It’s been a busy past week in Vancouver as the city fights its way into spring – with sun one day and snow the next…

Earlier in the week we visited the Van Dusen Gardens – a 55 acre space developed across what was once an old golf course.

It was pretty spectacular – but really Vancouver is filled with spectacular scenery wherever you go – it’s one of the most scenic cities I’ve visited.

We also visited The Museum of Anthropology which is located on the grounds of the University of British Columbia campus (the Uni campus itself is also very impressive).

The museum houses a massive collection of art and cultural artifacts from around the world – with a focus on the First Nation people of Canada.

It was an amazing museum both in terms of the sheer volume of items and also in respect of how they were displayed – all in massive cases put together in little vignettes – quite different to the staid displays you often find in Museums – if you are ever visiting Vancouver I can’t recommend this museum highly enough.

While I’m recommending things – we also saw two excellent films this week (and a third amusing one) – the first inspired by the life of German painter Gerhard Richter (who apparently isn’t a fan of the film or its account of his life) but it’s still a very good movie – albeit a very long one, it’s called “Never Look Away”.

The 2nd movie we saw, which was screening for a single night in Vancouver as part of a Film Festival here, John and I both agreed was the best film we’ve seen so far this year – it’s called Capernaum (Chaos).

It’s a Lebanese film and to say it’s confronting would be a massive understatement – but it is a really incredible movie with amazing performances – particularly from its child lead and I really hope everyone gets an opportunity to watch this film.

Finally (and of both a different genre and quality level) comes what I believe is the 2nd highest grossing Korean movie ever – and is the story of a group of cops who as part of a drug sting operation take over a fried chicken shop – it was absolutely a trashy movie but also a fun watch “Extreme Job”

Continuing a very cultural week we also saw two pieces of theatre – the first a play called Shoplifters (unrelated to the excellent Japanese Film from last year). This play was a comedy based upon a pair of shoplifters (an elderly woman and her younger cohort) who are detained by store security after attempting to steal some prime cuts of meat – which drop from their dresses as they exit the store. It was a good production – with slightly inconsistent performances from its cast – but entertaining none the less.

We then saw a local musical called Children of God which is based upon Canada’s own stolen generation past where indigenous children were taken from their parents and put into religious schools to be converted.

The production wasn’t of great quality and the cast were definitely inconsistent in their performance abilities – however the weight of the story – and knowing it was grounded in a horrific slice of history meant it still left an emotional mark.

We also took the ferry across to visit the Granville Markets – an excellent complex on a little island between two parts of Vancouver. It houses a range of art and craft stores, a food market, restaurants and the theatre we saw Shoplifters at in the evening. As is always the case with cold climate countries – berries featured in abundance at the stalls – cheap and delicious.

We are entering our last weekend in Vancouver but it’s somewhere we will definitely return to – it’s got a firm place in the top ten cities I’ve visited – probably in the top five in fact (John and I are eventually going to draft our respective top ten cities list and then assess each new city we visit to decide if they bump any of our existing top ten down the list. When we do this we’ll paste it here!).

Off to Las Vegas next week – I think it’s likely an experience we’ll do just once, but we do have some shows and tours lined up so it should be another interesting week ahead.