Remember how, playing Monopoly as a kid, there was always one guy who sat on Park Place, patiently collecting rent and waiting till the exact right moment to put a hotel there?

You know that part about travelling—the part where you roll off an aircraft disoriented and bleary-eyed, locate your luggage, extract a stack of bills from an ATM and then hand half of them over to the nearest cab driver in return for a lift to your hotel? Yeah, we don’t like that part so much, either.

Before each Olympic Games, the national anthem of every competition-eligible nation is arranged and recorded afresh for potential deployment during the Big Waterworks Moment: the medal ceremonies.

Re the “faster, stronger, higher” business: what if the Olympic tagline applied not just to the sports but to the cultural events? The gold would go to the work of art that pushed the boundaries the farthest.

We’re speaking in hushed tones—our “spa voices” —which sound a lot like the reverential whispers one might use in an art gallery or grand library.

It wasn’t British Columbia’s first spa—the high-service, low-frills Hills Health Ranch in BC’s Cariboo country nailed that honour in 1985.

Just when I think metrosexuality as an interior design trend is yesterday’s HGTV news, Vancouver, BC’s new L’Hermitage Hotel designers prove me wrong: they steal a kiss from last century’s Art Deco movement and marry i

You know something’s really good when it’s hard to find. Here’s a tip: follow the marble staircase at 464 Granville St. below the hustle of downtown Vancouver, BC to the new Breathe Spa.

If the world’s best theatre talent ever duked it out for gold medals in an international arena, Canada’s Robert Lepage would be the man to beat.

The thing about paradise is that it shouldn’t be this easy to get to.