Sunday, August 1st

So, after Ellen left on Saturday, we packed and headed to the Cleveland airport. As a 12th anniversary gift to Mer (and to me), I had booked us tickets to and a 4-star hotel room in Vancouver, Canada. Mer had sighed her way through much of the winter Olympics, and everyone I had ever talked to who had been there had raved about how wonderful Vancouver is. We had a short propeller plane ride to Toronto, and then a four-hour flight to Vancouver. To save some money on the flight, I booked us on the cheapest flight, which got in at 12:30 am on Sunday. The flights went fine, and then we took a taxi for the thirty-minute ride to our hotel in downtown Vancouver; we took a taxi because it was late and because the train to the city stopped running at 12:00 or something like that. We were both very tired, and did not mind not having to think to get to our bed.

We were staying in the four-star hotel the Westin Grand. I got the rooms for just $145/night on Priceline, which was a great deal for a downtown hotel (and one that normally starts at $330/night). The staff at the hotel was very nice and polite and always helpful all week, and our suite was very comfortable. We had a good-sized bathroom with a two-headed shower (boy, did that feel nice), a small living room where we stored out stuff, and an adequate-sized bedroom with a very comfortable queen-sized bed. And, it was on the 21st floor, so had some good views of the downtown (no views of the mountains or ocean, but that was okay).

We got to bed around 2:00 and slept in until we woke up without an alarm, sometime around 10:00. We walked several blocks to a small diner that our guidebook recommended, Templeton. The place only had about eight booths and about sixteen stools at the bar, and there was about a twenty-minute wait, but we got a booth and had a good breakfast. We then discovered what we were to confirm several times – eating out in Vancouver is expensive. With tip, the breakfast was about $30.

We walked back to the hotel to get our supplies (camera, backpack with jackets, and such). We love walking in cities because you can see so much. We were not yet familiar with the public transportation system, so we did not have a lot of choice, but we still liked the walk. The downtown section of Vancouver is very walkable. It is also super bike-friendly – most roads have a bus-and-bike lane, and one of the bridges across False Creek bay has one whole normal sized lane dedicated just to bike traffic. Shannon would approve.

Anyway, after we got our stuff, we headed south to False Creek, a small bay south of downtown. Mer wanted to use that as the start of a long walk to have a mellow introduction to the city. Our mellow walk was slightly interrupted though. Sunday was the Gay Pride Parade, a huge parade that finishes off Pride Week. While we were quite able to continue our walk, the beach area was quite mobbed. Most people were behaving themselves, but as you would expect in a crowd that large, some people took advantage of the atmosphere to push limits by wearing as little clothing as possible (or no clothing for some of the women who went shirtless). There were also bands playing who were not using polite language. So we wandered west along the beach and got to and passed through English Bay Beach, where we dipped our toes in the ocean. We started to leave the crowds behind as we got to the western edge of English Bay Beach and the main drag (ha!) veered away from the beach. Having fewer people around was most welcome.

We then entered a gem of Vancouver – Stanley Park. Stanly Park is a 400-acre park west of the downtown. It has fine ocean and mountain views, and the entire peninsula is encircled by a public-access seawall that has a walking and biking trail (with separate lanes for walkers and bikers for most of the path). We entered on the southern side of the park, in English Bay Beach. There is a huge public swimming pool right on the edge of the park (I think it said the capacity was 3000 people!), and there are two very nice beaches along the seawall. We rested on a bench for awhile near one of the beaches, Third Beach. As the seawall turned northward, the path became bordered on the side by a huge cliff of rock, which was very very cool. We walked on past Siwash Rock, a huge free-standing column of rock about twenty feet out in the ocean. We then turned a corner and saw the magnificent and Matt-terrifying Lion’s Gate Bridge. Lion’s Gate Bridge is a green-colored Golden Gate Bridge in miniature, but not too miniature! We took some pictures of the bridge, and continued along the seawall, but as the path turned south-southeast, Mer felt we were running out of time, so we cut through the park itself to get out as quickly as we could. That still was not very fast, as the park is huge. Once we did get out, we walked back through the downtown back to Sunset Beach.

We were trying to get across False Creek to get to some tents on the other side of the small bay. Since we were short on time, we skipped the bridge across the bay and hopped on a water taxi. We got over to the north shore of Vanier Park. We walked over to the tents and picked up our tickets for “Bard on the Beach” – Vancouver’s Shakespeare festival. We were there to see Antony and Cleopatra, which I had never seen and Mer had not seen in years. The festival uses open seating, so we got in line, and when the doors opened we were still lucky enough to get front row seats, albeit slightly to the right of center stage. As we sat down, we noticed the seats next to us were labeled; the festival lets people “tag” their seats so they can wander to the concession stand.The seats next to us were labeled as one for Antony and one for Cleopatra. We smiled, and when an older but very vigorous couple sat next to us, we commented on being lucky to sit next to the main players of the play. We got to talking, and kept talking at intermission. They were fascinating people. They lived on an island outside of Vancouver near Vancouver Island. They traveled a lot, and had just gotten back from a trip to Egypt. The man, James Hawkins, is a best-selling author of mystery books, although he writes some histories as well. His wife, Sheila, had just gotten back from a weekend trip to China for an award she won. They were utterly remarkable people, and went out of their way to be kind to us. James told us to swing by a well-known Vancouver destination, the shopping district of Granville Island. He was going to be there on Monday for a book signing, and he offered to give us a book. He was quite taken with Meredith since he found out she was an English teacher. They gave us advice on what to see and made us feel very welcome. They were great people.

Back to the play – the set was very simple, but what a view! The set was a series of platforms with columns along the back of the set. The middle back of the set was open as an entrance for the actors, and it faced the mountains, if you were facing center stage (we could not see the mountains from where we were sitting).

The acting was excellent, as you would expect from a major metropolitan acting festival. Antony and Cleopatra were especially strong, with huge personalities and very good chemistry. Augustus Caesar was very good as the man everyone loved to hate, and the story was riveting. The major battles were portrayed as a few men carrying banners that would advance and retreat as needed, and it worked very well. I don’t really remember anything that we were critical of – it was a great production.

After the play, we walked over the Burrard Bridge, which was long and high enough to make me nervous, but small enough that I could still walk over it. We headed up to Davie Street to go to a restaurant called Hamburger Mary’s. It turns out that Davie Street is the heart of gay Vancouver, so the street was quite wild on the evening of the Pride Parade. What a zoo – tons of people, most of them waiting to get into clubs jammed with too many people already. We did get to the restaurant, and I finally got to eat around 11:00. We learned for the rest of the week to take some crackers and cheese along for a mid-day snack, since we never did eat lunch in the city.

After the late supper, we headed up one street so we could walk down a quite residential street for much of the way back to the hotel. It was lovely. We got back to and wandered down Robson Street, which our hotel was on. This is a main street and was still hopping, even at midnight on a Sunday. We got back to the room and happily went to bed, having walked at least ten miles that day and having seen an excellent play. It was a good introduction to Vancouver.