Vancouver walkabout

Three days in a row the weather was good in Vancouver - sensational! The SkyTrain is not far from Karin & Adam's place, so we took that into the city on Monday morning. When I say the weather was good, I mean it wasn't raining - the day alternated between sun, overcast & wind of varying degrees. There's a good walk around the waterfront with informative historical information boards - we took this towards the marina & Stanely Park. This area is also home to many seaplanes, it was neat to see so many landing & taking-off - something I haven't seen much of for quite some time.

All that Albertan sulphur provides a bit of brightness

Vancouver is really nice, especially with a bit of sun, but there is a proliferation of glass apartment buildings & I think these are awful. There are all very samey & lack any sort of character. While the metro system is great, the roads system shows a complete lack of forethought when you try to drive through what is quite a small city - no/few highways, how was that a good idea?

Stanley Park was well worth a big walk around. We followed the seawall counter-clockwise for a few kilometres taking in the Nine O'Clock Gun, a lighthouse & the Girl in Wetsuit statue (the grumpy Danes wouldn't let them call it a mermaid, so the tail became flippers) before heading in to the center of the park.

Just as we were leaving the park, much to Valerie's delight, we came across a family of very docile racoons. I'd seen a couple on earlier rides, but racoons were one of the animals Valerie was still hoping to see in the wild.

We didn't see any beavers at Beaver Lake, just water-lillies.

We walked alongside the very pleasant & popular English Bay towards another purported GT dealer in search of a dogbone for my bike. That was fruitless once again - but Valerie did manage to get a coffee-cup holder for Karin's bike. Not sure they would be a good idea on a mountain-bike, but apparently it's the thing to have on your Vancouver city bike.