On Day 3 of our stay in Vancouver, we made our second visit to the beautiful and immense Stanley Park. The weather was fabulous[…]
Our first visit the previous day was for us to do a recce and we knew instantly from that we needed to spend more time here.
Stanley Park
It is truly a wonderful place. We have visited a number of parks around the world (Central Park in NYC being our favourite), Stanley Park was something different again. For example, the park is still very densely forested. If you look at the area from the sky you would think that it was a woodland rather than the urban park space it has evolved to become.
For this visit, our plan was to do the full walk along the Stanley Park Seawall. We started at the rowing club and walked the full perimeter cutting in by the Lost Lagoon at the end to get back to our starting point.
Along the way there were some amazing cityscape views of Vancouver as you will see pictured here.
All in all, we did over 7 miles of walking and it took us about 3 hours as we didn’t want to rush it. Here is the route we took:
On the final part of the walk and as a result of us navigating around the lagoon, we came across the Rose Garden at Stanley Park, which had some magnificent blooms.
The Victor
After a fairly energetic day, it was good to know that we had a table booked at The Victor for our evening meal.
The Victor is located in the Parq Vancouver complex, which includes a J W Marriott hotel, a casino and several restaurants. After all the walking we had done during the day, and the fact that the Parq was very near to Chinatown, we decided our safest option was to get an Uber there.
When we arrived, it was a pleasant evening so we sat outside and had our first drink on the terrace area. With a man made pond with little fountains of water, it was a relaxing environment to enjoy a drink.
The drink I ordered was a Pandan Colada. This was made with mt. gay eclipse (rum), 1800 coconut tequila, falernum, pineapple, pandan, coconut water and sparkling wine. The cocktail came in glass decorated with what I believe were nuts. It was tropically refreshing with a hint of coconut.
Once inside, our order was taken promptly and we were offered some soft crusty bread to munch on.
For starters, we ordered the following to share:
Lobster and Crab Bisque with crab salad and gruyère toast.
Shrimp Tempura with spicy creamy ponzu sauce.
Both of these dishes were tasty but both were also very substantial. Along with the bread, this meant that we were a little full upon arrival of the main course.
When you come to a place like The Victor, whose tagline is “The Ultimate in a classic North American steak and seafood experience” – you have to try the steak. So that’s what we did.
I had the Striploin. The menu described it as a well marbled 12oz USDA prime ambassador’s cut. All the steaks came with some small baked potatoes and grilled cherry tomatoes.
I also ordered (not appreciating how full I would be from the starters), a well presented caesar salad. This was a combination of romaine & shaved brussels sprouts, large slices of pecorino cheese and crispy sumac-spiced chickpeas.
My husband ordered the rib cap, which is the “favourite” cut of the restaurant with extreme marbling.
Alongside this he had the substantial triple cooked fries. These came with truffle aioli.
From the interesting reds & blends, we ordered a bottle of the Masseria Surani ‘Dionysos’ Riserva Primitivo.
Overall, the starters and the steaks were good but we weren’t blown away by them. You will see from one of our future journals, that we made even better steaks from Granville Island Market.
After the meal, we returned home to a spectacular sunset over the English Bay.
