Le Soleil Hotel
Vancouver, BC

Vancouver, streets shiny from an autumn rain, welcomed us with the sun sparking life into its snow-crested mountains and bestowing a flush on its red maples and golden aspens. Our hotel, Le Soleil also greeted us brightly. The sun is both their seal and their point of view. Decorated in the sun’s gold and crimson hues, they used the emblem of the Sun King (Louis the XIV) as their own, but their congenial and competent employees were not, merci dieu, little-merry-sunshines.

I expect it was all those suns that drew us to Le Soleil. We had come to Vancouver to celebrate my sister’s fiftieth birthday and wanted somewhere both special and a short flight from her home in western Washington. A busy working mother of two, we’d have only a weekend and we wanted to make the most of it. Her name is Alison, but everyone calls her Sunny.

As we checked in, we got a feel for Le Soleil’s style. A special gizmo played "Happy Birthday" as we were asked if we preferred a crimson or gold suite? A healthful snack or chocolate? A tub or fancy shower—and so it went until they knew exactly what temperature we wanted our room. I rarely go gaga over temperature controls, but this one could be switched between centigrade to Fahrenheit. I figured if I watched it long enough, I might actually get a feel for how cold (or warm?) it is when its 30 degrees centigrade, but I didn’t.

We had a good laugh pouring through our fruit basket, potions and lotions and mini-bar offerings. Not that the fruit was funny, nor the sumptuous Aveda products, but we loved figuring out who we might present with an "intimacy kit" with its safe sex accoutrements. Our brother? Sunny’s teenage son? Surely not our widowed mother!

I doubt Le Soleil had sisters in mind when they designed their suites, but we could have used one when we were growing up. Two rooms each with a big TV allowed us to forego the use of the elaborate TV statutes we had worked out as kids to decide which TV show we were going to watch when our parents weren’t home. And while Le Soleil provides only one marble-and-orchid-endowed bathroom, there were enough other attractive and well-lit spaces to primp and prep that we didn’t have to institute the bathroom-use code either.

The décor was definitely black tie, but not starchy. Crimson silk brocaded with golden cornucopia covered the sofa. An Empire-style burnished cherry armoire trimmed in ebony, contained the TV. A mirrored wall in each room increased the feeling of space and in each there hung an amusing collage. One was of Moet and Chandon champagne and it’s trappings with the sayings:

…ça c’est la vraie eau de vie
pas simplement un luxe
mais use nécessité, naturellement…

…it’s the true water of life
not simply a luxury
but naturally a necessity…

In the bedroom, a more understated crimson and gold silk dressed the beds and their headboards. A well-supplied desk (high speed net access, speaker phone, fax/printer, and personal stationery) made this a great place for a working woman, but we were women who lunched, at least for the weekend.

And shopped. Another reason we choose Le Soleil, we were right in the middle of Vancouver’s downtown and could walk to everything. Saturday morning we caffeine-and-carbo-loaded at Oritalia, Le Soleil’s restaurant. We just had cereal. Sunny had oven-roasted granola with dried cherries and blueberries and I had caramelized apple and cinnamon oatmeal with maple syrup. We stopped by the concierge’s desk and found him most helpful. He determined the type and price range of what we were after and then made some great recommendations. He also supplied us with le Soleil’s exclusive "suite deal" a brochure which, along with our Le Soleil room key would enable us to receive discounts at 37 of Vancouver’s finest shopping venues.

Up one street and down the next we poked. There were dozens of interesting stores and trendy cafes for latte. We were hoping that shopping in Canadian dollars would produce a big savings, it did—sometimes.

We did indeed lunch, at what we imagined to be a very "ladies who lunch" kind of place—the pink stucco Sutton Place Hotel. It was a lovely place to get out of the rain (two days of sun would have been pushing it for Vancouver) and we enjoyed our relaxing lunch. Thus fortified we opened our umbrellas and took to the streets until we were finally beat a retreat to Le Soleil.

While critiquing our purchases, we devoured our fruit, cracked out the drinks from the mini-bar and then got into the crackers, smoked salmon and cheese. By the time we were done, just as Mom would have cautioned us, we were too full for dinner. Sunny had discovered the movie "Maverick" with James Garner was going to be on television. The old "Maverick" TV show was dear to our hearts, because we could watch it even when our parents were home, so our evening’s plans were set.

Waiting for "Maverick" to begin, "What do you suppose," we pondered, "the Fuji apple beignets with bourbon ice cream and caramel sauce might taste like?" Last night after dinner at Oritalia we just didn’t have room for them. They weren’t on the room service menu, but when asked, Oritalia gladly brought us some and were the perfect pre-theater treat.

Sunday brought fair weather, so we went off by cab to catch the ferry to the Granville Island Market. We had precise instructions from the concierge, but something went amok and we ended up at the other side of town amongst the Teflon-coated sails of Canada Place, so we opted for a walk and brunch. Canada Place, built as the Canadian Pavilion for Expo ‘86, now houses the Vancouver’s convention center and the Pan Pacific Hotel. The hotel’s Café Pacifica with great view over the Burrard Inlet was serving a buffet brunch which was, well, a buffet brunch. Canada Place has a deck like a ship with majestic views across the bay to the West Coast mountains and the forested Stanley Park, named after Lord Stanley of Stanley Cup fame.

We walked back to what we now considered not Le, but Notre Soleil, congratulating ourselves on having found such a warm and welcoming spot to usher in Sunny’s second half century.

Kate Crawford    January  2002

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Here's Le Soleil's website.