Vancouver

Following on from yesterday’s post, we had deliberately walked around Vancouver in the evening hoping to see it at its best, as we had seen the weather forecast for today; unfortunately, the forecast was not wrong. The rain has been relentlessly chucking it down all day.
So, maybe not the day we had hoped we might spend for our one full day in Vancouver, but we made the most of it.

First thing in the morning, we took a bus tour around the city, which let us see several of the city’s ‘greatest hits’ places.
The massive Stanley Park [ever-so-slightly larger than New York’s Central Park, apparently] was our first stop. We grabbed some breakfast and saw the totem poles.  Interestingly, there’s a plaque beside them headed ‘Indian Totem Poles’ – interesting because we’ve not heard the word ‘Indian’ all week; the references have all been to First Nations peoples.
The text on the plaque reads: The totem was the British Columbia Indian’s ‘coat of arms’. Totem poles are unique to the northwest coast of B.C [British Columbia] and Lower Alaska. They were carved from Western Red Cedar and each carving tells of a real or mythical event. They were not idols, nor were they worshipped. Each carving on each pole has a meaning. The eagle represents the kingdom of the air, the whale the lordship of the sea, the wolf the genius of the land and the frog the transitional link between land and sea.
 
After Stanley Park we had a brief stop in the Gastown area to see the famous Gastown Steam Clock – the world’s first steam powered clock. The live steam winds the weights and blows the whistles.
We then went over to Granville Island and spent some time at the indoor Public Market there. We did partake of some of the artisan bakery products there (it would have been rude not to) – they even had ‘Empire cookies’ – just like our own Scottish Empire biscuits!
To while away some time in the afternoon, we caught the local public transit Skytrain (a bit like London’s DLR) to Science World, a science centre that’s a legacy of Expo86. Lots of interesting interactive displays and live demonstrations. We then caught the Skytrain back to the Gastown area and spent some time looking around there again.
We had planned that we would go out to a nice restaurant in the evening, but with it being so wet still it didn’t seem worth doing that, so we’ve eaten in the hotel’s excellent restaurant instead.

So all in all another good day, even if not what we’d originally planned it to be.