Taking Off

Vancouver, Day 8

Phew! Today's been a busy one.

A return to the Red Umbrella Café for brunch then back to Main Street to mooch about some of the funky shops in the Mount Pleasant area. Lots of bike shops, vintage clothing stores, coffee shops and bookshops including Pulp Fiction, which is well worth a visit.

After that, it was back Downtown for the evening. Following last night's great meal at Meet on Main, we decided to visit its sister restaurant, Meet in Gastown. The food was equally great but it was much more tourist-y and the ambience wasn't quite as good.

The restaurant was just a few minutes walk away from the Firehall Arts Centre where we went to see 'Thus Spoke...' A dance/spoken word mash-up which is part of the Dancing on the Edge festival of contemporary dance. It was a brilliant piece, sometimes hilarious, sometimes profound, always engaging - performed by 4 dancers/actors from Montreal http://www.dancingontheedge.org/program/thus-spoke/

After the show we wandered about Downtown and took in the sights and sounds of Friday night! By chance, we stumbled upon the opening night of this year's Vancouver Mad Pride art exhibition, 'Mad Pride: Mad City' at the Gallery Gachet on East Cordova St http://gachet.org

This was a big thrill for me as I'm involved in co-ordinating Liverpool Mad Pride and Liverpool's annual mental health-related art exhibition. The Vancouver show had some amazing pieces in it and inspired me anew!

Afterwards we fell into conversation with a local shop worker who was on her break, and had a fascinating chat with her about Vancouver's housing crisis, the EU/referendum fallout and much else besides.

Further wandering took us past an al fresco ballroom dancing exhibition in which elderly Chinese couples were proving themselves to be extremely fleet of foot!

And then it was about time to head home.

It's been a warm day with a lot of beautiful low cloud over the mountains. As you can see.


Today's Canadian musical selection is by the enigmatic Mary Margaret O'Hara www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z14wPTz6PdY