#153. Sky to Sea to Celebrities (Tuesday, June 23, 2026)

What was your best day…of being in relaxed motion?

My first, and quite possibly, only lifetime trip to the Pacific Northwest had definitely peaked early. I had spent Day One and Day Two watching two host nations win their World Cup matches convincingly, in or literally right beside the stadium where the games were being played (#57). That would be hard to top through the next five days of the trip.

Still, I made sure to get the proper Seattle–Vancouver experience: Paul Oakenfold (who I didn’t know was still DJing) at Seattle’s Q Nightclub Friday night; Pike Place, Bainbridge Island, and a sunset ferry ride Saturday; then a Sunday day trip to Mount Rainier, where a random Spanish guy in my group and I hiked up to the real glaciers a few hundred meters beyond where we were supposed to stop. Then a Monday “Under the Streets” tour¹, the standard Space Needle ascension, and my return to Vancouver. Wednesday was Canada–Switzerland at BC Place and a peaceful evening at Kitsilano Beach; Thursday, a bike tour of Stanley Park before flying home.

But this trip wasn’t defined by the individual days so much as the three things that pervaded all of them.

The World Cup group-stage matches running continuously from morning to evening, with seemingly every big screen and bar television I passed showing a different game to a medium-to-large crowd.² It gave me this satisfying sense of being in continuous motion while the world and time around me were moving too, just at a comfortably slower pace.
Dropping at least a hundred dollars on dinner most nights, always at a good (but not exorbitant) seafood restaurant that had to be popular and right next to the water.
The constant feeling that I was seeing everything I possibly could without ever feeling rushed. I could move from one place to the next at a relaxed, unforced pace and still feel confident I wasn’t missing anything.

And among this string of well above-average days, one stood out only slightly above the rest.

On this Tuesday, I do the Sea to Sky Whistler Tour with a tour group made up largely of New Zealand and Scotland soccer fans³. We make several picturesque stops along the coast and through the mountains. The centerpiece is a multi-stage gondola at Squamish, followed at the top by a terrifying suspension bridge—short, but at extreme elevation—and a long forest hiking route through the mountains. From there, we spend two hours in Whistler Village, where I drink at the Long Horn pub while watching England fail to beat Ghana.

Once I’m dropped off back in Vancouver, I head straight to Cardero’s, which the tour guide had recommended as “the one seafood place that’s a true Vancouver institution”⁴. With a perfect harbor view in front of me, I spend the next two hours drinking a few beers and stuffing myself with shrimp rigatoni, their signature wok squid, and—unbeknownst to me—about half of somebody else’s chicken dish. I’m apparently so at one with my surroundings, and so mercilessly consuming food, that I get a third of the way through it without actively wondering why the squid tastes like chicken. Eventually my server notices, looks at the plate, and tells me: “That’s not squid.” He brings me the actual dish.⁵

From there, I take the long, peaceful walk along the waterfront as the late sun sets, then descend into the city. I’m heading in the direction of the Celebrities nightclub, but I’m not that excited. I knew I had to have a second nightclub night on my trip, after Q in Seattle, but my sense was that Vancouver, not being a “major city” in my mind, wouldn’t have any truly epic nightlife spots—Celebrities was simply the one that was open on Tuesday night. Adding to that low expectation, it’s… well, Tuesday night.

I was wrong. Five minutes after I walk past the bouncer at Celebrities, I can barely tell the difference between it and Omnia at Caesars Palace (the best Vegas club, #48). It has almost exactly the same dimensions, configuration, and ambience: clean high-end decor, bars running along three walls, and a huge dance floor so packed there’s barely room to move. This is THE ideal dance club vibe, on a Tuesday night, in a city that doesn’t even have two million people. Where the hell are all of these partiers coming from? (And it’s late June, so it’s not all college kids either.)

The next four hours of pounding pop music and a continuous stream of Smirnoff Ices feel much like any of my peak club nights. With only two things to note: the embedded excitement in the crowd about tomorrow’s World Cup game against Switzerland, and one rather dangerous incident later about two hours in. A group of girls—one of whom catches my eye—is dancing intensely near me when one of them falls, sending everyone around her collapsing into each other like dominoes. A few of us, including the girl I’d noticed, immediately start pulling everyone back up. Nobody seems hurt; the original girl is already dancing again like nothing happened. The attractive girl and I turn to each other, share a shrug and a laugh at the ridiculousness of what just happened, and then the dance floor swallows us in opposite directions. I never see her again.

Those last five days on the West Coast didn’t have the historical spectacle of the first two, but they didn’t need to. They were what made the trip feel like a true vacation: constantly in motion, with nowhere I urgently needed to be.

Of the old Seattle the current city was literally built on top of—disgusting nineteenth-century sewer stories included.
Most notably at Vancouver’s Jack Poole Plaza and Seattle’s Pacific Place, both coincidentally—or perhaps unconsciously intentionally—right next to my hotels.
Scotland never actually played in Vancouver. They apparently just enjoyed traveling across North America and getting drunk.
For directions, he simply told us to go to Cardero Street by the waterfront, then immediately cited that as proof the restaurant was legit: they even named a street after it!
Despite my extreme ignorance, I got the accidental chicken for free.