At a recent conference, a professional blogger stood up and shared with her fellow bloggers this valuable piece of advice:

Write about the places around you. Write about where you live.

Thus this post: Welcome to Granville Island. I suppose I could resort back to the hipster label I gave Gastown but Granville Island has a homier, cozier feel that Gastown certainly does not. For the Calgarians reading this post, think Kensington as run by genuine farmers and artisans. With a lot more surrounding water.

I mention the water because Granville Island is an actual island, complete with harbour and docks and boats nearby. That’s right. Boats.

Across the harbour you can see parts of downtown. Or more highrises. I’m actually not entirely sure because that’s how great my knowledge of Vancouver is so far. At the very least, you can see tall buildings.

There are also a handful of houses situated right in the harbour that are charming and probably exceedingly expensive. Still, it’d be kinda cool to live in a harbour directly over flowing water. They all manage to seem both modern and homey at the same time.

Inside one of the harbour hotels there was a display of flowers made completely out of chocolate. How those chocolatiers managed to get the chocolate oh-so-shiny is beyond me. I thought the entire thing was sculpted out of stone, to be honest. Seriously, can you believe that’s chocolate? It’s gorgeous. My only regret is that I didn’t get to eat it take better photos. You can see a ghost-y version of me hovering in front of the vase.

Granville Island is also home to the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. I don’t know about you but I would love to go to a university on an island. Oh wait, some of my friends are already doing that in the Caribbean, lol. The exterior looks pretty … well, artsy, as it should. Artsy fartsy schools for smartsies. I’m totally on a rhyming roll today.

While the buildings and scenery on Granville Island are really neat (which is what this post focuses on, I guess), the shops themselves are particularly interesting. The Granville Island Broom Company, for example, sells nothing but brooms. Just to keep you wondering though I’m going to include pictures from the broom shop in another post. Whee. They also apparently did a booming trade (or should I say, sweeping trade? I’m such a riot) in sales during the years in which the Harry Potter movies were released, as is only right. Every budding Hogwarts student (or Durmstrang, or Beauxbaton) ought to have a well-made transportation device.

The food is also one of the best things I love about this island (surprise, surprise), because the farmer’s market here is ballyhoo-flippin-fantabulous. Again though, I think I’ll save pictures for the second post I’ll be doing on Granville Island. It’s not so much that I want to draw you back (although I do) but rather that these pictures were all taken in one visit… and the next set was taken in another visit.

So, food. There is something really fantastic about seeing fruit in open-faced tarts. You may think me mad, but I think tarts and things are delicious treats.

Finally, as I left Granville Island, I decided to capture one of my most loved spots: the ivy-hung arch found at the entrance/exit to the streets on the island. Green leaves on stone just make for some lovely thoughts, don’t you think? Until Part 2, cheers (=