Cycling adventure #2

We decided to hire a couple of bikes so that we could go with Leanne on a cycle ride around the seawall to Stanley Park and back.  What fun!  The bikes were excellent and we cycled about 20km.

The seawall

It was a beautiful sunny day and there was lots to see along the way.  Including...a family of raccoons.



We stopped at the Lost Lagoon to admire the view.

Our trusty steeds

 

The famous Stanley Park Totem Poles

 We cycled under the Lion's Gate Bridge.
 

The Lion's Gate Bridge

 

We then rode a short way on one of the forest trails. I liked the bright red fire hydrants.

On the way home we headed past the a few nice beaches towards the Burrard Bridge, through Yaletown, and back towards the cycle hire place.

And, of course, we finished the day off  with a well earned pint at Leanne's local pub, The Whip.





Meet Hamish's aunt - Margaret Pryce

Today Leanne and I went and did some errands in her old neighbourhood.  I got to see a couple of places she had lived in Vancouver before the current loft apartment, her old vege store, the fabulous organic store where we found reasonably priced New Zealand racks of lamb, and a few other places around the eastern part of Vancouver. 

I was glad I was not driving on the 'right' side of the road as it was scary enough just being a passenger. This is not a reflection on Leanne's driving, but of all the other cars, bigger cars, 4WDs, mad drivers, buses, cyclists and pedestrians that you have to contend with driving in a big city like Van.

While Leanne and I were driving around, Hamish met up with Teresa and they went to visit Hamish's Aunt Margaret, Teresa's Mum, who is living in a retirement home near Teresa and Mario's house.

Margaret got hit by a car while walking to a yoga class a few years ago, which has had a noticeable impact on her physical health and memory. Hamish and Teresa took Margaret for a stroll to the nearby Van Dusen Botanical Garden. Hamish was very pleased that his aunt Margaret remembered who he was, but said it was very sad to see how much she had aged since being involved in the car accident, and since he last saw her.

Teresa and her Mum

Hamish with his aunt Margaret

Later in the afternoon Hamish and I met up at Granville Island for another quick look around the market and then went and had a beer and a wine and enjoyed the lovely sunshine before catching the bus home.

The public transport system in Vancouver is fantastic. Easy to get around and very efficient. Auckland has a lot to learn!

Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and Park

It was still raining a little after we had finished looking around Gastown, but we decided to walk home rather than take the bus, and go via Chinatown so that we could pop into the the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and Park.  We went to the park part, which had free entry (bonus!), and was described in our guide books as "dowdier than its neighbour" (the garden part). I disagree - I thought it was lovely and a very pleasant, serene and beautiful little park to have in the midst of all the high rise Vancouver buildings and busy, noisy Chinatown.

There were mosaics of the Chinese zodiac animals on the ground at the entrance to the park
 Guess which animal sign I am...Sssssss!

Vancouver seems to have an abundance of very large and very noisy crows everywhere, 
but  they are difficult to photograph

Intriguing words on the building across from the Chinese garden and park

Steamy Gastown

Today's plan was to go to Gastown, an old historic district in Vancouver, which Mum had recommended from her trip to Vancouver two years ago.  When we got into the city it was raining heavily - but only the second day that we had packed our rain coats for a day's outing since we had arrived - so we decided to have a look around the shopping mall that Hamish's cousin Conrad and his sons' from Penticton had told us about – the Pacific Centre. What a huge, expansive, expensive maze of a shopping mall!

We soon found the Apple store and had a good look at all the cool new Apple toys. The store was really well laid out with lots of iPods, iPads, iPhones, iEverything out on display for people to have a play with, and lots of iApple staff on hand to help out. What a great store. And what extremely helpful and patient techy Apple staff. Nice!

At Gastown we were real tourists and waited for the Gastown Steam Clock landmark to let off steam on the quarter-hour and took lots of touristy type photos. 

The steam clock was actually built in 1977 to resemble London's Big Ben.

Gastown steam clock

Letting off steam

Hamish with the statue of Gassy Jack
(An Englishman who was one of Vancouver's founding fathers)

Time for Hamish's photo with a beer shot for the day, so we went to the Steamworks Brewing Company for a drink and a small bite to eat.

Getting artsy

On Sunday afternoon we went with Leanne and Susannah to the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG). I love the name of their website - Vanart. Very cool. In fact I am beginning to love the city abbreviation of 'Van' in everything, which is strange for me, as usually I like everything to be spelt out in full, and spelt correctly, at all times!

We all went on a short 'Hot Spot' tour of one of the current exhibitions called 'Bearing Witness', which was very good and quite thought provoking.  I then had a look at some of the work of Canadian artist, Emily Carr, who I had heard of, but never seen any of her work before.

The gallery was in a beautiful old building and well worth a visit. After a good look around the gallery, we went to the VAG cafe where Leanne, Susannah and I shared a lovely bottle of a Canadian white wine. This is where I began taking photographs of Hamish enjoying sampling the local Canadian beer. Today's brew was the (not quite so local) Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, all the way from Nova Scotia.

The image below will soon become quite familiar on my Blog, as we attempt to take pics of the new and different beers that Hamish samples while in Canada and the US.

Hamish with today's brew - Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale 

Time for some photographs at the Vancouver Art Gallery cafe.

Inside...

And outside...

Who took this photo? We look blurry!

We then decided to have dinner at a restaurant in the city that Leanne and Susannah like called Milestones. We all shared  a few dishes of really yummy food and it was a fun evening catching up.  Before we caught the bus home we went to a huge bookstore on Robson Street (I think), where L and Sz got a coffee.

Who are these two crazy chicks?

The bus ride home was interesting, with two men having some sort of disagreement and one banging his umbrella very loudly on the floor of the bus, just to annoy the other. We came to learn that you get to see some interesting characters while riding on the Vancouver buses. Leanne's rule number one was 'never make eye contact', which was quite hard for me, given that some of the people, sights and behaviours we saw on the buses I found behaviourally quite fascinating and it just made me want to people watch even more.



The Van loft apartment

Leanne and Susannah's loft apartment was near an area called Mount Pleasant, or SoMa (South Main). It's a funky apartment which suits their photography business really well, and has a great space outside where Susannah can take her head shots.

Here are a few pics of the inside and outside of the loft.

Leanne beating up some delicious banana bread

Home again

I am leaping ahead in time on my Blog today as we are now back in Auckland and back at work. Being back home is not nearly as bad as having to get back into the routine of going to work and sit in front of a computer all day.

My Blog is very out of date but I will try and publish a new post every couple of days to try and catch up to the current date.  I also have 1170 photographs to sort through and choose which ones to post on this Blog...and delete some of the not so good squirrel photos.

We had a wonderful time on our Canada/US holiday - thanks to all the family and friends who looked after us, fed and watered us, showed us around and generally made sure that we had a fantastic time.

We will be back...one day!

Meet the Pryce cousins

Hamish has a strong family connection to Canada. His dad Peter's late older brother Colin moved to Canada from India and the UK many years ago and met and married Margaret. They had four children, so Hamish has four cousins in this part of the world - Conrad in Penticton, BC, Judy in Victoria, BC, Teresa in Vancouver, BC, and Paula in Boston, Massachusetts, US.

Teresa had invited us over for dinner on Saturday night to meet up with her family and Hamish's other cousin Conrad who was visiting Vancouver from Penticton, and his family. We had a wander around the lovely South Granville shops with Teresa before heading to Teresa and Mario's large home in leafy Shaughnessy for dinner.

The shops had lots of Thanksgiving and Halloween themed window displays - we don't celebrate either of these occasions in nearly the same way at home, so I was quite fascinated by all of the elaborate displays.

Teresa and Mario grow many of their own fruit and vegetables, so we had fresh produce for dinner from their garden...and homemade berry ice cream. Yum.

It was a great extended family reunion, particularly for Hamish, who had not seen any of his Canadian cousins or their families since 1997. Everyone had grown up, or looked older etc. Still all young at heart though!

Hamish, Conrad and Jordan

The Pryce cousins and their families

The beautiful big city in 'Beautiful BC'

Vancouver is a very beautiful city with tall buildings, condominiums (condos) and lots of green spaces, nice gardens and parks. 

We went into the city with Leanne on our first full day in Vancouver as she had a photography shoot to do. We were still feeling jet lagged, so got a little lost. We managed to find our way to Robson Street, and down towards Canada Place and the Convention Centre, but we didn't really work out what was where exactly...well, at least I didn't!

Hamish probably did, but he has the advantage of having a better sense of direction than I do... and this is, after all, his third visit to beautiful BC!

The next day we walked around the seawall to Granville Island. This was really great and I loved looking at all the outdoor art, sculptures and views that we saw along the seawall.

Today was one of the few days during our three weeks in Vancouver that we needed to wear our raincoats...but on this day I wished that we hadn't bought the same style of coat. Matching raincoats...hmmm?! We looked a bit like a pair of walking advertisements for couples Kathmandu clothing. Not a good look!!

At Granville Island we checked out the fantastic Public Market, watched the buskers, did some people watching, had a bite to eat for lunch, bought some brocollini for dinner...and I wished I had room in my suitcase (and spare $CAD) to buy lots of nice pottery stuff.  

We went to the Granville Island Brewing place, where Hamish began his 'when in Rome' almost daily sample of local brews, only we were in Canada, not Italy. It didn't seem to matter to Hamish, who enjoyed his three sample tastings of the Granville Island beer.

After the liquid refreshments, we walked around to the next bay to buy some halibut for dinner at the fishing village. Alas, the fisherman was still out fishing. Oh no! We had promised Susannah that we would bring her home some halibut to cook for dinner, so I decided to run back to the Granville Island Public Market to buy some fish. Then I ran back to meet Hamish at the fishing place...phew... a lot of exercise done today.  

And then we walked up and over the Burrard bridge, with the emphasis on the 'rrard', which was a very impressive structure, and had lots of great photo opportunities.

Little did I know that today's walk would be the start of many many more days of walking, walking, walking and very tired legs and feet.

These feet were made for walking...

An unexpected bonus of this trip is that we will be getting fitter before the New Zealand summer has even started!!

We met Leanne and Susannah at the Aquatic Centre below the Burrard bridge where they had been swimming lengths for a ride home, and then another lovely meal cooked by Susannah - fresh halibut, which was delicious. A very nice end to day three in Vancouver.