The 'other side' of Vancouver (or Go West, middle-aged man!)

View from the WEST

And I'm not talking about something sinister (we'll leave that for another post ;-), but about the part of Vancouver situated west of Lions Gate Bridge, in particular West Vancouver.  Census Canada lists it as the richest community or postal code in all of Canada (The poorest is right across the bridge: The Downtown East-side).

If you ever GO WEST (Caution: Link to Village People ;-) along Marine Drive and somewhere west of Dundarave take a road up the hill looking for Highway 1 (you won't find it), you will get lost in a maze of streets.  If you get lost on the right streets, you will see houses like you've never seen before.  The words posh & decadent are much too weak to describe these mansions. You will also see quite a lot of women presumably from the Philippines standing at bus stops. In this regard, West Vancouver is very much like Hong Kong.  They seem to like their household staff to be from low-wage countries.

But there is another side.

When I went to Different Bikes on Ambleside (read posh!) to purchase one replacement hex bolt for the bike, I was looking at a racing bike for $12k (actually 'only' $11,999, and it looked VERY FAST) at one moment, but wasn't charged for 2 bolts the next moment. Thank you, Different Bikes !

Another nice thing about West Vancouver is that it is WEST of all the traffic. Given that the predominant winds in Vancouver come from the WEST, that means that West Vancouver only gets a fraction of the pollution that the rest of the city is inundated by (But given the STOOPID, slower-than-pedestrian-speed traffic jam that can be seen in Park Royal on a daily basis, West Vancouver deserves more of it ;-)

AND:  West Van has a pretty waterfront and nice views!

I could handle waking up to this view ;-)

View from the 11th floor; not my picture

Coincidentally, there was an apartment for rent in those numerous towers populated by tenants with numerous accumulated age years that provided exactly this view, but from the 11th floor instead of from sea level.  Even though the price for a 1 BR apartment was rather exorbitant, the Craigslist ad only lasted one day before it vanished. Lucky new tenant!