Vancouver

Skyscrapers compete with mountains.

Vancouver Art Gallery currently has an Emily Carr exhibition on, with beautiful paintings of vivid (and sometimes creepy) totem poles and swirling green forests where the undergrowth laps at the trees like waves. Emily Carr often visited and painted First Nations villages, sometimes with her sister and I quite liked this description: "Sister purchased a bird of melancholy mien, so resembling herself she had difficulty in restraining her emotions".

There was also a Paint exhibition on, so bright and neon and full of geometrical shapes and patterns, which seemed like such a contrast to the dark and brooding world Emily Carr sometimes painted, but it was still her trees that I found the dreamiest.

After visiting the gallery, we headed for Stanley Park, to see the Hollow Tree, which is mentioned in City of Glass: "Vancouver is perhaps the only city in the world where criminals might strap moose antlers to the hood of a stolen car and park it inside a 1,500-year-old hollow tree."

That was the day, I also ate a latke in Desert and then saw the play of Life After God.