🏨 The Setup
We came into Vancouver on a NEXUS card crossing — under two minutes at the border, rolling stop, exactly what the card promised. From Denver nine hours at home doing laundry and repacking before heading north. Vancouver welcomed us in style: Fairmont Pacific Rim, Coal Harbour, the North Shore mountains across the inlet, and a cruise ship docked at Canada Place right outside the window.
The hotel itself turned out to be more interesting than we expected. The exterior of the building — floors five through twenty-two — carries a piece by British conceptual artist Liam Gillick from 2010. Two-foot high letters running across the facade: no nearer than when I was lying on the street. The full sentence: Lying on top of a building the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street. Whether you are at the bottom looking up or at the top, the sky is equally far away. Quietly humbling for a luxury tower.
Liam Gillick — the text on the building
The artist behind those letters is Liam Gillick, a British conceptual artist born in 1964, one of the most influential figures in contemporary art. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2002. His work often takes the form of text, architecture, and structures that ask questions about how we organize space and power.
The Fairmont Pacific Rim piece — formally titled Lying on top of a building the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street — was commissioned for the building's opening in 2010. It runs continuously around the exterior on the concrete fins, visible from street level, reflecting the surrounding buildings and the changing Vancouver sky in its polished letters. The meaning is deliberately open: success doesn't bring you closer to infinity. The clouds are the same distance from the penthouse as from the street.
Douglas Coupland is also woven throughout the property — Suite X on the Fairmont Gold floor is a collaboration with him, full of original works, a curated library from his personal collection, Cold War missile models and beach flotsam from Haida Gwaii covered in gold resin. His art runs through the lobby and the Pacific Gallery on the second floor. For a Coupland reader, sleeping inside that building hits differently.
Douglas Coupland — Vancouver's literary DNA
Douglas Coupland was born on a Canadian NATO base in Germany in 1961 and moved to Vancouver at age four, attending the Emily Carr College of Art and Design and never really leaving. In 1991 he published Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, a novel that defined a demographic and coined two words that entered the permanent vocabulary of the 20th century — Generation X and McJob.
He was supposed to write a nonfiction handbook for St. Martin's Press about the post-Boomer generation. He took their $22,500 advance, moved to Palm Springs, and wrote a novel instead. It sold worldwide in 35 languages. His subsequent work — Microserfs, JPod, Shampoo Planet, City of Glass (an intimate portrait of Vancouver) — established him as the defining literary voice of the Pacific Northwest digital age.
The Fairmont Pacific Rim collaboration is perfectly Coupland — mixing mass-produced objects, personal history, Cold War nostalgia, and the specific geography of British Columbia into a space that is both beautiful and a little unsettling.
Crossed at the border with NEXUS — under two minutes, rolling stop. That card has already paid for itself many times over. Checked into the Fairmont Pacific Rim and got the lay of the land. Coal Harbour spread out below the room, seaplanes on the water, mountains beyond.
Fairmont spa massages in the afternoon — proper rest and repair after the Denver trip. Then settled onto the sun day beds at the pool, lounging in that particular Vancouver light that hits differently than anywhere else on the coast. The kind of afternoon you do not overthink.
NEXUS — the border card that changed everything
NEXUS is a joint Canada-US trusted traveler program administered by the Canada Border Services Agency and US Customs and Border Protection. Members undergo background checks, biometric enrollment, and interviews at enrollment centers, after which they get access to dedicated NEXUS lanes at border crossings and expedited processing at airports. At land crossings like the Peace Arch on the I-5 between Bellingham and Vancouver, NEXUS lanes are often open 24 hours with wait times measured in seconds rather than the 45–60 minutes a regular lane can take on a busy weekend. Once you use it you genuinely cannot understand why you ever waited in the other line.
Superflux Brewery
We found Superflux in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood — one of the best craft breweries in Canada and the tap list confirmed it immediately. We ordered the full taster flight. Every single one.
The Daytime Karaoke and Death From Edmonton were the standouts. The Vin Van Collab is genuinely unusual — gooseberry and sauv blanc in a hazy IPA is something you do not encounter anywhere else. A serious beer education in one sitting.
Amrut Indian Restaurant
Dinner at Amrut on Pender at Richards. Exceptional. One of those meals where everything lands exactly right — the spicing, the textures, the warmth of the room. Vegetarian options throughout the menu, nothing feels like an afterthought. The kind of Indian restaurant you go back to every time you are in Vancouver.
Up early, Starbucks, and out to Stanley Park for the morning loop. The seawall at that time of day in Vancouver — early light on the inlet, North Shore mountains across the water, the city skyline behind you — is one of the best urban walks in North America. We covered 9.32 miles in 3 hours 13 minutes. 1,073 calories. Avg heart rate 93 bpm.
Stanley Park — 1,000 acres of history
Stanley Park was dedicated by Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, in 1888 — the same Lord Stanley who donated the Stanley Cup to hockey four years later. He threw his arms to the heavens and declared it dedicated to the use and enjoyment of peoples of all colours, creeds, and customs, for all time. The park sits on unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, who occupied it for at least 3,000 years before European contact.
Where Lumberman's Arch now stands, there was once a large Squamish village called Whoi Whoi — a longhouse measuring 200 feet long by 60 feet wide was documented there. The seawall — now the world's longest uninterrupted waterfront walkway at 22 kilometers — was begun in 1917 and took more than 50 years to complete. Master stonemason Jimmy Cunningham led the project from 1931 until his death in 1963, working by hand.
On the walk back toward the waterfront we stumbled onto a massive film set transforming several blocks near Canada Place. Rusted picture cars, post-apocalyptic debris, elaborate set dressing across multiple city blocks. It was The Last of Us Season 3, filming under the working title Calm Current. HBO drama, filming through November 2026 in Vancouver with Bella Ramsey, Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Gabriel Luna and Jeffrey Wright. The third and final season, focusing on Abby. We walked through the perimeter of it without knowing until we looked it up afterward.
Vancouver — Hollywood North
More film and television production happens in Vancouver than almost anywhere in North America outside Los Angeles. The combination of diverse locations, experienced crew, purpose-built studio infrastructure, a favorable Canadian dollar, and generous BC film tax credits makes Vancouver the default location for dozens of major productions simultaneously. The Last of Us Season 3 is one of the biggest, using the former Hudson's Bay department store on Granville — 617,628 square feet across seven floors — as its primary indoor set. The city has been doubling for Seattle, New York, and a post-apocalyptic United States for decades.
Lunch at Stanley Park Brewing right in the park — Trail Hopper IPA at 65 IBU, assertive and piney, exactly what you want after nine miles. Fish and chips for me, the seawall salad modified vegetarian for Aimee. Well earned.
Mel Robbins — The Orpheum
The Orpheum is a 1927 Spanish Baroque concert hall — ornate ceiling, sweeping arches, the kind of room that makes whatever is happening on stage feel significant just by proximity. Mel Robbins filled it. The Let Them Theory delivered in that setting.
The core framework on the screen: Let Them — no control over what others do. Let Me — take control of what you do next. Simple on paper, harder in practice, and she made it land. Her daughter joined her on stage for part of the show, which added genuine personal weight to the material. The gut punch slide was the life in weeks visualization — your entire existence as a grid of dots, the white ones already spent, the orange ones remaining. In a room of 2,700 people, looking at that slide, it is hard not to feel the urgency of the orange dots.
Honest review: if you are already a regular podcast listener you have heard most of the material. But there is something that only happens when 2,700 people receive the same message in the same room at the same time, in a hall built in 1927 for exactly that kind of collective moment. Worth it.
The Orpheum — Vancouver's great hall
The Orpheum opened on November 7, 1927 as a vaudeville and movie palace, designed by B. Marcus Priteca in Spanish Renaissance Baroque style. It was the largest theatre in Canada at the time, seating over 2,700. By the 1970s the owner planned to convert it to a multiplex cinema. The City of Vancouver bought it in 1974, the same year it was designated a heritage building, and restored it as the permanent home of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The restoration cost more than $3.5 million. It has hosted everyone from the Vancouver Symphony to Radiohead to Mel Robbins.
Dank Mart + Tap and Barrel
Post-show we walked past Dank Mart — exotic snacks and rare drinks, walls covered in branding, wild imported chips and sodas from everywhere. Fancy Chex mix acquired. Then wound down at Tap and Barrel for evening drinks before heading back to the Fairmont.
The Canada Place Geocache — GC3WQYC
Back at the hotel for a nightcap and we spotted the light was still good — nearly 9pm in Vancouver in May, still full daylight over the mountains. One quick cache: CPC Canada Place Cache, GC3WQYC, Traditional, D1.0/T1.5, Large container, 1,135 favorites, placed by CanadaPlace in September 2012. Found it. Logged it. The Coal Harbour sunset behind the seaplane terminal while we were out there was one of the better views of the whole trip.
Coal Harbour seaplanes
The seaplanes docked at the Coal Harbour terminal are operated by Harbour Air, the world's largest all-electric commercial airline (in transition) and Canada's largest seaplane operator. They fly between Vancouver downtown and Victoria downtown, between Vancouver and the Gulf Islands, and on charter routes throughout coastal BC. The Beaver and Otter aircraft on these routes are part of a coastal aviation tradition that goes back to the 1930s when floatplanes were the primary transportation link for logging camps, fishing communities, and First Nations villages along the BC coast — places without roads, without runways, accessible only by water or air.
The 1am Wake-Up
Asleep and then at 1:02am the room lit up with a BC AMBER Alert — full province, Terrace RCMP, twins Raina and Mathias Wood, 3.5 years old, blonde hair, blue eyes, allegedly abducted. We had thought Do Not Disturb was on. Turns out Canadian emergency alerts override everything. The alert was cancelled at 2:38am — children found safe.
✈️ Crossover — Captain George Vancouver: the man behind the city
The city we were sleeping in, the island it sits on, and the cattle that became the Parker Ranch in Hawaii all trace to one person: Captain George Vancouver of the British Royal Navy. Born in 1757 in Norfolk, England, Vancouver joined the Navy at age 13 and sailed on two of Captain James Cook's Pacific voyages — including the third voyage on which Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779 while midshipman Vancouver stood nearby.
Between 1791 and 1795, Vancouver commanded his own Pacific expedition aboard HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham, charting over 1,700 miles of the Pacific Northwest coastline with an accuracy that was not surpassed for decades. He entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca, mapped Puget Sound, circumnavigated and named Vancouver Island, and established British territorial claims from California to Alaska.
On the same expedition he visited Hawaii three times, developing a close relationship with King Kamehameha I. In 1793 and 1794 he gifted Kamehameha cattle from a Spanish mission in Monterey — the first cattle on the Hawaiian Islands. Those cattle became the Parker Ranch. The flag Kamehameha designed in 1816 carries the Union Jack in its canton — Vancouver's diplomatic legacy on fabric. Vancouver died at 40 in 1798, his charts still in use half a century later.
Both the city we were visiting and the island we would fly to a week later exist in part because of the same man.
Up and at them after the interrupted night. Another Stanley Park loop — 9 miles again, because apparently that is just what we do in Vancouver now. The morning light was different from the day before, slightly overcast, the mountains softer across the inlet. Bonus Donuts downtown for the sugar fix. Starbucks. Then time to bounce.
Loaded up the car, crossed back into the US via NEXUS — less than two minutes again, rolling stop. Stopped at Boomers in Bellingham on the I-5 south, the classic Pacific Northwest road trip break point, then straight back to Lakewood. Home briefly. Laundry. Reset. Hawaii in less than 48 hours.
Vancouver's temperate rainforest
The reason Vancouver stays so vividly green — and the reason Stanley Park contains half a million cedar, fir, and hemlock trees — is the temperate rainforest climate of the Pacific Northwest coast. Warm Pacific currents keep the winters mild, the mountains force moist air upward where it cools and dumps enormous amounts of rain, and the growing season is long enough to sustain trees of extraordinary scale. The western red cedar trees in Stanley Park are some of the largest in urban North America — some over 500 years old, with circumferences measured in meters.
The same temperate rainforest ecosystem runs continuously from Northern California through Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia all the way to Southeast Alaska. It is one of the rarest forest types on earth, covering less than 0.2% of the world's land area, and the Stanley Park pocket of it — 1,000 acres in the middle of a major city — is one of its most accessible expressions. The 9-mile seawall loop runs through the edge of it.
🏆 Vancouver Highlights
- 🏨Fairmont Pacific Rim — Liam Gillick art on exterior, Douglas Coupland woven throughout
- 🍺Superflux — full taster flight, every tap. Daytime Karaoke + Death From Edmonton the standouts
- 🍛Amrut Indian — Pender and Richards, exceptional, would return every trip
- 🏃Two 9-mile Stanley Park seawall loops in two days — 18+ miles through ancient temperate rainforest
- 🧟Stumbled onto The Last of Us Season 3 set filming near Canada Place — Hollywood North in action
- 🎤Mel Robbins at the Orpheum — 1927 Spanish Baroque, packed house, Life in Weeks slide
- 📦GC3WQYC Canada Place Cache — found at sunset, Coal Harbour golden light, seaplanes
- 🌅Coal Harbour sunset — seaplanes, mountains, the best Vancouver view of the trip
- ⚡NEXUS card — under 2 minutes both crossings. Never going back to the regular lane
- 🎨Liam Gillick + Douglas Coupland — the Fairmont as a living Vancouver art institution
📋 Notes for Next Time
- 🎨Douglas Coupland Suite X — book it for a night, experience the full Coupland Vancouver
- 🍩Bonus Donuts — both locations, more time needed
- 🌲Granville Island — deserves a proper half day: Public Market, artisan studios, False Creek ferry
- 🍺Superflux — go back for the Heavy Fruit sour rotation, they change seasonally
- ✈️Harbour Air seaplane to Victoria — watched them all trip from Coal Harbour, should actually take one
- 🏛️Vancouver Art Gallery — the largest in Western Canada, strong Indigenous BC art collection
Two NEXUS crossings in under two minutes. Two nine-mile Stanley Park loops through a 3,000-year-old Indigenous landscape. Every tap at Superflux. The best Indian restaurant in recent memory. Mel Robbins in a 1927 concert hall. An accidental zombie apocalypse film set. A sunset geocache over Coal Harbour while seaplanes landed in the golden light. Liam Gillick on the side of the building reminding us the clouds are no nearer up here than down on the street. And the city named for the same man who brought cattle to Hawaii and shaped the Pacific Northwest forever.
Brooks & Aimee · Vancouver · May 2026 · 🍁🌲🍺🎤