We arrived in Vancouver midday and went to our Hotel which was the YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association). It was a pretty nice place, basically a normal hotel room without a bathroom. We had a sink and mirror though. It was a great price and comfortable safe place to stay. So we put our stuff down and went exploring. We hit Gastown first. Gastown was the first downtown area of Vancouver. It is a very touristy area with tourist shops and gelato places. We walked to the convention center from there which is the place where the cruise liners come to unload / load passengers. it was really cool and amazing seeing the enormous ships maneuvering around such a small area. This is the same side of Vancouver where the shipping boats come in.
After there we walked across Vancouver's peninsula to Sunset Beach. We walked around the beach, saw tons of people laying out playing volleyball and frisbee. We saw this restaurant over looking the beach and we decided to get a drink (it had been a long day). The place was pretty nice a little more expensive than we wanted but its alright, seeing a douche get kicked out of this classy restaurant for hitting on the hostess was pretty funny and kind of made up for it, kind of. We left to go get some cheaper drinks and food.
At this next place, a homeless man walks up asking for a some change, after saying no, he says "I normally don't do this but, you want to buy some Pot or Ecstasy?" needless to say we declined and he eventually left. We found our way back to hotel and made it an early night cause it was a long day.
The next day we found a coupon for bike rentals. We rented some bikes for the day and decided to ride around Stanley Park. This is a huge park at the Northwest end of Vancouver's downtown. It was really cool, most of it was along the water. There were tons of people out riding bikes or rollerblading or walking. This park has tons of attractions, golf course, aquarium, a lagoon, and little tourist monuments among other things.
We stopped at the aquarium before lunch. This place was great, I love aquariums, its not the best I've been to but it was nice. While we were in there an aquarium worker came out of a room and said a spiel about how they had a dead shark and they need to find out what killed it, essentially a shark CSI. We went in to watch this presentation which had a ton of little kids in there as well. She started cutting this thing open and as going through it she cut out the heart, the stomach, liver, intestines, etc... It was pretty disgusting but kind of cool at the same time. We left here, finished riding around the park and decided to take the ferry across to North Vancouver and ride around some more. There was not much up there so after about 20 minutes we took the ferry back across and turned in the bikes.
We then went to eat dinner and headed out to find a bar to get our drink on. It was Monday and well there was not much of a bar scene going on, which was kind of strange cause it seemed like we were in the ritzy area. But we found a pool hall at the end of a long row of restaurants. We played some pool for a few hours and pitchers with only a few other people in the place, then around 1 pm the people just started flocking into this place, so maybe we just started our night a little earlier than people in Vancouver. By the way, Mason I think was kicking my butt like 11 games to 8 or something like that. But that's alright, I think I'm still a few games up on him in chess.
The third day we eventually woke up and walked around some streets we had not been down and saw some pretty interesting buildings such as the public library and Robson Square and the Vancouver Courthouse (sorry can't find good photo's of these). We made our way to Burrard Bridge which goes across False Creek which is a little inlet which is the main port for smaller boats (sail boats, yachts, even canoe's and kayak's). Our goal today was to go to Vanier Park, Kitsilano Beach, and Granville Island. First was Vanier Park, which is across the False Creek from Sunset Beach. It had some interesting art pieces and HR Macmillan Space Center (which is the one that has the huge chrome crab that looks like its getting an enema). We walked down the park and beach around to Kitsilano Beach which had tons of sun bathers and swimmers and volleyball playing. This was apparently the place to be in Vancouver (not surprising it was close to the University of British Columbia). We eventually made our way to Granville Island. I'm not sure how to discribe this place. It was underneath a large bridge, it had a kids park, another park with hill for viewing the city, an art and film school, many shops and restaurants, and a public market. The Granville Island Public Market was huge, you could find just about any type fresh meat, seafood, vegetable, bread, cheese, or spice you would ever want. It was amazing, I wish we had something even half this size down here, it would be fantastic.
We ate dinner on the island at the Keg Steakhouse and Bar. It was great, first time I'd ever had Alaskan King Crab, and holy crap, fantastic. It was hella expensive but damn was it good. We took a ferry cab across to False Creek and walked around the Southeast side of the Peninsula where there are a ton of really cool condo towers. We eventually made it back to our hotel because we were going to get up early and go hiking our last day.
On our last day in Vancouver we walked around Chinatown first. Something that will stick in my mind forever would be the smell of the "dried" seafood market. This was perhaps one of the most disgusting smells I have ever smelled in my life. I love seafood, but the fact that anybody has the stomach to sell this stuff much less eat it is amazing to me. By dried seafood, I mean shrimp, oysters, calamari, squid, anchovy, herring, etc... Apparently this is a very common food in coastal Asian countries.
After that we took the ferry across to North Vancouver, hopped on a bus and took it about 10 or 15 minutes north to Lynn Canyon park to see the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge. We were encouraged to go here as opposed to the Capilano Suspension bridge because it is free and its more nature like, Capilano is more touristy. Lynn Canyon was wonderful, just minutes from the large city of Vancouver was this amazing park with tons of waterfalls and hiking. This was one of our favorite parts Vancouver. It was also the one place where we could do some real adventuring and my only real "oh shit" moment. There were fences all over the place saying not to jump the fence. So we didn't, but we did bend the rules. We walked down to where you could go around the fence. So then when I climbed over the fence to get back on the trail, I get yelled at for being on the other side. Second time we went around the fence I slipped on a moist rock and slammed my camera lens into the rock. I turned my lens and there was a lot of friction and it cracked twice then turned easily. Works like it did before, man was I lucky.
We headed back to Vancouver early afternoon to catch a movie (Wall-E) and get to bed kind of early because our bus leaves the next morning at 5 am. That night though I wanted to get some long exposure night shots of the city and some pretty interesting condo towers a block from our hotel.
The next morning (Thursday) we woke up at around 5 am to walk a mile or so across an interstate overpass to catch our bus that leaves from the train station. My heart got beating really hard though because we could not find where the bus stop was. It was a 12" x 12" sign about 12' up on a light pole. Needless to say I was about to start freaking out. But we made it, bus arrived about 5 minutes after we got there. It is about a 3 hour bus ride to Seattle to catch our train to Portland.
Well, I finally got my Vancouver photo's on flickr. When I get the Portland photo's on I'll be done and write the last post about our trip. Enjoy.
Troeger
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