First things first – since we have a washing machine (yay) time to put some washing on. It’s one of those combo washer/dryers that doesn’t really excel at either thing, so it’s good that we weren’t in a rush for clean clothes.

It looked like we were going to get some rain this morning, so after a very good coffee at nearby ‘Matchsticks’ cafe we aimed to stay more or less under cover by heading toward the city centre.

We caught one of the trolleybuses – it’s a bit weird as they are just a bus (not weird), but when they aren’t moving, they are completely silent (weird) , since they’re electric, powered by the wires overhead.

The trains are short – I haven’t looked up all the details (I am a nerd, but not yet that much of a nerd) but it feels like they are only long enough for for carriages. (Yes I’m enough of a nerd to be talking about trains though…)

There’s a mall right at the City Centre station, and since it had an Apple Store, what is a nerd to do but grab a photo.

Among the shops we visited was Marshall’s – feels kinda like a Target — but among the many things they sold were Poutine flavoured dog biscuits. You know you’re in Canada when … 🙂

We wandered up and down the streets, through what I guess is the cinema district, because it had … lots of cinemas. It also had a pretty high proportion of homeless people. This isn’t the ‘East Downtown’ area that is the main area for the city’s unhoused, but just seems Vancouver has its fair share of homeless people. I don’t have numbers but it feels like a lot more than Sydney.

While the news was talking about Ford and other companies starting to implement job cuts, there was also a story about a big ‘tiny house’ site to give homeless people their first step to getting back on track, with not just somewhere to live but plenty of medical and mental health support and stuff. I’m getting off track when it comes to talking about a holiday, but anyway it was nice to see that someone’s at least trying to do something to get people off the streets.

Anyway didn’t take many photos but here’s a nice cinema sign.

On the way back to the hotel we saw a nice park:

Also, I think I had the best lemonade ever (ie the non-fizzy, American/Canadian version of Lemonade) at a cafe called Trees. It was next level delicious, blended with ice and smooth and just delicious.

Also, cake!

Once we got back the room I took a moment to put the big-arse zoom lens on my camera to get some shots from the balcony. It’s doesn’t give beautiful crisp pictures but it sure makes faraway things look closer 🙂

I spent about twenty minutes trying (and failing) to get some photos of the birds that are flying around the place, with little to no luck. For example this was the best I’d managed:

I must have been manifesting birds out in to the universe or however that goes, because next minute, we had The Visitor. A massive, one-foot-tall seagull landed on the balcony railing, and just start there for a good 20 minutes, striking various poses. So I switched over to my ‘portrait’ lens on my camera and got to work.

So that’s the visitor. Not that dramatic really! Eventually it gave up, but about half an hour later either it or one its friends was back for a while. I guess most tourists give them something to eat – as far as I know I cant read bird-brains but it sure give off ‘sense of expectation’ vibes. Luckily it didn’t go all Alfred Hitchcock, we didn’t up with a hundred of its best friends or anything mad.

The bit of Davie St that we’re staying in, slap bang in the middle of the gay village, feels a bit like King St Newtown – there are like a hundred restaurants and they all good. Tonight we went to Tami’s’ Taverna – and no prizes for guessing that yep it’s a Greek restaurant. The food was pretty phenomenal, we ordered a mixed platter of just-about-everything, plus probably our favourite Greek dish, Saganaki cheese. This was like dinner and a show as the fried cheese was brought to the table and then set alight in front of us. All good flambé fun!

The platter-of-everything, while maybe not the nicest looking thing ever, was sure one of the most delicious things ever. The potatoes were cooked in, well I don’t know what, but they had such a depth of flavour, even the thick slices of carrot were infused with deliciousness. Everything had flavour turned up to 10 or thereabouts, without it being overpowering, every bit of food on the platter was well cooked, and bursting with flavour. If you can’t tell we were pretty impressed, and the prices were reasonable too. So glad we chose this one!

There was a lot of cloud so wasn’t able to get any nice sunset photos, but this one will do.

That was about it for the day – almost feel like I’m still recovering from yesterday’s 3am start. Nighty night!