Ahhh…. Vancouver
Our first full day in Vancouver today.
We got up at about 8:00 and got ready for the day. This morning we’re having breakfast at an old favourite – Denny’s on Davie Street! We made our way there and had a hearty breakfast: Vince had one of the Skillets and I had one of the Slams. Very filling and satisfying.
We left Denny’s feeling stuffed and walked over to Robson Street where we checked out many of the shops, our goal being to locate the Rocky Mountain Chocolate store. We found the store without too much difficulty and went in to plan tomorrow’s chocolate purchase (for gifts and for ourselves).
Leaving the store we walked across Robson Street looking in more shops, then headed north down Nicola Street to West Georgia Street taking pictures and admiring the urban landscape:
Continuing on West Georgia Street we located the Vancouver City Centre Skytrain station where we were to later meet our group for a 2:00 walking tour (“The Really Gay History Tour” with Glenn from Forbidden Vancouver). While we were in the area we wandered through the plaza in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery and checked out the Chinese Culture and Arts Festival. They had some colourful and fun exhibits:
We then walked down to Canada Place to look at the mountains and cruise ships. There were 3 cruise ships in port that day, and they obscured much of the beautiful mountain view:
After walking around Canada Place we took a coffee/break at Blenz on the waterfront.
With our caffeine break complete we sought out Pacific Central Station (Vancouver’s train station) as I’ve always wanted to get a few shots of its impressive and stately interior:
Our next destination was the Vancouver City Centre Skytrain station to meet our group for “The Really Gay History Tour”. Vince and I have taken walks with this touring company (Forbidden Vancouver) in the past, and their guides have been sensational. For this walking tour it was a pretty big group – about 14 of us. It was an utterly amazing tour through Vancouver’s gay past and our host Glenn was fabulous. The tour took about 3 hours and finished at the Jim Deva Plaza at the corner of Davie Street and Bute Street. We said our goodbyes to the group, and a surprisingly large number of hugs were exchanged among the group. We were right outside Mary’s on Davie (once known as Hamburger Marys), so we decided to have our dinner there. I had the meatloaf – not bad.
From Marys on Davie we walked down to English Bay to catch the sunset. We sat on our bench there for quite a while and I took several shots of the sunset in its various stages. This added such a peaceful ending to our day:
At about 7:30 we returned to the hotel where we just rested and chatted for the remainder of the evening. We were both quite tired from all the walking earlier in the day so we headed to bed around 9:45.
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