The sun rose about 5am, but that didn't do anything for our body clocks. Wide awake at 4am, but then we couldn't keep our eyes open at 9am. We'll adjust eventually.
Spent a fair bit of the morning walking around Vancouver suburbs, not just the CBD mind you, looking for a camera repair place. Looks like I've got a bit of the Jordanian desert inside my camera lens, so every photo I take has a black spot in the middle of it. After walking miles to a camera place that no longer exists, we re-grouped at a nearby Starbucks on their wi-fi, and walked a few more miles to the next one. Luckily he was still operating, and offered to fix it before we needed to leave town.
That out of the way, we walked down to Granville Island which is a large arts, crafts and food market precinct south of the city centre. Looked just like Brendan's photos from his trip. Spent a relaxing day in the sun just mooching about. The food market area was very impressive, with all kinds of things that we don't get at home, or at least are very seasonal. The variety of fruit was huge, including odd things like yellow raspberries and donut peaches - didn't know there were such things. Saw several dog and cat bakeries. Just the place to get your dog's birthday cake, with an extra free treat!
Sometime in the afternoon we caught the river taxi back across to the downtown side and walked around the shoreline back home, past several of the Vancouver beaches. Large numbers of sunbathers on the beach and the shorelines, with the snow covered hills behind them. Where else would you see that? Most of them were lying there in bikinis or shirtless although it was only 20 degrees. I guess when you are used to snow, you lap up any sunshine you can get.
Ventured past the laughing park full of statues of laughing people - obviously not from one of Mandy's jokes, and back to the apartment. Later it was down to the local Safeway to pick up tea which we prepared in the kitchen.
Vancouver is a wonderful city. Very like Melbourne, only a bit nicer really. I can see why they often win the world's most livable city title from us. The city itself is very green - trees and grass everywhere, they are environmentally conscious and recycle everything, they bike often (though it's not Copenhagen) and have electric car recharge stations all over the place. The airport wasn't frenetic. The beaches aren't anywhere near as good, but the skiing makes up for it. The people are friendlier. They walk on one side of the footpath and don't plough through you. Cars never try to beat pedestrians at traffic lights. Cyclists stay in car lanes behind cars and don't get threatened, but equally they don't try to make extra lanes and plant themselves in front of cars. Every time we stop to look at a map, somebody always offers us help. It has a cafe and eat out culture. Don't know what it's like in Winter, but I think it would be a great place to live.
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