Kim, her parents (Ron and Joan), and I all went up to Vancouver for the weekend. Kim’s parents had a couple free nights at the Marriott hotel so we stayed there. The hotel was nice, but it’s a little far from where the action is downtown.
As soon as we arrived we went looking for food in Chinatown. Chinatown was a tad disappointing to all with its rundown, closed businesses and large vagrant population. We spent the next few days mostly seeing the parks and gardens of the city. We took the seabus across to North Vancouver to see the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge. It was pretty with nature trails, but Joan is afraid of heights and didn’t go over the bridge. She got about 1/4 of the way across and turned around. Good effort though.
After some Persian food for lunch we headed to the south part of the city to see the Elizabeth Gardens. There were a lot of weddings going on there despite the grey skies and showers. There was a conservatory with birds and tropical plants. There was a salmon colored conure named Charlie who liked to scream really loudly and then tell you “I’m Charlie!”. Quite the character.
Kim and I headed down to the strip on Granville to check out the bars and people. We found a seat in a fun Irish pub and had a few drinks then headed back for sleep. We were too tired to stay out too late since we had been walking and site seeing all day.
Sunday we saw another garden, the Van Dusen botanical gardens. Kim and her parents are big plant aficionados. They even know what almost everything growing in out yard is. I can name the edible stuff… Most of it. Anyway, the highlight of the garden was the hedge maze, at least for me.
Then we booked it out of the city to wait an hour at the border to get back in to our amazingly secure US of A. I feel SO much safer.