Vancouver Fall 2012: The Late Night Zone
Sep. 28th, 2012 06:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI don't normally suffer from insomnia. I've heard friends who do suffer from it describe it and it certainly doesn't sound like what I get occasionally, which is "can't fall asleep in a timely fashion". It's very rare for me to be woken up for any great amount of time in the middle of the night. Strange noises will wake me up (I'm hyper-sensitive to it), but once I've identified the noise I generally fall back to sleep.
Maybe it was the vacation, maybe it was sleeping in a strange house, but I went to bed at about midnight and woke up around 3 am. And I couldn't get back to sleep. In my groggy state I decided that, since I was on vacation and didn't need to be anywhere the next day (at least until the evening) to have an adventure. I got up, got dressed and left the house.
Now this was a time of day when even the late-night clubbers and bar habitués have gone to bed. The city was, aside from people who had to be up, deserted. My travels included the Commercial/Broadway area and (after a quick cab ride) downtown Vancouver.
What did I see? A handful of other people walking around late; Lots of Vancouver municipal workers running around maintaining things (changing lightbulbs, fixing signage, emptying trash). Mostly what I saw was empty side streets. Oh, and the inside of a Tim Hortons, where I had a breakfast sandwich.
I did this until dawn, at which point the first commuters where entering downtown. I took that opportunity to take an empty train back out to Commercial and went back to bed. This time I slept until the crack of noon.
Maybe it was the vacation, maybe it was sleeping in a strange house, but I went to bed at about midnight and woke up around 3 am. And I couldn't get back to sleep. In my groggy state I decided that, since I was on vacation and didn't need to be anywhere the next day (at least until the evening) to have an adventure. I got up, got dressed and left the house.
Now this was a time of day when even the late-night clubbers and bar habitués have gone to bed. The city was, aside from people who had to be up, deserted. My travels included the Commercial/Broadway area and (after a quick cab ride) downtown Vancouver.
What did I see? A handful of other people walking around late; Lots of Vancouver municipal workers running around maintaining things (changing lightbulbs, fixing signage, emptying trash). Mostly what I saw was empty side streets. Oh, and the inside of a Tim Hortons, where I had a breakfast sandwich.
I did this until dawn, at which point the first commuters where entering downtown. I took that opportunity to take an empty train back out to Commercial and went back to bed. This time I slept until the crack of noon.
