It was really nice that centrally located Kingston Taphouse and Grill was chosen for the first-ever Vancouver Metbloggers meet-up. It’s a stone’s throw away from from the Robson/Granville corner.

Every city has a famed corner where tourists slow down because they read about it in their guidebooks and locals slow down to check out the scenery - be it city-scenery or people-scenery. Toronto has Yonge/Bloor and Halifax has an Atlantic version at Spring Garden/South Park.

It was at this street corner I was standing getting plowed over by people who took the corner too tightly, waiting for either the Cambie bus or any one of them going down Granville where I fancy I looked official because no sooner did two ladies ask me for the way to the Granville Skystrain station - I think I point them towards a construction site on Granville between Georgia and Pender, oops - then this young guy asked me for the way to Robson Square.

A year ago, I might have thrown up my hands in futility when asked these simple queries but I’m happy to help with a smile to really propagate the image of friendly Vancouverites.

Crossing the bridge, seeing the yachts and boats bobbing on a quiet False Creek, and pulling away from the downtown condo towers twinkling after a late evening sprinkle, I can believe for a moment that Vancouver is, as Douglas Coupland may have said in his Vancouver homage, City of Glass, “a dream of a city.”