Vancouver (/vænˈkuːvər/) is a coastal seaport city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia.

Sounds great, but how did I end up here? I met my friends Richie and Dustin during my time in Barcelona about 2012. Richie at first, then Dustin came for his second round of the great life in Barcelona. The first one being the Powerhouse times, basically what made me want to move to Barcelona. As both of them are Canadian, they kept going on and on about how awesome Canada is and that I should make a move and visit them in the future. I wasn’t too sure, mainly because Canadian winters are supposed to be extremely cold, but I said yes, I will visit some time, I wasn’t exactly sure if I would follow through though. Time flew by, both of them went back and forth and once they had left Barcelona got a bit boring without good friends so I left too, but then got bored elsewhere and returned back a and forth a couple of times as well. The quality of life in Barcelona is great and even though I get sick of it when I am there for too long, it takes about the same time to miss it again. Dustin had 3 rounds of life in Spain, but he and his wife moved to Canada by the end of 2015 or 2016, trying to get her the Canadian citizenship. Another Canadian friend I met during my Barcelona times is Brandon and he was about to visit the two in Vancouver for a month, starting with Dustin’s birthday on May 14th. Barbara tried to organize a birthday surprise, saying we could sleep in the van, so it came all together and I finally decided to go and visit Canada.

The usual suspects, May 2018, Vancouver, Canada
This was the crew of May 2018, Dustin on the left, his wife Barbara and Brandon on the right. Taken on one of the first days, Dustin and Barb showing us the benefits of living in a city like Vancouver.

Bandon, you got to do something here, May 2018, Vancouver, Canada
This was taken on one of our early morning seawall skates. We would get up while everyone was still asleep, get coffees and spliffs and skate around the seawall for the good morning. We came by this picturesque bankspot in front of the city skyline and I made Brandon come up with a move.

Top favorites Vancouver Bladelife

It feels a bit hard to put a whole month into sentences, so here are a few of my Vancouver bladelife favorites:

Skate the Ambleside skatepark by the ocean with the Vancouver skaters. We went there for our first session in the city
Skate around the alleys, every main road had a little alley in urban areas. We never got around to film the alley-cats edit we were so enthusiastic about
Local skate parks, every neighborhood had one so there were a lot to discover
Mountainblading or off-road skating, we hit quite a few local parks to try out the SUV skates by Powerslide. Great fun to mob down the hills in a group of people, not worrying about falling etc.
Droneplay, Skydio hooked Dustin up with a “follow-drone” it was great fun to try it out
Skating around the city looking for spots, trying to film for our video one for fun two, classic blade lifestyle
Early morning seawall skates with Brandon
Waking up early in the morning way before everyone else, hanging around the house and yard, getting and drinking coffee
Living in mt. pleasant right next to city hall and mt. Pleasant as a neighborhood to live in in general… so nice.
Coffee all the time everywhere for everything
Hanging out at shop Task, touch everything but buy nothing (which is not true, I actually bought a pair of skates and later wheels bearings and frames)
Hastings and Chinatown for the contrast
Just drive or skate down to Kitsilano and enjoy the sunset by the ocean
Canadian oven baked pizza hangovers (Don’t have one two times in a row)
Local dispensaries and cannabis policies
City nightskates, we actually skated on the main road of one of the busy bridges going in and out of the city back to Mt Pleasant one night with the police seeing us and being cool with it
A few trips into the surrounding nature
huge coffees all the time with everything
Home made Pizzanights