Thursday, September 7th - Sightseeing in Vancouver, Canada.

Bill complained to the concierge about having a small, dingy room with only 1 chair, no view, and so forth, and the Hotel Regis management shifted them up to Room 320, a HUGE room with THREE windows, TWO beds, TWO chairs, and even a REFRIGERATOR, while we had to make do with one bed, one chair, and one window with the big, bright neon "St. REGIS" sign just outside. Lesson learned: If you are a tough, grizzled, Korean War veteran and you complain about your room, something better will certainly come along! I was impressed at how that worked.

Our bus tour of Vancouver was very nice. We first circled Stanley Park, a 1,000-acre park on the northwest side of town. There we saw the Lion's Gate Bridge, a duplicate of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge built by the same guy and finished about 2 years later. Very pretty. The bus driver said there was a nude beach in the park, but did we get to visit that? Noooo, of course not, but that is probably just as well as our tour guide later mentioned that the average age of folks on that beach was about 65, so it would probably look like a "wrinklies convention" and who needs that? Although, come to think of it, I have a pretty impressive scar running down the middle of my chest now and maybe that might impress folks.

Anyway we looped around the definitely-wear-your-bathing-suit beaches on the Pacific side of the park before crossing over to Granville Island, an old industrial district that has been converted to artsy-fartsy boutiques and craft shops of all kinds. In the center was a big farmer's market with a lot of organic produce and, of course, places to eat. I enjoyed a store with hand-blown glasswork object d'art. Some of the pieces were just so nice and intricately composed of different glasses melted together that I wondered exactly how it was done. Monika found a silk weaving shop where we watched a woman weaving a shawl on a very nice weaving loom specifically set up for silk. But by then we were out of time and had to run back to the bus before Monika could select some skeins of silk to knit with, which was too bad.

Back on the bus, we returned to the mainland and zigzagged through a very large, but somewhat seedy looking Chinatown and then moved on to Gastown, an 1800s waterfront bar district founded by "Gassy Jack", a colorful entrepreneur of the times. Much of that district is heated by an underground system of steam pipes and we even passed by a steam-operated clock.

Our final stop on the tour was the tallest building in Vancouver, which conveniently has a 360-degree observation tower on top and looks something like a fat boy version of the Seattle Space Needle. We rode to the top on a very fast exterior elevator and then had a guide discuss the views to the north, east, south, and west. Since we again had a completely clear, sunny day the views of Vancouver and the harbor were fantastic in all directions.

After the tour we rested a bit before re-gathering for a lunch at Tim Horton's. That's a Canadian fast food chain that we like to patronize. The downside was the Spartan furnishings did not provide any sound attenuation at all and the nonstop chatter from a nearby bunch of college students made it very noisy. On the plus side, it was cheap, the food was decent, and it was conveniently located directly across Dunsmuir street from the St. Regis Hotel.

Our meal gave us the energy to walk over to the Catholic cathedral two blocks down Dunsmuir Street, which had beautiful stain glass panels inside plus a perfectly formed high vaulted ceiling in the nave. Very pretty indeed. An organist was practicing while we were there and the majestic music covered the noise of my taking pictures quite well, so I didn't disturb anybody (I hope). We detoured on our way back to the hotel to visit a used book store where I picked up, "The New Oxford Book of Light Verse" plus a couple of Ellis Peters mysteries for reading in my spare time (Bra Ha, Ha, Ha Ha!).

We rested a bit before returning to the observation tower that evening to get sunset pictures of the city. The sun set out over the Pacific Ocean in a blaze of glory, and shortly thereafter the lights were coming on all over the city and the moon rose in the east. The lights completely changed the appearance of the cityscape. The dark background was punctuated by chains and patterns of lights, and that is something I have otherwise only seen while flying an airplane at night. Night photography is never easy, but I thoroughly enjoyed taking pictures of the different faces of Vancouver at night from our aerie.

As we came down from the elevator I made a joke about how fast we were falling for Phyllis's benefit. Monika asked whether I had lost my fear of heights or was just showing some macho "bravaydo", whereupon I launched into a riff of "You say bravaydo, I say bravado, bravaydo, bravado, how can love survive?" One of our group muttered something about selling me cheaply, but a nice blonde who was riding down the elevator with us came to my defense and said that she thought I was "adorable". Well, that just made my day and we all laughed about it as we wandered back toward the hotel. Monika and I stopped off at a bookstore that was open late and Phyllis, Bill, and Lois stopped off at the A&W right next to Tim Horton's for a rootbeer float, but we all managed to find our way back to the St. Regis for the night.