Yes I think these blog titles are becoming more and more unhinged. I’m OK with it 😀

Today we breakfasted at ‘The Basic’ – it lived up to its name but mostly in a good way. The absolute best part, coffee was being poured into my cup even before I sat down. It’s like they were reading my mind.

Eggs Benny with Avo and Tomato was ok (but I think the sauce might have been from a packet?), and Perry had a corned beef hash. No hash, but lots of corned beef.

And the most important part – Perry’s breakfast was also served with toast and Jif. For all us Australians that sounds pretty problematic. Here, though, it’s different:

Yep Jif is peanut butter. What next, we find out Mr. Sheen is an ice cream, and Gumption is a salad dressing? Probably not. But Jif peanut butter … it’s a thing. Just don’t clean your surfaces with it.

On the way back from breakfast, saw this supportive and thoughtful piece of street art:

After 1,000 or so sunset pic yesterday, here’s one in the daylight hours.

Anyway. Today’s adventure was a 5 hours or so bus tour. This was as good a time as any to put the washing machine on for another of its own 5-hours journeys. Our tour was “Vancouver City and Capilano Suspension Bridge Park”. Happily, it was a pretty small bus with less than 20 people. Our tour guide Steve was great, he drove us all around some of the sights of Vancouver, the fancy shopping district around Alberni and Burrard streets, and a hot tip to go to Lee’s Donuts. We also went around Coal Harbour, and our first real stop was in Stanley Park. It’s a massive park and we saw a little bit of it, but was good to see a collection of indigenous story / family poles. It was also great to for Steve to explain that no, they’re not Totem Poles. And you know whose fault that was? Captain Cook! When he was in Canada he’d recently come from a part of the pacific where people had thes poles with figures carved into them, which they did indeed worship and totems. Captain Cook, upon seeing something vaguely similar in Canada, decided it must be exactly the same thing. So for the following few hundred years people keep saying Totems Poles, when, they ain‘t. As they say – every day’s a school day!

The main attraction of this tour though was the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. There was more to it than a suspension bridge -it was has a few restaurants, a gift shop (of course!), and a number of other walks around the beautiful are in which the park it situated. We were all pre-warned that there was a cliff walk which was great, but, with tons of steps so I thought nah I’ll give that one a miss.

We did however take the suspension bridge. First built in 1889, it has been modernised since then of course, but geez is it ever wobbly. There’s a more comprehensive history here: https://www.capbridge.com/our-story/

Walking across the bridge was a great way to feel really drunk without taking a drop, I couldn’t walk it without holding on to the handrail, it didn’t take much at all to get it swinging and fucking and diving. Running and deliberately shaking the bridge is forbidden, there’s even someone permanently stationed in a little watch-house to pull up anyone doing the wrong thing. It doesn’t need anybody’s extra effort to wobble, it does a great job all by itself. It’s not really obvious from the video, but have a look anyway.

Of all the people eon the bridge, I only heard one mid-way meltdown (and no it wasn’t me!) so that was pretty good going. We made it across the bridge without incident and rewarded ourselves with a cool drink and some Otter Balls 😀 In another instance of ‘every day is a school day’, Otter Balls are just Poffertjes, served with icing sugar and maple syrup, Delish.

Anyway, time for photos of our time at the park:

Next big stop on the tour was Granville Island – renowned foodie area, artist area, and of course, tourist area. Last time we visited in 2018, we were there mid to late afternoon, didn’t even stay an hour as it didn’t seem that impressive. This time, we had a bit longer to explore which was great. The food market was good – kind like a Queen Vic market in Melbourne or the markets in the center of Adelaide. Lots of interesting good, plus Lee’s Donuts, the shops highly recommended by our tour guide Steve. He was right – tasty donuts! Sorry we went through our ‘butter crunch’ donuts before taking a photo. The whole area is an interesting urban mix of industrial, and, well, more industrial. Situated under a bridge, much of its factory past has been reclaimed, most of the building remain, just housing new and interesting things. Like donut shops 🙂

Eventually it was time to return to the bus, and in turn, back to our accommodation. For dinner we headed out to a great (?) dining institution, Denny’s. Tasty lasagne and a good quality steak soon followed by – it was all pretty good and reasonably priced.

Who knew spending half a day in a bus would make you tired, so maybe I rushed through this one a bit as I want to go get some sleep. But not without yet another shot of the beautiful sunset of English Bay.

Good night.