This morning we woke to the sun coming up over the islands as we entered the Vancouver port. We had one more opportunity for my favourite lamb chops breakfast where Deb started talking to the New Zealanders on the next table, only to find a Columba College alumnus, thus completing another small world story. It was then time to gather and wait in the public areas on the ship for disembarkation instructions. There was no negative news to be delivered, so no announcements were delivered by Captain Doom today. I will miss him.
There’s a fairly convoluted methodology for disembarkation with passengers and baggage categorised in colour groups, depending on the next destination. We were in the Purple 1 group. Passengers are advised when their baggage is available in the terminal and their group called. It doesn’t always happen in a logical numerical order, so there was a bit of grumbling from some passengers, but in reality the whole process took about an hour. Our group are all staying on at the Fairmont Vancouver for a day or two and we were all bussed at once, which created a little chaos at the hotel desk.
Our room at the hotel wasn’t yet available, so we thought we’d do lunch at an asian noodle place called Basil. I had a Pad Thai while Deb did a MYO stir fry. Both very nice but served in cardboard boxes, so I’ll skip the photo.
The area we were staying is near one of the central squares, and it seemed today was protest day. Reading the placards there did seem to be a number of issues being covered, but it was definitely a LGBTQI? aligned crowd. It is interesting how much more vibrant Vancouver becomes when the sun comes out. Our last couple of brief stays had been cold and rainy. We decided the protest was best avoided, so we ducked into the Vancouver Art Gallery just off Robson Square.
There were three contemporary exhibitions on and they had lent out their permanent to other galleries. We had seen some of the Emily Carr and EJ Hughes paintings when we were in Whistler. The first exhibition was all about the history of regarding people as white and had lots of mixed media displays. I thought it made the viewer ask themselves interesting questions around perception and privilege. The second exhibition was called ‘Fashion Fictions’ and featured displays of experimental fashions. Not usually my thing, but there were some interesting pieces. The last exhibition was from an Iranian sculptor who mainly works in bronze and has created some striking pieces.
After the gallery, we came back to the hotel and checked into our room, which is probably the largest of rooms we’ve had so far and a nice change from the ship’s cabin. This room also comes with a resident seagull who sits on the window sill staring in at the people.
We rested our feet for a while and then thought we’d walk down to the Chinatown area to find somewhere for dinner. This wasn’t a great plan, because the Chinatown areas in Canada seem to be more of a place for the Chinese population to do business, rather than a concentration high-end chinese restaurants like Chinatowns in Australia. We stopped at a really interesting second hand bookstore on the way. It was full of classic novels, many of them originals. We see fewer books all the time as we consume our literature in different ways, perhaps for the worse sometimes.
As we made our way back to the hotel we stopped in at a brew pub. We both agreed that some basic pub food would be fine after the week of eating at the ship’s restaurants. I had a pale ale called The Widowmaker, which was pleasant and we shared some Chicken Mac Cheese and dumplings.
We hunted down some ice-cream off the Room Service menu and will get a good nights sleep ready for more sightseeing around Vancouver.
Until tomorrow
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