Walking around Vancouver
We woke up pretty late, and got ready at a leisurely pace. We walked towards town along 4th Street, seeing what we would see. It was oppressively hot, and even walking on the shady side of the street wasn’t comfortable.
We saw tourist favourite, Sophie’s Atomic Diner, so that’s where we went for breakfast. Ruth and Dave have had a bad experience here - undercooked home fries - but we had a really good breakfast. I had the usual eggs and toast and meat breakfast, except that my meat was chorizo.
The Atomic Diner has “crazy crap on the walls”. You know the score: vintage photos, old toys, kitsch. In the mix there were a few photos of the queen in her younger days, a Charles and Di cushion and a Dragon’s Lair lunch box.
Full of food, we walked on towards Granville Island. We took an early left, which didn’t turn out to be right, but did take us past some sights. It seemed to be the Brollywood area - there were buildings with parking spaces outside marked “20th Century Fox” and “Universal”, and there were a lot of high-end car dealers in the area. We emerged next to the Molson brewery, which smelled nice, and walked some way over the Burrard Bridge, in order to get an overview and hence our bearings.
Once we had our bearings, we walked off the Burrard Bridge the way we came, and onto the scrubby area below, where I was pleased to point out a dead rat to Debbie. This (path, not rat) led us to the marina, from which we could follow the shore round to Granville Island.
We bought some cold drinks from a market stall, and sat outside to drink them. I was feeling a bit weak from the heat. We poked around the market a bit, but the heat was really getting to me, and it wasn’t much fun, especially since it was crowded.
We left the market, and found ourselves looking at some of the craft workshops. There was some lovely woodwork for sale, and we watched a glass blower do his thing (blowing glass). By now I had perked up a bit.
We walked off Granville Island, and made our way south to Broadway, where there are shops. We had promised to look for a Toronto football shirt for nice neighbour Steve. In the Running Room, we asked if they knew of anywhere that might sell them. “Well, you could try Soccer Cents, it’s about 15 blocks down the street. Or there’s Soccer West, that’s next door. They’re both in the soccer district.”
We chose to walk there, just taking in the kinds of shops there were, the views over Downtown, where we crossed a major intersection, the people on the streets and snippets of their conversations. There’s an excellent range of restaurant types along this street - Russian, Mongolian, Mexican, you name it. Especially, there’s a sushi restaurant on almost every block.
Soccer Cents and Soccer West turned out to be the same shop, and it did indeed stock a lot of football stuff. However, they didn’t stoop to stocking Toronto things, so we left empty handed. We caught a bus back towards Ruth and Dave’s.
It was mid afternoon, and because of our late and large breakfast, we hadn’t had lunch. We didn’t know what was in store for dinner, so we decided to get a light late lunch. We paused, fascinated, outside Transylvania, a Romanian restaurant. I’m eager to go, or at least hear from someone who’s been. Their comfort food looked as if it would be better suited to hungrier people on a colder day. We ate at BC Sushi, and seemingly started a trend, for it it was empty when we went in, and respectably busy when we left. The sushi and sashimi plates we ordered were bigger than expected, but didn’t defeat us. It wasn’t gourmet sushi, but it was cheap and good. I think Britain needs to embrace cheap basic sushi.
On the way home, we popped into Rogers Video — it’s a Blockbuster-like chain — where I bought two Xbox 360 games, Soul Calibur IV and Civilisation: Revolution. I’m sure I could have found a better price by shopping around, but Canadian prices are sufficiently low compared to the crazy European prices of games, that it didn’t seem necessary.
(Aside: some 360 games are region locked. Check before you buy! I did.)
Back at the house, Dave was home and playing Red Alert. I watched until he won his scenario. We hoped to play some Civilisation, two player, but alas you can only do that with two consoles, which makes sense given the nature of the game. Instead, I played while Dave watched and made suggestions. This went on for longer than expected, during which Ruth arrived, a lot of pizza was delivered and some wine was opened — our hosts taking advantage of a clause in their household rules which allowed such luxuries when guests were present.
Eventually the two girls got bored of watching Civilisation, and demanded it come to a stop. I saved the game with England threatening to capture all my cities, and we selected a DVD to watch: Wasabi, in which Jean Reno discovers that almost everyone in Tokyo speaks perfect French.
… and with that, everyone was exhausted, and went to bed.