We visited Vancouver, British Columbia, for three days to visit a former student. He is a Junior at the University of British Columbia.
We always enjoy visiting Canada and plan to keep going back.
Our trip started at the beautifully renovated King Street AMTRAK Station in Seattle. The building was allowed to deteriorate quite a bit during the '60s and '70s. They put in a dropped acoustic ceiling and all of the carved plaster was painted and wall boarded over.
If you live near enough, the station is actually worth a trip to visit. It reminds you of the grand old days of coast to coast luxury trains.
This is the wall clock in the station. If you have been on the Seattle Clock Tour, be sure to go back for this one.
This was a common sight from the train traveling north. There was a good minus tide and it was the end of the school year. Every elementary and pre-school kid was on the beach in spite of the cloudy weather!
The view from our room in the Sylvia Hotel included this Flag Park.
All large cities now seem to have some kind of Farmers' Market. Vancouver is no exception. The market here is on Granville Island and is definitely worth a trip. Lots of shopping, tourists and food.
A tourist favorite is to go visit Gastown. It was called "gastown" because of Gassy Jack, a local celebrity seaman. You have to remember that "gassy" at the time had nothing to do with a gastrointestinal upset and a lot to do with the fact that he drank a lot.
This is a picture of the genuine, fully functioning, steam-powered clock in Gastown. The clock has been moved and renovated a couple of times and is once again in need of repair. The clock "chimes" with steam whistles and the steam power makes the clock works wear out quite quickly. Imaging living in a steam bath all your life!
If you went to the Vancouver Expo in 1986, you saw Canadian Place. This is now a Convention Center on the waterfront. The thing in the center of the photo is the convention center. The thing on the left that looks like a hotel is one of the two cruise ships in the picture. They are both on the Alaska Cruise route and come up from Seattle and make their first stop in Vancouver. The traffic for incoming passengers was really bad. There was an extra Mountie directing taxi traffic for passengers to get to the boats.
The view from Canadian Place is lovely. You can obviously catch a float plane to just about anywhere from here. Dinner cruise boats are also common.
We always try to visit small, unusual museums. This one qualified; it just wasn't open. They were having a meeting of the board of the local golf club and the museum was closed to outsiders.
We didn't visit the museum, but we got to go play pitch'n'putt in Stanley Park. Lovely course and a lot of fun. Jim got to meet a local skunk. He gave a friendly wave of his tail and left.
This is sunset from Stanley Park near our hotel.
