After our hike in Wells Gray Provincial Park, Amy arranged for a couple of days in Vancouver to spend time relaxing before heading home... it was a nice visit.
The drive down from Kamloops was easy for most of the way, but the traffic was heavy towards the end-- also, a section of the route we'd picked out ahead of time via Google was closed (there was construction on one of the key highways), so we had to sort of 'wing it' once we got closer. We also had to go over a toll bridge (no human toll collectors, however, only cameras, so you have to go online to make the payment).
We eventually wound up in "Kitsilano", a neighborhood southwest of the main Vancouver downtown area. Allan had recommended visiting 4th street, and had suggested a place to eat: "Sophie's Cosmic Cafe". It was a fun meal; both the food and atmosphere were enjoyable. Sophie's is a funky/artsy diner type place-- the decor reminded me of the Houston "Art Car" festival in some weird way. I ordered a BLT, Amy had felafel, and the kids had burgers of some sort. Tasty. Picture just outside Sophie's:
Afterwards we had fun wandering up and down 4th street visiting the shops; there were some cool places to visit. We investigated a store called Icebreaker that sells clothing from New Zealand made from merino wool (lovely stuff but very expensive). Amy also found a cool store that had all sorts of interesting dried nuts and fruits, including a couple of ingredients for a recipe from the "Jerusalem" cookbook that she's had a hard time finding near Lexington.
It would have been nice to spend more time there, but we had arranged to return the rental car that same afternoon, so we packed up our stuff and drove down the airport, dropped off the car, and then took a cab back up to the "Hotel Landis" in downtown Vancouver. The hotel room was absolutely ideal; separate bedrooms for the kids and the adults connecting to a nice light living area with floor-to-ceiling windows and a nice view out into the city (Amy found a really nice one).
This vacation I decided to bring a laptop so as to be able to do email and search the web while we were on vacation-- this turned out to be very useful, but I had to fight for time on the machine with Lydia, who was using it to work on her fiction story via Google Docs. Photo:
We had a nice dinner that evening at the "Blue Water Cafe" -- a chic / upscale seafood place about 10 blocks or so from the hotel. Food was very good -- Amy and Ethan had sablefish with a fantastic miso glaze, Lydia and I also had fish dishes that were quite good. We also decided to share a couple of sushi appetizers-- Ethan liked the ones with crab, but was not so hot on the marinated tuna sashimi thing (in fact I think I was the only one who had any of that one).
The next day: biking! Amy signed us up for a nice big long tour of the city; here we are getting ready to embark. The Landis hotel has a free shuttle service that will drop you off anywhere in the city (if you reserve ahead of time) -- we took advantage of that to get to our tour. Fantastic weather: sunny, breezy, not too hot. The rental place had really nice bicycles for a change, too: Giant "city bikes" that looked very new (I was glad about that).
Our tour started out at the north edge of the city just below Stanley Park, then looped up around the eastern edge of the park, cut across the middle to the western side, and then back down again. Our tour group leader was Ifne, an extremely verbal/chatty/fast-talking woman who had lived in Vancouver for a while. The other riders were from New York, Houston, and Italy (no other Canadians). View at the start of the ride to the east:
And to the south. The odd-looking building the foreground is the new "green" convention center, which is interesting in that it has plants + grass planted on the roof (!).
Our tour guide on the right, Ifne:
Taking a break:
View to the north edge of the park, the Lions Gate bridge going over to North Vancouver. Way back when Amy and I visited the first time, I actually walked this bridge (nearly froze -- it was quite cold and windy a the time):
Not sure where this weird facial expression came from-- I am reminded of the character Wallace from "Wallace and Gromit":
As we biked south along the western edge of Stanley Park, we went past this thing-- it's the hotel that Amy and I stayed at the last time we visited Vancouver:
View looking west into the harbor from the hotel above-- lovely clear day:
... and of course the obligatory "selfie", with Ethan doing his best to take over the photo:
I have to say that Vancouver is a really bike-friendly city now. There are bike lanes all over the place, even in situations where you would not ordinarily see them (for example, going across busy bridges). Our tour guide told us that the traffic levels (normalized cars per road per day or something like that) are still at 1970's levels in spite of the fact that the population in the city has increased hugely.
After leaving Stanley Park we hugged the south end of "downtown" Vancouver for a bit and then crossed over to Granville Island, where we had lunch. Here is a photo across the creek looking north; the colorful little boat is one of the "Aquabuses" that you can take to get from one side to the other (they are inexpensive and fun).
The skyline of Vancouver has changed pretty radically since the last time that Amy and I were visiting (20ish years ago). Tons more high-rise buildings.
Our tour guide told us that Vancouver has a peculiar real estate market-- there has been a huge building boom in the last 10-20 years, mostly condos and other big apartment buildings, but many of the buildings look empty (not a lot of people going in or out). Apparently people buy the condos / apartments as investments and never actually live in them-- they are strictly for speculation. This means that it is actually quite hard to find a place to live (especially an affordable place to live) even though the occupancy rate quite low. If the stats are to be believed, about 25 percent of all apartments are either empty or occupied by non-residents.
Chinatown:
Back on the north edge of downtown again, at the border of Gastown:
Near the convention center they have a sea-plane terminal, which is kind of interesting:
The bikers:
Time to ham it up:
We finished our tour at about 3:45 and then cabbed it back to the hotel for showers and some down time.
We decided to head back to Granville island again for dinner and to take in a comedy show. Here we are after the meal having ice cream. I kind of like this sequence (Ethan is showing his total concentration and focus on his dessert):
The comedy/improv show was fun, although a bit predictable at times. It featured a "travel" theme...
The next day the kids slept in, so Amy and took advantage and snuck down to the gym for a workout, then got organized/packed and had breakfast. The kids were ready to head out by about 9:20 -- it was such a nice day that we decided to rent bikes again. We walked down to the local bike place (the so-called "Reckless" bike shop) and rented bikes for the group (these ones unfortunately not quite so nice as the previous batch, oh well).
We crossed over the Burrard St bridge and biked along the waterline to the west out to the University of B.C. campus to visit the Museum of Anthropology, about several people had recommended. It was about a 6 or 7 mile ride (but with a huge uphill to deal with for the last 3/4 of a mile or so).
This is about halfway to the museum, view to the northeast, with the downtown towers visible:
Museum was recently redone; it is a huge concrete and glass construction with lots of skylights. They have a huge collection of artifacts from the native ("First Nations") peoples of the area, especially the Haida, Musqueum, and Kwakwaka'wakw tribes. Arrived at the museum just in time to latch onto a guided tour, so we got to hear a bit of history about the area and the interactions between the European settlers and the first nations peoples from 1850 - 1950 or so.
Most of the wooden pieces in the museum are red cedar-- this was the so-called "tree of life" for the people living in these areas when the Europeans arrived:
A more modern piece:
I liked this one, not sure why:
There was a fascinating set of blurbs about the so-called "bent-wood" boxes that they constructed from a single cedar plank that was boiled / steamed and then carefully formed into a box shape. Pretty cool stuff.
This gallery contains the famous "Raven and First Men" work by Bill Reid (one of his sculptures also appears on the Canadian $20 bill). It started out as a metal work (silver or gold?), then it was commissioned and re-done as a larger piece. The wood is yellow cedar:
After our museum visit we biked around the University of B.C. campus for a while -- there were a couple of cafe type lunch places that had been written up in Yelp, but we had a hard time finding any of them (I think they may only be open during the school year). Instead we hopped on our bikes and headed back down to Kitsilano. Halfway there:
The neighborhoods we biked through were lovely -- it looked like a really nice area to live.
For lunch we ate at "Fable", another 4th street eatery. It was another excellent meal; the menu was brunch, so Lydia ordered an omelet, I had Eggs Benedict, Amy had some sort of muffin + egg combo, and Ethan ordered "Johnnycakes" with pulled pork. It was delicious -- best eggs benedict I have had in some time (the potatoes on the side were superb as well). We did a little more window shopping and then biked our way back to the hotel.
Lydia at work on her story:
We had an extended session in the pool (plus reading the Sunday New York Times, which we managed to find a copy of).
Off to the airport the next day-- we were all ready to get back home at that point. The flight back was fairly uneventful, thank goodness.
I can see why so many people visit Vancouver and then wind up deciding to stay there for good -- it is a lovely city in many ways; I'm glad we had a chance to spend some time there.
