From Sunday’s and Monday’s breakfast experiences with the prices at sit-down places in Vancouver, we decided to try a different approach. We initially tried a crepe place (it was even an “express” crepe place), but after 20 minutes, they told us it was going to be a very long time before they were ready. Apparently, to expect a breakfast crepe at 9:00 am was too early. We wandered down Granville Street, heading toward our old friend, Waterfront Station. We happened upon a Subway along the way, and Subway serves breakfast. Quite good breakfast as it turns out, and for under $10 for the both of us. We were delighted, and were to continue getting breakfast at Subway for the rest of our stay in Vancouver. Good stuff.

After we finished eating, we headed down to Waterfront Station, where we were amazed by the Millennium, a truly huge Celebrity cruise ship docked next door at Canada Place. It is difficult to express how large the ship was. Anyway, we caught the seabus, and then transferred to a regular bus, which took us out to Grouse Mountain. As briefly mentioned in the previous post, Grouse Mountain has a gondola to the top, and once at the top, it has zip lines, and paragliding, and free shows at the top. It is supposed to be the most visited attraction in the Vancouver area.

Back in the 80s, two men carved a walking trail out of the woods up the side of the mountain. According to Wikipedia, they did this without the permission of the owners of the mountain. However, the trail they created, called the Grind, is very popular. It takes most people about 90 minutes to climb it, with the record around 25 minutes. Mer had decided to humor my penchant for climbing things, and we were going to attempt to go up the Grind.

This is no small feat. The Grind is a two-mile long trail, and climbs almost 2,800 feet, with an average grade of 30 degrees. It is steep. It is really steep. (It essentially involves climbing rough and rocky stairs for two miles.)  We started climbing cheerfully, and made decent progress. After a few minutes, Mer was breathing quite hard and we were both sweating quite heavily. I am in the middle of training for another marathon, and have much longer legs than Mer, so I was doing okay with keeping my breath, but I certainly was working. After a few more minutes, we needed to stop to rest. It was then that I began to notice that no one around me was smiling. The trail was a steady stream of panting ans sweating people who looked as if they were not having much fun. Mer dubbed it “The stairmaster from Hell located in Heaven.” It certainly was beautiful – the trees were very pretty, and they stretched out in all directions.

We continued on our way, and we had to stop for rests more often. After about 45 minutes, we got to a sign that said we had finished one quarter of the trail, and that the remaining trail was very rough and difficult. At that point, Mer declared that she was beaten. We later ended up calling the mountain Caradhras, after the mountain that made the Fellowship of the Ring turn back in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. Mer was just deflated by the sign – she said she probably could have made it if it had even said we were one third of the way there. Since her stomach was cramping, I was more concerned about her health than the trail. I could not handle the huge suspension bridge; Mer could not handle the Grind. We all have our limitations. We did make it about 1/2 mile, and climbed about 900 feet, and we still had to go down the rough trail! It took another 30-40 minutes to get down. Mer left it up to me what I would like to do – go up the mountain on the pretty expensive gondola (of which I was very nervous), or got back to the city. We went back to the city.

Once we had returned to the city via bus and seabus, we walked over to Canada Place to check out the cruise ships docked there. Then we went back to the east toward a neighborhood called Gastown. Gastown used to be run-down, but now it is a pretty vibrant shopping and dining district. It has a famous clock run by steam, that looks really old, but is only 40 years old or so. It was a good place to window shop, although we did not tarry. Mer is not much of a shopper, and I was not in the shopping mood for the entire trip – too much to do to go shopping. We then turned south and went through Chinatown, passing through two or three blocks of rougher areas along the way (we still never felt threatened).

Chinatown was a fun walk. There are hundreds of foods and smells that I cannot identify along the streets. We took a short walk through the public Chinese garden of Sun Yat Sen Park, which was small but pretty. Just outside the park, we noticed movie trucks again, and so we asked what was being filmed. It was a spin-off of Fringe called Human Target. We could not go for a walk without hitting a film crew!

After Chinatown, Mer took me on a meandering walk to and through Yaletown, which seems like a nightlife and dining center. Along the way, we picked up a hitherto unwalked part of the seawall, so that was satisfying. We got to go by the tents of Cirque du Soleil and then walked near the small science museum at the end of False Creek. We also managed to wander by the local casino without stopping in. Yaletown itself was an interesting walk, but it was past 3:00 and I had not had my snack crackers, so I was more hungry than I should have been. Happily, we were headed to an early supper, just west of Yaletown, near the Elbow Room, where we had eaten breakfast on Monday.

Mer took me to Nuba, which is a small Middle-eastern restaurant. At first, I was discouraged. I was very hungry, and I am fussy about food, so I was not sure how well I would eat. It turned out okay – they had an excellent grilled chicken. After supper, we wandered back to the hotel, where we took it easy for a couple of hours. We actually went to the hotel outdoor hot tub and pool, and relaxed in both (not at the same time!). It is amazing how much better we both felt after the soaking and swim. Water is good stuff.

Mer then had us head out to catch the Granville Island bus, and we did go back to the small island. We swung into the small theater that houses Vancouver Theatresports, Vancouver’s improv comedy group. I was very excited. It turns out that Vancouver Theatresports does different types of improv at different times. We were there for the 7:00 show, which turned out to be an improvised musical.

It was astonishing. The pre-show was a man playing fun 30s music and showtunes on the piano. One member of the improv troupe then came out and applauded the piano player and announced that everything from that point on was going to be made up on the spot, including the music. He asked for a suggestion to get things going, by asking for an occupation of one of your parents. He heard a bunch of different ones yelled out, but settled on “magician.” So, he and four others came out and did the one-hour long musical “Magic Dust,” which opened with the piano player playing an improvised overture. The musical/show itself was very funny and really good. It had good character development, and great improv skills (heightening and callbacks and great listening skills). I was totally sucked in. The show went something like this:

The old but master magician, Mephisto, broke the news to his young female assistant that because of the glut of entertainment options available to the young, no one wanted to see magic anymore, and they only had nine shows left. The young woman insisted that they had to tell Mephisto’s son, Sydney. Sydney was feeding and caring for the rabbits, and Mephisto and the assistant told him the bad news. He was distraught, but the young woman suggested he could take the Mephisto mantle for the last shows. The father agreed, and handed off his cape to his son and left the stage. Sydney and the assistant then revealed they loved each other and would be together forever with the great line in the song “Forever will not be long enough – you’ll see!”

Meanwhile, an evil magician who was no good at magic wanted to steal the show, quite literally. He had two assistants, a man and woman, who reveled that his name was “Beelzebub, the evil magician,” which led to a very funny solo song from Beelzebub, the evil magician. The evil magician told his woman assistant to go and seduce the older Mephisto so she could steal his book of tricks, and then he left. The man assistant revealed that he was none too happy with this plan, as he liked the girl. Still, she left to follow the plan.

Sydney and his girlfriend were practicing a new trick when we heard the ringing of a doorbell, which the woman answered (“I’ll get it … because I’m the woman!”). It was the evil assistant, under the guise of selling almonds, which it turned out that Sydney and Mephisto both loved. The girlfriend was suspicious, and would not let the evil assistant near Sydney, but she succeeded in selling her almonds to Mephisto before disappearing with him into a back room (Sydney’s reaction: “Suddenly, I don’t feel like being home right now”), and so she got the book. Somewhere along the way, Sydney mentioned that Magi-con was in town, and he could try his new trick there.

With the book in hand, the evil magician realized he needed to take both Mephisto and Sydney out of the picture. He planned on kidnapping Mephisto at Magi-con, which he succeeded in doing. He then put on Mephisto’s shirt, and pretended to be Mephisto, explaining to Sydney that the face and voice changes were all part of a new trick.

Back in his evil cave lair, the evil magician plotted to get rid of Sydney. He decided to lure Sydney to the cave with the promise of a new trick, and his man assistant suggested putting Sydney in the iron maiden (“Ah, yes! I had forgotten I had one!”). They got Sydney and his girlfriend to the cave, and told Sydney that if he went in the iron maiden, he would become very small, and that it would be a great trick. Sydney went in and the evil people locked him in and then revealed their evil plan to go on stage as Mephisto. They told Sydney he would get small when he rotted in the iron maiden, and they left, at which Sydney cried out, “Hey! This doesn’t seem to be a magic trick! It seems more like a science trick!” Sydney told his girlfriend to go after them to try to stop them, and he would get out somehow. After a solo about how he needed to be magical, Sydney lamented that he had no lock picks, but then remembered he had his almonds that he had bought. He used the almonds to bribe his rabbits to come to the iron maiden and chew him out, and so he escaped.

Meanwhile, the evil magician was trying to perform (“Don’t worry about the rabbit, children! It’s MAGIC blood!”) when Sydney showed up and revealed that he was the real magician. The evil magician was defeated in a stare-down, and Mephisto (the father) was freed. The evil assistant asked his love to marry him, and then Sydney asked his girlfriend to marry him, and Mephisto agreed to go on the road with the now-reformed evil magician. The show ended with a reprise of the big opening number. Keep in mind that this took an hour and was all made up on the spot. It was perhaps the best improv I have ever seen. What a great show.

After the show, we headed back to the hotel, with a swing by a smoothie shop so I could get a strawberry smoothie. We were back in the hotel before 10:00, and Mer officially conceded her planning powers over to me for Thursday to Saturday. She had done a great job – we made good use of our time in Vancouver the first four days.