Day 2 - First day sightseeing in Vancouver.

After a good night's sleep, we awoke to a lovely day. The temperature reached to mid 20's.

We headed up to Main street to catch the bus into downtown Vancouver. A very helpful bus driver informed us that we could not use paper money to purchase a ticket, only coins. He graciously let us ride into the city for free.

On arrival we went to the tourism office along the waterfront, near Canada Place. Once again we came across a very helpful customer service person. We confirmed what we had originally planned to do for the day was pretty spot on. At the same time, we purchased our tickets for the Capilano Suspension bridge for a trip on Saturday.

First on the agenda was to walk along the waterfront toward Stanley Park. Just before arriving there we hired bikes to do the 9km ride around the island. Starting off a bit unsteadily as we had not ridden bikes since Neil and Lauren were at school (at least 15 years ago). Margaret was in the lead but discovered doing a quick turn of the head to see where Vince was resulted in becoming friends with a nearby bush.

First stop in the park (which is a peninsula of about 1000acres) was the totem poles. These totem poles represent events in the life of the tribe. They are not used for worship. Continuing our ride there was a children's water playground with a blow dryer for children to stand in to become dry. Further around was a sculpture of a girl in a wetsuit sitting on a rock in the harbour. This was to signify the dependence of Vancouver on the sea. Whilst stopped here a group (or should it be squadron??) of jets flew over several times creating a jet stream. Not sure what may be coming up that caused this practice.

We continued on our ride and went under the Lions Gate Bridge which gives access to the Northern Shore of Vancouver. By now we were cycling in shade and there was a sneaky breeze definitely keeping us from overheating. At about the half way point we arrived at Third Beach. As it is still summer school holidays here, there were several brave people in the cold water whilst other were sunbaking on the sandy beach.

We finished our ride around the park then went up one track towards the Rose Garden. It was pretty but believe New Farm Park roses give a greater variety. We then headed back to the bike rental office to return the bikes after 2 hours of use.

We then walked down to Robson Square as advised by Visit a City . It is more of an attraction in the winter months as it has an outdoor skating rink in the centre of the square. As it was sunny and around lunchtime, there were a number of people sitting on the steps enjoying the summer's day. They have a number on mobile vendors pulled up on the side of the road selling different varieties of food.

Next was the Christchurch Cathedral that is undergoing renovation. They had some lovely stained class windows and wood panelling for the roof.

We walked then into Gastown and arrived on the quarter hour to see the Gas Steam clock toot a little tune. The streets in this district are tree lined and floral pots hang from the street lamps. It is a very quaint area. Onto Chinatown where we ate a meal with the locals that definitely topped up the energy used in the bike ride and kept us going for the rest of the day.

Back to the waterfront heading to Stanley Park where we walked to Beaver Lake and then up to Prospect Point Lookout. The lookout gives 180 degree views up and down the river and looks directly out onto Lions Gate Bridge.

It was then time to head for home and try and make it to the local grocery store before closing at 8.00pm. This was going to be a challenge as we had to walk 3.4 kms get out of Stanley Park. As we were only leaving Stanley Park at 7.30pm we decided to google for the closest grocery store downtown (which just happened to have a bottle shop across the road). All we had to do was find where to catch the return bus. This turned out to be where we stopped in the morning as this bus does a loop of the city. We arrived home around 10.00pm to have cheese, biscuits and fruit (and a drop of BC red) for dinner and headed off to bed (after 12km bike ride and 25km walking) as the Friday was to be a very early start.