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.