Category Archives: city

Canada, city, family, friends, hiking, roadtrip, travel

No rain in Vancouver

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For a whole week I was in Vancouver & I didn’t see it rain once. I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. With mild summer temperatures it was quite pleasant. Valerie & I spent a bit of time Wednesday & Thursday on the North Shore doing pleasant little walks & enjoying the sun. Karin & I caught the final installment of Harry Potter one evening in the city – it really is a very good conclusion to the series & the 3D adds something extra.

Thursday night I said goodbye to my traveling buddy as Valerie flew off back to Sydney. It’ll be a huge shock for her to go back to work after thirteen weeks. It was great to have someone to share the such a large trip with & we really did see a lot & have some great memories – plus having a shuttle driver for my MTB rides was a huge bonus.

Karin took Friday off work for an extra long long-weekend & we tossed around various ideas for a hike close to town. The forecast was good, but the morning started off with a shroud of cloud covering the city. We eventually decided on walking to Eagle Bluffs from the Cypress ski area to hopefully get a good view of the city & out to Vancouver Island. The trail started by climbing steeply up to the top of the ridge & Black Mountain. There was a lot of snow to cross as we approached the ridge, walked along it & then went down the west side for forty minutes before reaching the bluffs. There were a few small ponds around doing their job of looking pretty well.

We did get out on the bluffs for a good view of the surrounds. It was still a little hazy, so the photos don’t show nearly as much as we actually saw. The clouds came & went & were replaced by various others, but it was worth the walk as most of the time on the top of the ridge we had clear blue skies.

From a bit further down the hill on the drive home

We took a slightly different route back to the car & were down after about four hours in total. After resting for a little while we pulled bikes out & went off in to the city to meet a couple of Karin’s friends to watch the sunset from Kits beach. The skytrain took us half way there & we had a very pleasant forty minute ride around the waterfront to the beach where we grabbed some sushi. After sitting & chatting on the beach for too long, it was rather dark for our return trip but we managed not to knock anyone over of get hit ourselves. A very fun little outing to cap the day off.

Canada, city, family, roadtrip, travel

Vancouver walkabout

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Three days in a row the weather was good in Vancouver – sensational! The SkyTrain is not far from Karin & Adam’s place, so we took that into the city on Monday morning. When I say the weather was good, I mean it wasn’t raining – the day alternated between sun, overcast & wind of varying degrees. There’s a good walk around the waterfront with informative historical information boards – we took this towards the marina & Stanely Park. This area is also home to many seaplanes, it was neat to see so many landing & taking-off – something I haven’t seen much of for quite some time.

All that Albertan sulphur provides a bit of brightness

Vancouver is really nice, especially with a bit of sun, but there is a proliferation of glass apartment buildings & I think these are awful. There are all very samey & lack any sort of character. While the metro system is great, the roads system shows a complete lack of forethought when you try to drive through what is quite a small city – no/few highways, how was that a good idea?

Stanley Park was well worth a big walk around. We followed the seawall counter-clockwise for a few kilometres taking in the Nine O’Clock Gun, a lighthouse & the Girl in Wetsuit statue (the grumpy Danes wouldn’t let them call it a mermaid, so the tail became flippers) before heading in to the center of the park.

Just as we were leaving the park, much to Valerie’s delight, we came across a family of very docile racoons. I’d seen a couple on earlier rides, but racoons were one of the animals Valerie was still hoping to see in the wild.

We didn’t see any beavers at Beaver Lake, just water-lillies.

We walked alongside the very pleasant & popular English Bay towards another purported GT dealer in search of a dogbone for my bike. That was fruitless once again – but Valerie did manage to get a coffee-cup holder for Karin’s bike. Not sure they would be a good idea on a mountain-bike, but apparently it’s the thing to have on your Vancouver city bike.

city, history, roadtrip, travel, USA

Seattle

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For a city know for its rain & only having two seasons, winter & August, we were lucky to have an absolutely stunning day on Friday exploring what is a very nice city in the sun (but then most are). After much frustration with the metro’s awful website, Google Maps told me what I wanted to know simply & we headed downtown after a much needed sleep-in. First stop was the Underground Tour, which came highly recommended from Karin. The tour was insanely popular, but very well run, informative & most amusing. When Seattle was built originally it was in the intertidal zone & twice-daily flooding was a bit of a problem. Not to mention the smelly waste-disposal problem – sewage tended to come back in with the tide. Like all good American cities it seems, Seattle had a big fire in its history which went a good way to wiping out the whole city.

For the rebuilding phase the engineers wanted to take a long time to raise up the height of the city. However, the building owners didn’t wait so rebuilding started almost immediately. Eventually the City put huge retaining walls along the perimeter of 33 blocks worth of the city. These were then filled with whatever they could find & so the street was now up on the second story, while the sidewalk was still down on the first floor. Eventually a new sidewalk was built bridging the gap between the street & the building, leaving a underground network of tunnels where the old sidewalk used to be – this was what we toured through seeing all manner of relics. Well worth the time & money to get that interesting insight in to the city’s history.

The coil of the first electric elevator in Seattle & other paraphernalia.

The ferry to Bainbridge Island was a good way to get out on the harbour & enjoy the sun & good views of the city. So we spent a few hours riding out to the island, poking around & tripping back.

We strolled over to the famous Pike Place markets, saw people throwing fish around to order & wandered out. Valerie had decided some time ago that she wanted to buy me a Stetson in the States (I could hardly refuse such an offer) & as this was our last chance we eventually found the shop we were looking for. With me having no fashion sense, it was a long deliberation before I ended up with a grey fedora – which I hopefully will find occasion to wear a bit. That night we managed to tick off a very slight desire to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. It was crazy busy on a Friday night, but we had a nice meal & the cheesecake was very good & not too intense.

city, roadtrip, travel, USA

Portland

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We drove the extra fifty miles west to the outskirts of Portland last night as it was much more affordable to stay here than in Hood River. So with no riding planned today, we were free to explore the city a bit. Supposedley one of the greenest cities in the States with all its public transportation – we had to take the light rail in. It was pretty cheap (less than five dollars for an all-zone day pass), but gosh it seemed slow. Eventually we were deposited downtown & with good instructions from some loud-voiced (according to Valerie, at least) guy at the Visitor Center we set off walking to find the streetcar (trolley). With a brief stop at Powell’s (claiming to be the largest new & used bookstore in the world) second store, I then wandered in to the main store. This one takes up a whole block & four storeys – once I read that we had to runaway (“Runaway! Runaway!”) or else the whole day would have been wasted. It was a very pleasant walk around Nob Hill & all the nice old houses before we wandered up the hill to Washington Park. After a sobering time at the simple, poignant & effective Oregon Holocaust Memorial it was a short walk up to the International Rose Test Garden. Portland, as the Rose City, does have a mighty impressive lot of roses. Never have I seen a rose garden so large & so well visited – there were people everywhere. Another very nice place to sit down & eat our wraps for lunch.

A bit more wandering, riding the streetcars, checking out the riverside (they sure like bridges here – there were well too many crossing the river) & we ended up looking up at Portlandia. She’s the second biggest statue (of the kind) in the country.

She’s also up on the second or third floor, so bigger than she looks here.

We were exhausted from pounding all those pavements (‘sidewalks’ isn’t quite as alliterative) & the Max train was packed most of the way back out east. We had our usual dose of crazies on American public transport & a rather disturbing whitetrash domestic.