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So it's another day and we aren't going to let the b******s win so it's up and at it. We drove the short distance to Stanley Park which is pretty fab, right on the edge of the city it has 1,000 acres, three times the size of Hyde Park in London. Within the park there's heaps of green spaces, an aquarium, beaches, sound stage, cycling and walking tracks. We walked about 8k, checked out some awesome totem poles and beaches. The beaches are littered with small opened mussels so we assume some sort of aquatic critter (seals, otters, sea lions?) loves them!
The park was bustling due in part to a fun walk to raise money for a YWCA charity and cos the people of Vancouver were out in force to soak up the last of the summer sun. There were many cyclists, rollerbladers and walkers.
At the sound stage there was a big gig and parks were all taken for miles so a possible trip to the aquarium got shelved for another time.
There were a lot of geese just on the sand at the beaches & some herons and shags fishing.
It was a wonderful smoke free environment due to city by laws bless them lol it seems as though just about everyone in Vancouver is a smoker, specially the young women for some reason....
From the park we tried to head to English Bay but had zero luck getting a park so for now had to settle with a drive through :-( There were some very cool larger than life statues of laughing men which are sure to raise a smile from anyone. The street venders selling food were doing a roaring trade and have to admit, the food smelt great.
The traffic continued to be seriously heavy all down trendy maple tree lined Denman st with all its cafés and up Robson St which was mostly upmarket shops and restaurants.
Deciding it was zero fun fighting the traffic looking for a park anywhere today we headed back to our place for lunch and put our feet up for a couple of hours.
Refuelled and rested we headed out to Gastown which was pretty cool. Cobblestone streets, an eclectic mix of tacky souvenir places, pubs, cafés and high end stores. The steam clock was pretty interesting, not seen that before. There were some interesting sights to be had, a tranny flashing his/her frilly undies, hipsters, tourists, locals and young people begging for loses change. We wandered a couple of blocks over and came across some sort of homeless people convention lol there were hundreds of them and they all seemed to be fighting over mountains of used clothing. My local friend Tanya tells me they dumpster dive and take them there to sell. One junkie looking chick was wheeling a bike around asking who wanted to buy it, we had to wonder who had recently been released of ownership lol. There was an older broad with more tats than teeth who seemed to like me and Pete thought it hilarious that she gave me a gummy smile lol we didn't feel at all threatened but still decided to g for a drive.
We checked out a number of neighbourhoods. There were a lot of houses with for sale signs and when we got back we did some searches to get an idea of house prices. They're insane! A fairly average house like ours in a similar proximity to the beach etc would go for 2-3 million here. Unreal....
We got back to our unit, had dinner, a couple of drinks and now it's time to think about sorting out what we are taking on the cruise and getting packed for tomorrow.
They charge ridiculous rates for net access on the boat so facebook posts and blogs may be erratic as we tend to wait til we have free access in port at a cafe or something to go in line.
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