I'm very unhappy when I'm overwhelmed, and it's an overwhelming city. This isn't an encouraging way to start off a vacation.

Vancouver's divided by geography into a bunch of different sections, with several sweeping bridges providing a bottleneck through which traffic doesn't flow. Well, that's not true. Traffic flows perfectly well over the bridges into and out of the downtown core; it just doesn't move at all when you're in downtown Vancouver. On several of the major east-west streets, there are no left turns for probably 5 blocks in a row. On a heavy traffic day, this restriction doesn't make traffic move quickly, and for a newcomer, it can make for a very long 45 minutes trying to go south, but being forced to go west instead. But I should back up from my ordeal to leave Vancouver, and focus on trying to get back into it instead.

The very first thing that you'll notice as an Ontario driver going into Vancouver is the slow flashing green lights. "Advanced green," you'll think at first, but after a while it dawns on you: there is nothing advanced about those twinkling beacons. Instead, they form half of the most baffling traffic construction I've ever seen: the intersection of two streets, one controlled by traffic lights, and one controlled by stop signs. Imagine this scenario (purely hypothetical, of course): after getting lost, you pull up to a stop sign and glance around to see whether any of your neighbours will be forced to stop. Instead of being greeted by the familiar "4-way stop," or the less welcoming but still manageable "2-way stop intersecting another street which has the right of way," you're greeted by those infernal flashing green lights, taunting you with each cycle. "No problem," you think to yourself, "weight sensors will change these lights so I can go." Not true. As it turns out, those signals of despair are controlled completely by pedestrian crosswalk buttons. An driver, such as yourself, who is new to Vancouver then has only one option: exit the vehicle and press the pedestrian cross button, and then get back into your car. No greater humility exists.

(As it turns out, you can treat those intersections as a 2-way stop, proceeding when you can do so safely, but that was a sad 15 minutes wasted.)

Of course, if you really want to be humbled, just think of the scale of the Earth. Forty thousand kilometres in circumference, weighing billions and billions of tonnes, and with kilometres of atmosphere surrounding it. Now imagine you're in a metal tube flying 800 km/h 12 km above the surface of the earth. If you looked outside that tube, it might look something like this:

Those clouds look so fluffy, so soft, so pretty -- but don't think of the truth of the matter, which is that if you fell out of your encasing tube you'd fall and fall and fall and the only thing stopping your descent would be the Earth rushing up and up and up towards you, your bones shattering as they met those billions and billions of tonnes of Earth. And it wouldn't even notice you hitting it.

But hey, that didn't happen! We made it! And we even had satellite TV to watch on our way there (but I swear it wasn't this blurry):

After some time in the car, Vancouver becomes a lot less intimidating, and I became a lot less overwhelmed. And, even though it was foggy and rainy, the beauty shone through.

I can practically see the pot "smell lines" wafting off everyone here, though. It's Queen Street in Toronto blown up into a city. An Australian ex-pat once told me how much Melbourne is like Toronto: "Even walking up University, I can say "Oh, this'll be the financial district; here are the restaurants, a Bohemian street will be coming up soon, and here it is: Queen Street." What I've seen of Vancouver is very much Bohemian.

UBC's campus is unbelievable. I can't fathom being able to walk out of Waterloo's MC building and seeing mountains in the distance. That beach picture is actually taken from University-owned land. And the houses! Just following along the coast-hugging roads, Lisa and I came to what could only be called "estates." Every house had its own gate, and many houses we couldn't even see from the road. Even the student housing looked good. Imagine if University Ave. in Waterloo was tree-lined, with a well-kept divider island with trees and shrubberies dividing the two directions of the street.

I started off unhappy, but Vancouver's blown my mind. Everybody always said to me "Oh, you're going to Vancouver. It's such an amazing city. So beautiful." I thought to myself "Oh, sure, right, whatever." But it's true, it's all true.