Walking on air - Blogabond

Breakfast with the irritating bloke who wants to talk about global warming in attendance. He is miffed that I neither wholeheartedly support the contention that it is all man's fault nor debate why it isn't. I dodge the 'so you don't believe in climate change' with 'I don't believe the science is agreed'; I dodge the 'look at the flooding in Pastistan' with 'there have been floods since time immemorial but with modern communications we are more aware of them'; he thinks he nails me with 'you don't think that a disaster would have been recorded 500 years ago' and I sidestep with 'not all cultures have a written tradition.' I would love to ask why he thinks had a mini ice age for 300 years in the middle of the last millennia and whether he has considered that the vast herds of buffalo covering the North American plains may have produced more methane that current population of cows – or on what assumptions he calculates the methane output of the herds of herbivorous dinosaurs. But I would have ended up entertaining him rather than getting on and enjoying what the planet has to offer now!!

Steam clock sounding off

We checked out of our rooms and stored our bags in the basement. First stop today was gastown, apparently named after an early publican in the area who enjoyed 'gassing' - I would have been happy to introduce him to climate change man. Gastown is an area for domestic shops, furniture etc. and quite old. It has not yet suffered from an explosion of high rise buildings and seems familiar to provincial eyes such as mine. It looks rather attractive, I think. While there we saw a steam clock, originally powered by waste steam from the local businesses. Every ¼ hour, it toots; we were lucky enough o be there for the 09:15 tooting.

Chinatown gate

Moving on to Chinatown with its rather magnificent millennium gate, near which is supposedly the narrowest building in the world at 6 feet. It is undoubtedly narrow but it is tacked on to the front of a building a lot wider, so I think it is a bit disingenuous. Dr Sun Yat Sen has had a small park and garden dedicated to him with some funds towards it provided by the Chinese government. The park was small but beautifully formed and the garden was closed all day to accommodate a ruddy film crew, so we didn't get an opportunity to see it.

We wanted to get some maternity wear as part of Zoe's birthday present, but hard as it is to believe, there are no maternity shops in downtown Vancouver – or possibly none of the locals we asked wanted to share it with us.

Traditional patterns at Hudon's Bay Company

Even the Hudson Bay Company couldn't oblige.

We collected our bags, made our way to the Canada Line and Airport and picked up our rental car, a nice Toyota Corolla. Looking at the map, our next port of call, Lynn Canyon involved a long drive round Vancouver or a shorter drive though the middle. Rather to Sue's horror, I elected to go through the middle, hoping Ollie's tuition last week would be remembered. I found that having driven in Corsica last year, it didn't take very long for me to adapt to left hand drive.

Terrifying suspension bridge, Lynn Valley gorge

Tomtom navigated us beautifully through town but was less sure where Lynn Canyon was. Not altogether surprising as there are no signs to guide you. After stopping for directions a couple of times, we were able to find the path and take the ¾ hour walk up one side, over a terrifying suspension bridge and back up the other side. The walk through pine forest with huge trees along board walks and up and down steps was a wonderful experience. The guide book said that this was better than the Capilano which is much better known, busy and expensive. We can't compare but it was not too busy, it was free and our landlady at the B&B told us that in her view it was a much nicer walk.

We found a nice pub for our dinner of meatballs with linguini – excellent.

written by

rickandsuejohnson on August 4, 2010 from Vancouver, Canada

from the travel blog: Go west, then go west some more.

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written by chenwenjun on August 4, 2010

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