This past weekend, some friends and us went to the Khatsahlano Street Party!

The last time I went to Khatsahlano was back in 2016 or 2017 before I moved to Montreal. I always remembered it being a fun time, with lots of neighbourhood shops displaying their wares and big brands giving out free stuff.

For this 2022 edition of Khatsahlano, the crowds did not disappoint. It was even more crowded than I remembered—maybe it’s because they had to cancel the last 2 festivals due to COVID-19? We took our doggo with us and he kept looking around left and right since there were so many sights and smells to take in. That also meant he wasn’t watching where he was going and kept bumping into people’s legs =.=

We met up with our friends at around 3:30 PM and then started the walk down from Burrard. Whole Foods was giving out a variety of samples and they were pretty generous with their gelato freebies.

By around this point, our dog was also pretty done with walking in the hot summer sun so we put him in his backpack carrier and he enjoyed the sights from there instead.

At one point we also got free packs of cheese to take home? But holding cheese in the 28 degree sun was not so great. We came up with the genius idea of putting all the packs of cheese together in a bag so they keep cool. It kinda worked?

It was also our friend’s birthday that weekend and we had originally booked reservations at two different restaurants for dinner so we had options. Both ended up not working out and we eventually walked several blocks away from the street party to Castaway Bar & Kitchen. Love that they were dog friendly and even had a little nook for our small party to sit at! Their food portions were MASSIVE and I think our group actually got full off our shared nachos appetizer before our proper meals even came. The service was also lovely!

After dinner, we walked all the way back down to Burrard again from where we were. It was 8:15 PM at that point, so many of the stalls were starting to pack up and folks were starting to leave for the day. We caught a double rainbow in the sky during our walk back!

I managed to find a vinyl from the dollar bins at Zulu Records that I wanted as well. And then we headed off to a park to do some cake cutting!

I got bit by like 3 mosquitos during our 15 minutes in the park. But we got to enjoy this delicious cake from our friend’s wife. She’s literally a master baker. This cake had like 15 layers and was sooo good. A lovely way to round off the night!