Day 9: Vancouver Fun!

We spent all day in Vancouver.

We woke up, after having gone to bed at 2:30, tired. We had a nice breakfast in the hotel pub and hit up the front desk man for tips about where to go in Vancouver. He gave us great advice on a sweet sounding urban park and how to find the 2010 Olympic Torch. Naturally, the next thing we did was to go back to our room and take a nap.

We finally rolled out of the hotel parking lot around 2:30pm to tackle this famed city. We haphazardly circum-navigated our way into downtown Vancouver and discovered something we didn’t think was possible: parking is more expensive here than in Seattle. For less time than we parked in Seattle we paid more money in Vancouver. In one parking garage, ½ and hour of parking was $3.50 with a daily limit of $23.50! Robbers. Nonetheless, we parked and went for a walk around Canada Place: the two convention centers used as a hub for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

We strolled out onto a pier-like deck and saw the bay for a while before finding a quite impressive visitor’s center. They instructed us where to exchange for some Canadian dollars. We did so, and while meandering downtown we stopped at a little restaurant called the Bread Garden: Bakery/Café. We shared a quiche and continued on to find the Olympic Torch.

The torch was a lot of fun to see knowing that only months before had this city been swarmed with athletes, coaches, media and tourists. There was also this killer whale statue thing made out of cubes so that from a distance it looked pixeled even though it was 3-D.

After that we went back to our car. I turned in my left leg as payment for parking. We drove down the way to Stanley Park, one of the great urban parks of the world. We took the puptons out of the car and Nathan hopped on his good leg as we strolled the water-line and let the doggies run and play. Lola spotted the huge flock of geese and had a flash back to the wild turkey at our first campsite. All we needed to do was unleash her and it would’ve been Canadian goose for dinner! (Canadians not happy.)

At one lookout point Nathan was leaning on the 3.5-foot high cement wall and Lola suddenly leaped up onto it as a midway pause before attempting to get to the water 15 feet below. Luckily, Nathan was able to react and close-line the crap out of her back to the ground. One second later and Nathan would have been soaking wet and furious as he retrieved Lola from the beach and water. For the next few minutes, it was game over for puppy #2.

Back at the car, we drove for another 15 minutes through the enormous park to get a glance at the rest of it before heading toward Top of Vancouver Restaurant where we had dinner reservations.

Much like the Seattle Space Needle this facility had a revolving restaurant and an observation level. We made it to our 7:30 reservation and got a table right next to the angled windows. The view of the city and bay was beautiful. Lights were on everywhere, and we spun around two full times during dinner. The most expensive dinner we’ve ever paid for ($150 Canadian), we had a great time and enjoyed the food.

With full bellies we attempted to find our way back to our hotel. Eventually, we found it only after driving (as they say) around our butt crack to get to our elbow. Our friend Cynthia is known to have an innate sense of direction. This must be a feature of all Canadians, because we have found thus far their “mappage” and signage to be sub-par.

This was the first time we’ve stayed in the same place two nights in a row, and I must say, it was nice. Not having to pack/unpack was a load off and the down comforter and pillows at this Best Western were delightful. We went right to bed, happy and ready to tackle driving north in Canada.