Suspending Canucks in Gas Town

Saturday we started our day by wandering the streets of Vancouver to head to Gas Town.  Gas Town was Vancouvers first downtown area and was named after a seaman whose nickname was Gassy. The streets of Gas Town are cobble stone and the street lamps still have the aged looked to them.  There is a steam clock at one end of Gas Town which attracts many tourists including us.  The steam clock however was only built in the 1970's and was mainly put where it is (on top of a steam grate) to stop the homeless people sleeping there where it was warm.  For many years the steam clock was actually run by electricity as there was a problem with one of the components and nobody would pay to get it fixed.  Eventually some of the local businesses all chipped in and paid to have the clock fixed and it now runs on steam power from the main steam tunnels that heat many buildings in the downtown area.

Once we had seen the clock and taken some pictures it was time to start heading to the bus depot via China Town to meet Jnr who was coming to stay with us as we had tickets for the hockey the following day.  She arrived off the Greyhound bus just as we arrived so that was lucky.

We then headed to China Town to get some lunch and catch up in the one whole day we hadn't seen each other for.  After lunch we headed back to the hotel via the mall to find Lisa some new winter boots that have lots of grip and don't hurt her feet.  Mission accomplished - she ended up with the same boots as Gordo's.  They were now twins and also the fact they bought the same North Face hoodies.  Very cute!  We dropped off Lisa's stuff in our hotel room (she packs like Toot even for only one night her bag was super heavy!).

We then decided to head over to Granville Island to look around the public
markets, we walked about 10 minutes to the ferry depot and hopped on a cute little ferry that took us to the other side.  The journey only took approximately 5minutes to cross and we were at the markets - very convenient.  The market was a smaller type market than the Adelaide Central Market.  Still lots of fresh local produce - meat, fruit and vegetables and yummy sweets as well as local handmade crafts etc.  We each purchased a little goody bag of lemon tarts, strawberry tart and a local delicacy of "Nanaimo Bar" It consists of a wafer crumb-base layer topped by a layer of custard flavoured butter icing which is covered with melted chocolate.  Lisa reckons these were okay but she's had better!  I guess we'll just take her word for it.

We looked around the market area at all the little shops surrounding the market and eventually stopped at the Granville Brewing Company and had a little taste of their lagers and ales.  There were some caramel flavour beers as well as banana and fruity ones - some were not everyone's tastes but were good to try and have a seat while keeping out of the cold.


After Granville Island, we hopped back on the ferry to take us back and then wondered around trying to work out where to go for some dinner.  Jnr wanted a good chicken parmy and of course when you want something in particular you never find it.  So we walked around aimlessly for what felt like an eternity and finally settled on a busy pub establishment had a look at the menu and decided to eat there.  What a big mistake that was.  Once we were finally seated it took the waitresses at least 10

minutes to come back and take our drink order.  The people who came in after us got their order taken first and served their drinks before we had even ordered.  So when we were finally served to give our drink orders we thought we would order food straight away. However ordering a "kahlua and milk" was just way too out there and they came back 3 times confirming our drinks order!! How incompetent some people really are.  We then had to wait a further 25 minutes for our drinks to arrive.  We could see our drinks on the bar which were sitting there for over 15mins we were going to go pick them up but then thought lets just see how long it does actually takes these idiots to bring them to us! Such poor service it was unbelievable, especially since these people rely on tips as their wage they weren't really doing a lot to help themselves out!  Poor form!  Steam was coming our of Toots ears by the second.  Our food eventually turned up 45 minutes after ordering. It wasn't like it was that hard - they only had to cook up a few skewers of chicken and cook a steak which was meant to be medium but came out well done and cold.  We can only guess the food hung out under the warmers for as long as our drinks did at the bar. GROSS!  Also our appetizer that was meant to come out before the meal came out all at the same time! Argh.  Gordo got 50% off her steak as they asked if she wanted a new one cooking but she said she didn't have another 45mins to wait.  Toot was fuming and Gordo was hangry and Jnr was well Jnr, just taking it all in her stride and we were probably embarrassing her.  So as you can imagine no tip was left and the girl was not impressed when she found out, however it did make Toot feel a little better.

We grumbled all the way back to the hotel, then to top off this evening Toot had to cancel her credit card due to fraudulent activity, it seems that somewhere along the line someone has got her details and decided to go shopping in Riverside, Illinois USA.  Yay so Toot is super impressed to not have her card on her but thankfully it happened now and not at the beginning of the trip. Anyway we all had a good night rest from all the walking we had done that day and had a little sleep in the next day too. 

Sunday was Ice Hockey day....we headed off to Rogers Arena which is about a 30min stroll from our hotel, it was a rainy morning but that didn't dampen our excitement.  Gordo in her Canucks hoodie, map in tow and led the troops to their first game.  Once there we got drinks and headed for our seats which thankfully weren't in the nose bleeds.  We saw the Vancouver Canucks play the Minnesota Wild, unfortunately the Canucks lost but we did see a punch up not even 10mins into the game which was highly entertaining.  None of us know the rules so at some points were dumbfounded when the goals weren't being defended by the goalie?!  One day we should actually really look up the rules properly.  As always the North Americans know how to entertain a crowd, AFL etc really need to step up their game.  Also the game started 30mins early due to the Super Bowl starting at 3:30pm so gave people time to leave the game and go onto their next venue to watch the game. And yes we were notified about this the day before via email from the ticket sales people.  They also said if this was inconvenient then we could return our tickets for them to resell.  That's how easy it should be.

After the game we went to grab some lunch and made our way back to the hotel to pack up Jnr's stuff and slowly made our way back to the bus station as she was on the 7pm bus back to Whistler.  We dropped her off with many a tear and hoped it would be not too long until we see each other again.  Toot is super proud of how independent and what a great young woman she is becoming (far from the annoying little sister she once was)and for leaping out of her comfort zone and living halfway round the world for 13+ months (and counting).  It has been great to catch up and see what she has been up to and meet some of her amazing friends she has made while living over here.  So proud of the you Lisa and thanks for the fun times in Canada eh! Love you lots and I'll see you soon.

Okay so enough of the sobby stuff, we went back to the hotel made some pasta and salad for dinner and went to bed.

This morning we had a long sleep in oops! We're on holidays we're allowed to sleep in...right?!  We headed to Canada Place to catch the free shuttle bus to Capilano Suspension Bridge which was about a 25min ride north of downtown.  Again the weather today has been shit.  Rainy all day but not overly cold thankfully or maybe we're just getting used to it? Nah!  We were there for about 2 hours walking around the rainforest which was still beautiful even in the wet.  We did the treetop walk, the cliff walk and over the suspension bridge.  The bridge is 70m above the Capilano River which of the Statue of Liberty was placed in the river the bridge is at her shoulder height or the equivalent of 4 t-rex stacked on top of each other.  It spans 137m which is the equivalent of 2 x 747 planes wingtip to wingtip.  And can hold more than 90,000kgs or 96 elephants. 

After this we again headed back to the hotel and had some lunch and then took the train out to Burnaby to a shopping mall, yup that's right we love to shop and well we were getting sick of the rain and was nice to be indoors.  Thankfully a relatively cheap shopping trip probably due to Toot's card being out of action sorry CBA please don't hate her.  Once we had walked 3 floors of shops we headed back to the hotel and got some soup on the way for dinner.

Our last day in Canada tomorrow before we start the crappy long journey home - if your all good you might get another post from the airport tomorrow night.  We shall see....until then!