Post | 07/25/2008 4:00 pm
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ShareA Whale of a Tale: Gypsy Takes to Vancouver
I’ve always been a Med and Carib girl. My husband and I bought La Fiorentina in St-Jean Cap Ferrat, France, when there wasn’t a Russian in sight in 1970 and my children spent all their summers there. We bought our home in Mustique in the West Indies to spend Christmas and Easter warming up. The rest of each year we spent flying, busing, driving or training from town to town, country to country. My husband built and ran airlines, terminals and hotels all over the world. I ran an ad agency and had offices and clients from Detroit to Peru to London to Brazil. When we dreamed of vacations they were dreams of being in France and Mustique, swimming in warm seas, burning in hot suns with our kids.
When my husband died I had a crazy fit and started selling the big houses we had. I bought a boat I love — Strangelove — but after four years of calming down in the Mediterranean, I began to resent the economics of the weak dollar and 50-euro coffees. So I wandered around my atlas and saw Vancouver on the southwest Pacific coast of Canada — I had an image of Alaska and polar bears and whales. I have never been a fisher-girl or much of a sport of any kind. My vacation clothes have always been bare and floaty and I have been either barefooted or in Manolo’s highest heels on balmy evenings. But I am curious to the core and I didn’t know a thing about the Pacific Coast beyond Malibu, CA. So I made a deal with a very big boat to carry Strangelove from Italy all the way around and through the Panama Canal and then all the way up to Vancouver. I flew to meet it in Seattle which is a short sail to Vancouver. When I saw Strangelove it seemed to have grown since it left Europe. Strangelove is 156 feet. In the Med that is not a big boat. There are hundreds of boats between 200 and 400 feet. But between Seattle and Alaska, the new monster boats and the Russians and Middle Easterners who own them are still very rare and Strangelove is usually the biggest boat around. I am the Queen now on a BIG boat that hasn’t grown an inch!
Arriving by boat from Seattle, the sight of Vancouver is pure J.K. Rowling! You sail past vast purple-green mountains with blinding snow-white tops and furry dark-green islands so dense, so sexy that Hollywood stars hide in them while shooting films here — and there are 1,200 of those islands streaming all the way to Alaska. The sea is clear blue-green to the bottom. Little water planes fly about like paper darts and armies of beautiful young women row in their underwear in kayaks with men in little boats beside them yelling “bend those legs, chest to thighs, stretch those arms!” at them. Whales splash and have right of way. (Each one has a name and a number; this is Whale Land and there are as many whale people as there are green people here.) Then — as you get closer to Vancouver you imagine that it was created last night just for you by Peter Gelb, who orders those great sets for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Vancouver is not an old town left over from 150 years ago. It is illusionary. It is a dream. It can’t be real. It looks as if it was thought up and built last night — towers of shimmering pale blue-green glass with just a pink tower here and a bronze tower there all in a row gazing into the sea. It is a crystal city. The glass matches the sea. How the Vancouver fathers got everyone to agree on building all their glass towers the colors of the sea says something for the theatrical imagination of the leadership in Vancouver. I have a picture of our captain David Hoey, the crew and me with our eyes open wide saying oooooooooh! entering Coal Harbour of Vancouver.
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21 Reader Comments (so far…)
Gotcha Mary.
So happy toknow you are having so much fun.
Congratulations on your new apartment.
Speaking as an ex-Vancouverite who lives in NYC, Cioppino’s is a nice restaurant, and their chestnut soup is divine, I also reccomend you try Il Giardino, which has a beautiful room and outdoor space. Blue Water Grill is fabulous, as is their wine list.
And if you haven’t been to Le Crocodile, yet, you have to go. Real souffles, the best Dover Sole, frog legs, steak with Bearnaise sauce, etc.
Vancouver also happens to have the best Japanese and Indian restaurants in North America, Tojo and Vij.
Finally, Vancouver has so many excellent used bookstores. If you’re the type who gets a thrill from 1970s Penguin editions of WS Maugham novels with racy covers, go to McLeods. Albion Books, Tanglewood and PulpFiction books are also worth visiting.
OK - i’m sold. Headed to Vancouver soon.
Oh Mary I could live in your dining/library on your vessel (god forbid I should call it a boat!). I live on Vancouver Island and miss the likes of Urban Fare… big sigh.
Of all of the women on this site, Mary Wells seems to repeatedly irritate me. I am really pretty privileged in my world - but, still, I just do not relate even a little bit with the world she is living. I am bright, well educated, successful - but reality has imposed itself on my life too much and too many times - I just do not relate - and yet why is it that I seem to want that somehow. You are lucky, Mary Wells. I hope that you know that.
Mary Wells, you have found one of the most special places in our world. I know it so well - and predict you will be so glad you have made this move.
Your story, written so well, “caught me” and took me along as you have made the beginnings of a new chapter in your life.
You have made discoveries that take others forever to find — so many of the special places that make Vancouver a city set apart. Your friends will flock there, I guarantee, and if I were to guess - be envious. Stretch out your arms and within reasonable distances there are some of the most beautiful places in the world — I know them so well.
Treat some of your guest to the out-of-this-world Aerie Resort on the Island and watch their eyes pop. There are seaplane trips to the coastal islands that are to kill for from Aerie — and the spa — a dream! We go back — and back again.
Bet you haven’t heard of Princess Royal Island yet — but for those who have seen it all, it is about the only place in the world that has the rare white bears - well, they are called Spirit Bears (Kermode). . and the guides will somehow find them for you - and you will be safe, never fear. Once I was in their presence, I knew I had seen something rare and wonderful - never to be forgotten. I’ve taken friends who have supposedly “seen the world” and they still talk about this one experience that few have discovered. And Mary, this and so much more is a hop and a skip away.
The word “adore” will slip into your vocabulary - as it has done mine - when you begin to reach out into this new and magnificent world. I promise.
A new door has opened, a new chapter is about to begin — and you, Mary Wells, are going to say you have it all.
Welcome to this paradise!!!
I read this last night but had a hard time understanding what I felt. Ms. Wells appears to be writing to people who can live the live style she can afford. Today I realize that I am jealous. I don’t begrudge the things she has or the places she has been fortunate enough to live and visit. I worked long and hard but a registered nurse rarely gets to the glass ceiling, much less breaks through. (I only know of one and she had a great mentor, a male). I, today, am just happy to look at the magnificient pictures and thank Ms. Wells for sharing with us. (At least I maybe able to take a short vacation there. I am putting Vancouver on my bucket list right beside Alaska.)
correction “lifestyle”
When I indicated “a great mentor, a male” it sounded as if she (the nurse CEO and company president) couldn’t have made it without a male. Actually he noticed her potential and paved the way for her. It could just as well been a female.
Dabney —
As you read or hear about others’ lifestyles that you may not be able to ever afford, remember - as I do - the happiness we feel does not come from material things. It comes from within. . . and the rest, though wonderful to hear about is what I call “window dressing”. You would not want to turn it down perhaps - but does a yacht or a penthouse warm your heart? I don’t think so.
It is what YOU yourself put into life — and I judge that as not being selfish, reaching out to others, touching others, and for me, getting into nature - which I feel is the best restorative in the world. Frankly, I find it fascinating to hear about others’ lives - perhaps different than mine or sounding glamourous — so I love Mary Wells’ tale and wish her well. But jealous? I LOVE my life; I make things happen that send me to the clouds at times — and I wouldn’t switch mine for anyone elses on a bet. It is a mindset - and when you believe this way, people are so attracted to you, it is like you are a magnet. All I will say is that wonderful things happen … so try it if you haven’t.
Mary - In a way, when I read your accounts of your travels, I always have the feeling you’re chasing happiness. Forgive me if I’m wrong, and I don’t mean to be rude, but I hope you are also following Ashley Judd’s diaries.
Mary, My husband and I went to the Expo in 1986………..I thought Vancouver next to San Francisco was the most beautiful City I’d ever seen.
Reading your story makes me want to go back and see all the changes.
It also brought back sweet memories of things my husband and I did.
Thanks for sharing………..
Be sure to have lots of clothes for very cold weather. A taxi driver told us that they get so much rain in the winter that you can feel the cold clear into your bones…
That’s why I loved being a visitor there but prefer to live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Gawd, I wish I was rich. My boat is a 10 year old Ford Taurus. My vacation is a week at home, surfing the Net.
Spare a couple of million there, Ms. Wells? My email is registered here.
Having moved to Vancouver (from NYC) in the early 70s, I have seen Vancouver really blossom. I’m sitting here now overlooking lots of marine activities— and delighting in this fabulous place. Mary does indeed live a charmed life…. If she is ever at “loose ends” , I hope she sends me an email. I’d be delighted to show her my Vancouver favourites. SRW
The last ever trip I took with the Love of my Life was to Vancouver. Be SURE to lunch at the top of the Sky Tower. It will give you the city and the harbour in 360° rotation. Heaven!