As this trip starts drawing to a close, we figured it’s time to pick up a few souvenirs, else how do you know you’ve even been on holiday? A part of Vancouver called Gastown is very touristy, home apparently to a dozen souvenir shops, allegedly all opened by the same person. Who needs competition anyway?

We hopped on the Number 44 bus and off we went to a stop nearby. First up though, and much more importantly, breakfast. Tasty food and a massive soup-mug of coffee at Waves.

One thing I loved about Waves – on their menu they listed Coffee, Juice, and “Frapp-Eh.”:)

We visited a few of the souvenir shops – this one had the prettiest logo:

I even managed to get a shot of the famed steam-powered Gastown clock.

You’d think, being in Gastown, it’d be gas powered? I guess the funny thing is I took this photo just a few minutes after midday. Yet it was surrounded by tourists just standing there taking photos of it, getting selfies with it… it’s a quite a local celebrity. Apparently it’s not even fully steam powered, but helped along by electricity. But not enough help to make it accurate 😀

As luck would have it, once it decided it was something o’clock, I managed to capture the tail-end of its party piece, and it was kinda cool, hearing the standard clock bell tune played out by steam whistles.

We did very important things, like pop in to another branch of Lee’s Donuts – this time for Chocolate Churro Cheesecake, Lemon Cheesecake, and Apple Strudel Donuts. Delicious. You get three for $10, so of course you’d be crazy to get two (which I guess are under $10 but never mind).

It’s a nice part of town, feels very much an older part of the city.

And a cool record shop – which I managed to both (a) escape within 30 minutes and (b) not buy anything. Yes it’s pat-on-the-back time…

We probably wouldn’t be allowed to eat here 😉

Lunch was at a nearby food court, food is from FatBurger, which seemed appropriate. Poutine, and chicken bits.

After all that, we popped on to the Number 50 bus and made our way back to Davie Village.

It was around two years ago, more or less to the day, that we were in Liverpool in the UK for the Eurovision Song Contest. So it was very good to see that for 2025 the first semi-final had just been published direct to youtube and not limited to just Europe, it was ready for anyone to watch. And since I could beam youtube directly from my iPad to the TV in the hotel, we watched the Eurovision semi-final. Lovely!

For dinner tonight, still spoiled for choice with a big street chock full of restaurants, we opted for “Disco Cheetah” – mainly for the name, but secondly for the delicious sounding things on the menu. It was a Korean restaurant, with lots of delicious bowls available, among other things. I opted for the Tofu Cauliflower bowl, Perry had a chicken one. As unexciting as a tofu/cauliflower bowl might sound, it was delicious! Lots of lettuce, pumpkin seeds, shredded carrot, a bit of smashed avocados, and delicious big chunks of tofu and cauliflower in an amazing sauce. Way more tasty than it had any right to be, and it helped me feel a little less guilty after donuts and poutine for lunch.

Of course, what else was there to do after that lovely healthy food but have a pint of Ben & Jerry’s for dessert.

Tomorrow, it’s time to start re-packing the bags, and start the long trip back home. The flight (well, the first one) isn’t ‘til night-time though, so we have one last day to see what Vancouver has to offer. Sweet!