Lookout Vancouver...Here We Come!

On Tuesday, October 1, 2019, we took advantage of our Aldergrove campground's proximity to Vancouver, B.C. and spent the day wandering the city.  The Vancover waterfront is without peer, and, during our visit, we took time to enjoy it fully.  While these are Blue Chairs, we feel they qualify for special mention in our Red Chair Album because the view was so special.  As you will see, the beautiful Vancouver waterfront dominated our visit.

We are experienced enough to know that we shouldn't drive into large cities if we can avoid it.  We found that Vancouver's Sky Train links the city center to ex-urban areas such as Surrey, B.C., which was a short drive from our campground in Aldergrove.  So we drove to Surrey and hopped the light rail line to Waterfront Station.  When we came out to the surface, we were greeted by beautiful parks and open spaces near the tourist information center:

After getting information from the friendly tourist consultant, we started our long (9 mile!) walk around Vancouver's waterfront and down to the City Hall area.  We wandered past Canada Place with its sail-like towers, and then along the Coal Harbor Seawalk, past cormorants sitting and drying their wings on an abandoned dock:

The harbor boasts a floatplane terminal, where we saw planes lined up, waiting to take passengers on tours or trips of all sorts.  North Vancouver was in the background.

Several times as we strolled, seaplanes landed or took off, a diverting sight every time:

The marina boasted a few tiny houseboats that were too cute to avoid photographing:

As we started around past the marina, we looked back to the center of the city and enjoyed the skyline from a walker's point of view:

We stopped at Cardero's Restaurant, where Kathy had a scrumptious meal of raw oysters and sesame tuna salad with avocado, while David had a meal of the absolutely best Szechuan green beans and shrimp jiaozi he has ever tasted (sorry, Weina and Matt, better, even, than in China).  Thus fueled, we walked on our way around Coal Harbour to the Vancouver Rowing Club and Royal Vancouver Yacht Club --

-- with spectacular views back at downtown Vancouver along the way:

The shoreline of the harbor is shared by animals of all kinds, including some cheeky raccoons that did not seem the least bit perturbed the humans walking above the beach where they were foraging at low tide:

We worked our way around the harbor into Stanley Park and out to Hallelujah Point, where we got a chance to see and learn about the Brockton Point Lighthouse, with a view to West Vancouver across Burrard Inlet:

On the way back through Stanley Park, we stopped to admire the First Nations Totem Poles that Vancouver's parks agency has been collecting since the 1920's:

Working our way back around the harbor, we caught a glimpse of our next destination, Vancouver's Lookout Tower, peeking above some of the other high-rise buildings:

Riding the elevator up to the top of Lookout Tower, we caught another glimpse of Canada Place and its sail-like towers with the harbor in the background --

-- and Stanley Park, with the Brockton Point Lighthouse on the right end, where we had just been earlier in the afternoon:

Taken with the views in all directions, we couldn't resist filming this video of our walk around Lookout Tower, showing Vancouver all around us.

We had an appointment to meet friends for dinner (more on that below), so we needed to start working our way south toward the City Hall neighborhood.  On the way, we stopped by B.C. Place and its arena with statues of Terry Fox, a favorite hero of Canada's and ours.

Terry Fox, who was born in 1958 and died at the age of just 22 in 1981, was a Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist. In 1980, with one leg having been amputated due to cancer, he embarked on an east to west cross-Canada run to raise money and awareness for cancer research. Although his cancer eventually forced him to end his run prematurely, and he died after 143 days and 3,339 miles, his efforts resulted in a lasting, worldwide legacy. The annual Terry Fox Run, first held in 1981, has grown to involve millions of participants in over 60 countries and is now the world's largest one-day fundraiser for cancer research.  As of January 2018, over C$750 million has been raised in his name.

This statue depicts Terry and conveys a sense of his progress on his run.  It reminded us of the dramatic memorial to Terry that sits in Canoe Landing Park in Toronto, across the street from where our son Matt and his family lived for a few years, and of the memorial in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which we discussed in our blog titled, "Exploring Thunder Bay's History."

Just south of B.C. Place is the Plaza of Nations Dock for the most water taxi ride -- the False Creek Ferry -- which we caught from there to the Spyglass dock on the south end of Cambie Bridge, where our "Blue Chair" photo was taken.

The water taxi gave us an up-close view of Vancouver's Science World, which is a science centre run by a not-for-profit organization and is located at the end of False Creek.  It features permanent interactive exhibits and displays and rotating temporary exhibits.

While we were enjoying our ferry, we looked off to port, and there was a racing kayaker, who, with his strong paddling, was keeping pace with our little ferry boat.  We kidded the ferry pilot that she needed to pick up her speed or else the kayaker was going to outpace her.  She laughed and said, "They usually do beat us!"

From Spyglass Dock, we climbed Cambie Street toward City Hall.  When we looked back, we got this beautiful view of Lookout Tower and the mountains to the north of Vancouver, over the top of rush hour traffic.

By now, it was time for dinner, and we found our way to Kirin Restaurant, where we met Sherry Gaev, Kathy's good friend from her Stradley days (we calculated that it was over 24 years ago) and her wonderful, friendly husband Greg.  We found that we shared a great deal.  Sherry is still a paralegal, and we had lots of legal war stories for each other.  Greg is a real estate broker, which gave us lots of opportunities to share analyses of real estate markets and tall tales of real estate foibles.  More deeply, they are Jewish and we laughed about Passover experiences over the years; and because Sherry is Chinese by descent and can speak Chinese, we shared the joys and miseries of trying to keep our Chinese language skills fresh without any opportunities for immersion.

Before we finished dinner, the waitress was kind enough to snap our photo.  We promised Sherry and Greg that we would be back long before another 24 years have passed -- and that, next time, we would treat for dinner since they were kind enough to treat us this time. 

It was bittersweet to say goodnight to Greg and Sherry after dinner.  They turned and walked back to their neighborhood near the restaurant.  We found our way to the subway station at City Hall.

After a minor adventure back at King George Station in Surrey, trying to get into the parking garage at the train station, we found our way in the dark back to our campground and fell into bed with dreams of waterfronts and tasty Chinese food dancing in our heads.

Thank you, Greg and Sherry.