina, would not let us leave without tasting her brother’s chocolate soufflé cake with fresh berries and vanilla ice cream. 
She literally forced us to indulge, so we acquiesced and sat cheerfully enduring the “pain” of this luscious dessert.
La Terrazza is one of a handful of restaurants that consistently make the local “best of” lists. With new places opening almost weekly, the competition for top chef is a constant struggle. At La Terrazza they make it seem easy.
La Terrazza
1088 Cambie Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 6J5
604.899.4449
www.laterrazza.cam
Joe’s Grill
A simple name and a simple spot… for a simply delicious breakfast! Down the street from the Coast Plaza Hotel are numerous places bustling with early morning diners. We had spotted a striped awning the night before and vowed to go there the next day, without knowing why. We knew we had “guessed” right when we saw how packed it was inside. And how everyone was happily diving into their morning meal!
Joe’s menu offered loads of choices. We brought hearty appetites, so it didn’t take us long to decide. Their omelets are beautiful. Dennis’s sautéed spinach with garlic omelet was perfectly made and packed with fresh spinach inside the omelet wrap. “Bennys” is their catch-phrase for all the different preparations of Eggs Benedict they offer. My “Benny” had the traditional poached eggs on top of a thin crab-cake. I love to try variations on things, and I enjoyed being able to have a crab-cake for breakfast. It was crispy on the outside, filled with real crab, and overall a tasty treat to start the day.
Joe’s is small and frequently packed. We found a table and had barely squeezed into our seats when our waitress brought coffee and water. Service was prompt and courteous. A definite “come back” place.
Joe’s Grill
948 Denman Street
Vancouver, BC
604.642.6588
Hon’s Wun-Tun House
Cheap. Fast. Good. Generous portions of fresh Chinese food served steaming hot. Hon’s is known for their dumplings: pork, beef, chicken, or vegetarian; served pan-fried (potstickers), steamed, or with soup. There is a large selection of vegetarian dishes. Hon’s is always crowded, but the waits are short. A great spot anytime.
Hon’s Wun-Tun House
1339 Robson Street
Vancouver, BC
604.685.0871
Where to Go:
The Yale Hotel
After dinner, we headed out for some music. We love the BLUES─and lucky for us, not too far away was Vancouver’s biggest and best blues club.
The Yale Hotel dates to the mid 1880s, when it served as the temporary home of workers clearing land for the new community of Vancouver. Over the years it has burned down and has been rebuilt, and has housed all sorts of hard scrapple laborers who contributed to the growth of the city. At night it became a haunt for those seeking the wild nightlife for which Yaletown was known.
No longer a hotel, the Yale has become a mainstay for rhythm and blues bands and their followers from around the world.
The Yale recently built its own recording studio in the basement where stable boys used to groom horses. Today the Yale records “live” performances to promote up-and-coming local blues players and to raise funds for charities.
The Yale showcases different bands every night, and we were fortunate to see two terrific local groups. The first band was “So Tight featuring Miss Nadine.” Nadine is a trim little pistol of a singer with a whoppingly big and beautiful voice. She performed many numbers, selecting covers from Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. Helping her soulful vibrancy reach her audience, she is accompanied by five seasoned musicians on sax, bass guitar, piano, guitar, and drums.
Adding to her mystique is Nadine’s background. Days, she works as a longshoreman.What’s more, she is a single mother with three children: a 4-year-old, a 5-year-old, and a 17-year-old with her own baby. So, Nadine is a grandmother, but belting out those numbers with power and verve, she’s mainly one hell of a singer!
The second band we heard was “Brickhouse,” consisting of six hot musicians with a huge repertoire of original music. Known for innovation and complexity, their sound is rich, raucous and righteous. Listening late into the night, we left exhausted and exhilarated by their creativity and enthusiasm.
This part of Yaletown is still a little on the seedy side, but the Yale Hotel is a musical safe harbor for any and all visitors to Vancouver. Remember, this is Canada, all incredibly safe and civil.
The Yale Hotel
1300 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada
604.681.9253
www.theyale.ca
Tours by Trolley or Double Decker Bus
The best way to familiarize yourself with any new city is to have someone else do the driving and point out all the important sights for you. Limo too expensive? We think so, too, and chose the upper deck of an English-style double decker tour bus, since the weather was so good. You can also take an old-fashioned San Francisco-style trolley. We were treated to endless and interesting banter from Bob, our driver and guide. Bob showed us all the essential locales in about two hours. We would spend the next couple of days visiting individual sights.
Vancouver Art Gallery
Located in the midst of downtown, the Vancouver Art Gallery was a lively place on our visit. Originally designed as a courthouse and then renovated into a museum, the Vancouver Art Gallery is home to a large collection of works by Canadian painter Emily Carr.
It also hosts rotating exhibits ranging from Native masks to video installations. We were treated to a superb collection of European painting and sculpture from the Cleveland Museum of Art, entitled “Monet to Dalí.” The exhibition included key works by Manet, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Rodin, Picasso, Dalí and other renowned artists. Well worth the $15 entry fee.
Vancouver Art Gallery
750 Hornby Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6Z 2H7
604.662.4719
Granville Island
Granville Island, an eclectic collection of restaurants, quaint shops, theaters, hotel, housing, galleries, and industry, is easily reachable by aquabus or car and bus. For “foodies” in Vancouver, the Granville Island Public Market is nirvana. We wandered around the island, going in and out of the various buildings and bought some wonderful pottery in my (Marilyn’s) favorite subject: frogs.
All great cities have great farmers’ markets, where the best products are made and eaten while fresh, and where the city’s top chefs find fresh local ingredients. The Granville Island Markets is one of the best. The food choices here are unlimited; you can find almost anything that is edible, waiting fresh and delectable.
We had to go back twice to coddle our taste buds, each visit lasting only as long as it took to over-indulge. Our sampling included:
Blueberry bread with white chocolate icing
Peach and tarragon cake
Pesto and tomatoes foccacia
Apple bread with caramel and sesame seeds
Brownie with chocolate chunks and white sugar
Local peaches, apples and blueberries
Raw oysters and steamed clams
Smoked salmon
Sausages
Coffee
Rolaids!
The best thing to burn those calories after eating all the Granville Island Market’s goodies is a stroll around the island. Fairly compact, it’s easy to cover the place in a short while and explore the various buildings, watch students watching you, and walk along False Creek. Stop at the Granville Island Information Centre near the Public Market for a free map.
Stanley Park
One of the largest urban parks in North America at about 1000 acres, Stanley Park has activities that can fill your whole day. Chief among its attributes is its downtown, easily accessible location.
A peninsula sticking out into English Bay, it is mostly surrounded by water, where its most famous feature can be found. Something like 8 million visitors a year come to walk along the five and a half mile seawall. Others seek to safely ride bikes for hours, visit the gardens, restaurants, or take a guided tour like we did.
We chose the two-hour horse trolley ride around Stanley Park. Our driver, who was there because she loved the horses, was anticipating a more serious job – as a trained helicopter pilot waiting to get into the military.
Stanley Park
Located at the north foot of Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC
Capilano Suspension Bridge
Ten minutes from Stanley Park, the Capilano Suspension Bridge has been trekked across by millions of visitors since 1889. Crossing a huge ravine, it’s fun to walk across this historic bridge and then traverse the Treetops Adventure, a short boardwalk that’s high up in the treetops of ancient conifers. Incredible views and fresh air!
Spas
Given the healthy Vancouver lifestyle, it’s no wonder spas are flourishing here! The city’s day spas are swamped with Vancouverites (male and female), getting wrapped in seaweed, slathered with Moor mud, exfoliated, massaged, manicured, pedicured, purified, revitalized, and refreshed! There are many to choose from all around the city, and many hotels also have in-house facilities and services available.
Neighborhoods:
Vancouver is a city of neighborhoods, each with a variety of interesting features, restaurants, and feel. Get a city map and enjoy!
West End
Our hotel, the Coast Plaza, was located in this neighborhood, which feels very much like New York City, with high-rise apartments and streets filled with people at all hours of the day and night. Off the main thoroughfare are lower density residential areas of lovely Edwardian homes and parks. Nearby are Stanley Park and English Bay.
Chinatown
Soak up the scents and sounds of North America’s third largest Chinatown, located in downtown Vancouver. Find your Zen at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Classical Chinese Garden, or check out the displays of crimson barbecued duck, coils of spicy sausages, and stores brimming with silk, jade, and trinkets. Stop for lunch in one of the traditional dim-sum houses.
Gastown
Gastown has history and the kind of old-fashioned architecture, including a real skid row, in the midst of downtown. Home to the Steam Clock, which sounds Westminster chimes on 5 brass steam whistlers each 1/4 hour; Blood Alley; the Europe Hotel, dating to 1892; and a statue of the colorful saloon owner, “Gassy” Jack, for whom the area was named.
Gastown is a charming mix of old and new with cobbled streets, antique gaslights, Victorian architecture, and a unique tangle of mews, courtyards, and alleys pleasantly gentrifying into new housing shops and restaurants. Daily walking tours through the area are a must-see.
Yaletown
Yaletown, Vancouver’s former warehouse district, is now the city’s coolest neighborhood. Now adorning the original manufacturing buildings are high-end designer shops, excellent restaurants, and the local Mini dealership. Extending from downtown to the water’s edge along False Creek, new housing, parks and office towers bring a new vibrancy to a once rundown railroad yard.
A short way down the coast from Los Angeles is the beach town of Redondo Beach. Once a sleepy enclave of surfers and airline stewardesses (when they were called that), it now boasts of sky-high real estate and some hidden travel gems, perfect for a weekend escape.
DVD player we watched much later. We also particularly enjoyed lolling around in the hotel’s super plush terry robes, while surfing the Internet on their free wi-fi.
