We woke up to rain today & it hasn't really stopped all day. We wanted to use the second day of our hop on hop off bus ticket today. The last bus driver we had told us the first bus would get to the Colosseum (the library) in the street behind us at 9.23am. We got there before 9.20am but after 15mins no bus had come. We were heading for Gastown & knew it wasn't far away so we decided to walk there. The rain wasn't heavy but it was the fine constant rain that gets in your face. When we got to Gastown we found there was very little open. We finally found a discount department store & went in to get out of the rain. We found another store that had lots of cards, paper & giftware so we spent a bit of time in there. Because we hadn't come on the bus, we didn't really know where the main part of Gastown was. We knew by the funky street lamps where Gastown was but we turned the wrong way & ended up in an area full of homeless people & soup kitchens. It is an area of opposites. The high end fashion & homewares stores of Gastown next to a very poor area. We eventually found the section we wanted to be in where the bus picked up from & had a quick look in some stores but when a bus came we got on. We were glad to escape the rain for a while. The bus stopped for about 20mins at Canada Place which is down on the water front. it was so foggy we couldn't see across the water. I was surprised to see a seaplane. I didn't think they would fly in this weather. When we stopped here on Thursday, we saw a ride called Fly Over Canada which is a 4D ride very similar to Soaring at Disney World & California Adventure. We thought we could do that while we waited but today it had changed to "Help Santa Save Christmas". We just stayed on the bus instead. Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics in 2010 & the cauldron (today's photo) is down at the waterfront at Canada Place. There was also an exhibition of Olympic medals on & a couple on the bus went to look while we waited. We decided to stay in the dry, warm bus. The next place we wanted to get off was Stanley Park. This is a 400 hectare park in Vancouver that usually has fabulous ocean side walks & views. We got off in the park & decided to go to the miniature railway. We got there to find it was closed today. The cafe was also closed so there was no where to get warm. We stood under a massive fir tree & waited for the next bus. Thankfully they come every 35mins. When we came through the park on the bus on Thursday, we saw a raccoon walking around. It was huge - bigger than Frankie was which really surprised me. I was hoping to see one again today but we only saw squirrels - black ones and grey ones. We got the bus back into the main shopping area of the city & went to the Pacific Centre shopping centre. It was busy in there. Most of the shops had sales - a continuation of Black Friday. There were bargains to be had but we have to be careful about extra baggage until we have a car. We had lunch & spent a couple of hours wandering around before deciding to go back to the hotel. There wasn't anything else we particularly wanted to do that was ok in the rain so had a couple of hours at the hotel before going out for dinner. We went back to Rosie's which was a pub/restaurant we had a drink at before going to the Christmas Markets on Thursday night. It was a lovely meal & very cheap. We thought we may have had trouble getting in somewhere as it is Saturday night & Beyonce is playing at Rogers Arena which is 4 or 5 blocks away. Tomorrow morning we get a ferry to Victoria.