Spring Break Travel Writing, Pt. 1

This is the first of two pieces of writing I am working on about my trip over spring break to BC, Canada; the other piece will be about the train ride up. I am experimenting with voices and styles, so they won’t really be anything alike. Also, in news-of-my-life, the hectic spring hiring season has begun for teachers, so I may not get to it for a while. Since I don’t own a camera, I’ve borrowed a few pictures from Wikipedia. Click on them. They link to the articles.

I am a tourist.

If I lived here, I wouldn’t find myself on Commercial Drive in the first place, looking for a breakfast, late for me (at 10AM), but clearly early for denizens of “The Drive.” I pass competing hair salons as I walk under grey but not gloomy skies north from Broadway. The restaurants that eventually crowd out the salons cater to the late crowd: the earliest open at noon, some not until dinner.

Someone familiar with this area would walk with conviction toward their breakfast, or turn back and head toward more fertile boulevards. But I am a tourist. I walk forward wondering what lies ahead and how far to go before seeking sustenance elsewhere.

Because I am a tourist and want something I recognize as breakfast, I do not stop in the first open place I come to, Giancarlo’s Sports Bar (“Let’s Meet at GC’s on The Drive”), at Commercial and 3rd Avenue East, but do notice that it is full of white-haired men intent on conversation and card games. Another block on I come to Italian bakeries serving their coffee and pastries, and I perk up – until I see that small but expensive croissants are all these venues have to offer. Seeking a heartier breakfast than the light European-style fare proffered here, I head back to Giancarlo’s for (I assume) burgers, fries, and football. Being more than merely tourist, I reason that eating at a local favorite will make up for the expected greasy fare.

I see no menu but a board listing panini specials, so I walk to the counter and ask if breakfast is possible. “Yah. I can make you breakfast: eggs, bacon, and hash browns? How would you like your eggs?” the woman asks. I also take the coffee she suggests, which she mixes with steamed milk and pours into a glass mug. The total for the next hour – the best I spend in Vancouver – is no more than $6.50, Canadian.

Since I am a tourist, neither intrepid traveler nor experienced local, I do not understand the etiquette of Giancarlo’s. In addition to the card players, who never speak or look up, a single Italian-speaking man occupies each table and all the barstools are taken. After an indecisive moment, I head over for a large table in the corner, expecting to go through a ritual of asking and seating and apologizing and all the other things Americans do when brought together by unexpected circumstance. But before I can reach my destination, a man at the adjacent table throws an announcement of his immediate departure in my face and exits the restaurant while his mug and saucer still clatter on the table.

“Sorry. It can be hard to find a seat here sometimes,” says the waitress politely but without sympathy as she brings the breakfast she just cooked behind the counter.

From my seat, I watch the card players, sip the best frothy coffee drink I’ve ever had, and brood over the culture of seating. Was my hesitation a faux pass? Should I have simply yanked a chair to a stranger’s table?

Another group of men grab a pack of cards from the counter and gather at the large table next to me like the chess players of Central park. It occurs to me that perhaps the man who vacated this table did so to save me from sitting in the card players’ verboten playground.

I watch the card players – intent, silent, athletic – and try to discern the rules (the play is reminiscent of the card game cassino), but I can’t even recognize the cards. According to the man behind the counter, they are playing a nameless game they simply refer to as the “pastime game” using typical Italian playing cards. Bereft of all alphanumerals, these cards are printed in full colors with reds and greens and yellows mixing into suits I cannot decipher. Repeating patters seem to signify rank. Only later, I learn that what I am seeing is not simply a different style of a standard American deck, but cards unique to the different regions of Italy not only in illustration, but also in deck size and even the number of suits. While it might seem self-evident to the intrepid traveler, for a tourist like me, it is a revelation that something as basic as playing cards can be as parochial as an accent.

So, I am a tourist.

I wander the streets of Vancouver with a list of too much to do and insufficient patience for lingering to discover this place from the inside. On a dismal midweek day in which soft pellets of ice and snow fall from the sky, the streets are empty of people for watching. I proceed down an itinerary of places and things: SkyTrain; Museum of Anthropology; Granville Island; Library Square; Stanley Park; SeaBus; Gastown/Chinatown.

I am a tourist; I have my list of things to see. Some come recommended, many tickle simple pleasures I find in my own life. I indulge in the trains and catamaran ferries. I talk up Multnomah County’s Central Library to the woman in Vancouver Public Library’s store, while she tells me of her own pilgrimages to the New York Public Library and to the same of London and Berlin. “I’ve noticed that library people do that,” she says. So the library and light rail – these things make it on my list because they are the physical space I love at home and I must visit them abroad. Unplanned but predictable, the bridges, too, beckon to me as surely as any tourist trap.

I relish in the SkyTrain, sensually the most satisfying light rail I have ever ridden. An expanding network of elevated track, the SkyTrain is a computer-driven, electromagnet-controlled zip line above the city. Without a pilot occupying the front of the train, a jump seat and windshield offer the sensation of flying for anyone childish enough to run up front giggling. Needless to say, I am that person.

Only a tourist would spend an hour riding the SkyTrain’s entire length, and I do. I take a detour over the SkyBridge, a 2000-foot-long cable-stayed beauty that offers impressive views of everything but itself on the quick ride across. I am especially taken with the view of the Pattullo Bridge, the best-painted bridge I’ve ever seen, and the railroad bridge at water level far below it. In the other direction, a cable-stayed giant graces the horizon and I wish for a second for the opportunity to rebuild some of Portland’s less-impressive spans in similar grandeur.

I am a tourist. I walk down my checklist, ticking of the city. The Museum of Anthropology is worth the visit, but takes a long time to reach; Granville Island take more patience than I have, and should not be visited alone; Stanley Park needs a whole day. Also, it is on the main road out of town, so don’t head that way at rush hour. That is the kind of mistake that a tourist would make.

At the end of the day, I wander through Chinatown and wonder how well I have spent my time. I am tired. Riding Amtrak to Vancouver, I was a traveler, savoring the ride. When I leave Vancouver, I will be a visitor, heading north toward a friend to see a place as she knows it. Today, I am a tourist, seeing the city in part as I make it, and in part as it asks to be seen.