Lion's Gate Bridge, Vancouver*

We had a wonderful dinner last night at a restaurant on the waterfront. It was noisy and crowded and we didn't have a reservation, but we found seats at the food prep bar where we could watch the young chefs prepare a wide variety of food with efficiency and dispatch. They were the only people in the place who weren't talking!

Today was devoted to Stanley Park and we were lucky with both the weather and the blooming tulips, rhododendrons and numerous other flowers in the beautifully planted gardens. Stanley Park is a peninsula which sticks out into the harbor, so a walk around the seawall affords views of the shipping lanes, the hills of West Vancouver, with the mountains of Whistler behind on one side, and beaches and the high rises of downtown Vancouver on the other.

I always enjoy walking in a park which is being well used. We saw bicyclists, runners, skaters, people doing all manner of exercises and small children. Two children in colorful bucket hats playing on the beach reminded me of a Mary Cassatt painting, and a small boy in a red crash helmet "riding" a tiny two wheeler with no pedals hell bent across the grass after a squirrel made us all smile.

Over a leisurely lunch at The Fish House restaurant in the park, I marveled once again at the fact that parks in Canada, provide so many options for dining, from a snack bar to a fine restaurant,. Compared to the abysmal fare Americans have come to expect in their National Parks, we are constantly delighted at restaurants we have discovered in Canadian parks, from local ones like Stanley Park to the Parks Canada ones in Lake Louise and even at back country lodges.

Walking back to the car after lunch we saw a surprising amount of wildlife for such an urban park--swans, herons, and turtles, geese and ducks, squirrels and even a raccoon. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day....

* A cargo ship passing under the bridge with its attending tug following.