My views do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
It’s very common for my next contract to change frequently. Over the last three contracts, I think I’ve been assigned an average of 6 ships before one sticks long enough for me to embark. The last two times it got stuck on the Caribbean Princess. So this time, when my assignment landed on the Golden Princess and I saw the itinerary, I was determined to make it stick. I would join in Vancouver before crossing the ocean to New Zealand and Australia. I’d heard that Vancouver was really cool, so I submitted a request to book my own flight there so I could spend a few days in Vancouver before I joined the ship. I wanted to hang out in Vancouver and I wanted to work on the Golden. The more I researched the city, the more it seemed that my friend Emily should come with me. So she took a couple days off of school and booked a flight! The podcasts, the travel guides and the people I asked for advice all had the same recommendation first: go to Stanley Park. And rent some bikes. It was a sunny day. A little sheet at the hotel recommended stopping at Thierry, a Chocolate Patisserie Cafe on the way to Stanley Park, so we did!
I saw a Spanish Latte on the menu. What is that? It’s a latte made with condensed milk. Yes, please. And a pan au chocolate.
I noticed the festive Canadian post office boxes and realized that I hadn’t noticed any cool post boxes in the Caribbean, even though I visited several different countries. I liked these.
And if you think the Post Boxes are festive, check out this money! It looks like candy!
We were following the dotted line on google maps which would take us to the cheapest bike shop when I looked down the street and saw the water. We should definitely walk down the waterfront rather than the city street! The grid of the city seemed easy enough to follow. We walked down to the water and there were sea planes!
And a gas station in the middle of the water!
I realized that this was probably common place for locals, and probably very touristy, but I was thrilled.
I looked around the corner and there were some ships! And a Princess ship! It was the Coral Princess. My friend Stef was on the Coral for her contract after the Caribbean, but she wasn’t there anymore. I don’t think I know anyone who is on the Coral right now. But it was still cool to see it. That’s probably where I’ll join the Golden in a couple of days!
There were sculptures along the path.
And cool house boats.
We found our way to the bike shop that one blog that I looked recommended for having the best deals. After my experiences biking in Ireland, I suggested that we upgrade to the electric bikes so we would have the energy to go further and see more things. I’d read that it took 1-4 hours to do Stanley Park depending on how much you stopped. Then, the bike path wound around to Granville Island, which I always wanted to visit. With electric bikes, we could do both!
We mounted our bikes and headed in the direction of the park. When we found our way to the bike path, we figured out we were heading to Granville Island. That’s okay! We’ll do that first! Maybe we’ll get some lunch there and then do the park.
The day was gorgeous, the path was awesome and easy to follow, and the water was a ridiculous color of blue.
We found the bridge that went to Granville Island and tried to figure out how to get on it. We followed some bikes going up a hill that looked like it would be the entrance to the bridge. They stopped to take a picture. I looked up. What a cool building!
So I took a picture too. Oh! Have I mentioned the architecture in Vancouver?! It’s so creative. The big glass buildings all look a little quirky and different. We asked the people on the bikes if they knew how to get to Granville Island. They were tourists too! from New York. They had just been there. They told us the best way to get there would be to take the bike path around the water instead of going over the bridge. So we did!
When we got to Granville Island, we realized we didn’t have bike locks and all of the bike racks had big signs saying that regular bike locks weren’t good enough. You need heavy duty bike locks. We concluded that our bikes would probably therefore get stolen with no bike locks. We couldn’t find a place to sufficiently stash our bikes to go somewhere to get food or a drink or go into the marketplace, so we continued on our way. We found a bridge that took us back where we started and followed the bike path toward Stanley Park.
We rounded the corner and now we were on the other side of the water! There were the ships again!
We found a light house!
It felt like my electric bike was giving me an advantage about 30% of the time. It seemed like when I started coasting to slow down for a pedestrian crosswalk, the motor would kick in and give me a little boost. It certainly didn’t kick in as I struggled to climb uphill. Emily’s bike, on the other hand, was all over it! She’d press a button and it would take off. She said it was like riding a scooter with pedals!
We followed the loop all around the perimeter of the park with craggy beaches along the way, then we did a little loop inside, and found ourselves in a forest.
Just incredible. Toward 3pm we returned our bikes and walked back along the water, enjoying the fall colors and looking for food.
We found a little place on the water for happy hour.
The view was so cool. It reminded me of the Dockside restaurant in Sequim.
And then I saw the Coral Princess slowly pull out and sail away!
I took a moment to appreciate being on vacation. The Cruise Staff on board might be at the sail away party, or getting ready for the evening activities. That’s what I’ll be doing for the next six months, but today I was drinking delicious apricot beer with my friend, eating oysters, and spending the evening on land.
There was so much food to eat and so little time. Emily and I decided to have a couple of small meals instead of one big one. A couple of blocks from our hotel was the Ballyhoo Public house. It made me think of a moment in my favorite movie, Good Will Hunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftl_ckcpZgY
We had to go.
And then we found sushi. Everyone said we had to get sushi in Vancouver because it was so good, but no one was specific about where we should go. So we found a highly rated place a couple of blocks away. Our waitress was really cool and she talked science with Emily and helped us select our order.
This place seemed more authentic than the sushi places I’d been too before. The tastes were more clear and crisp. I looked around and there were more Asian patrons than white patrons. I thought that was a good sign. Anyway, as sushi is, it was delicious. So good that we talked about how good it was the whole next day.
Finally, we finished the evening with Japanese buttermilk ice cream. It was tangy and amazing. I’d never heard of this before!
At the end of the day, our legs were a bit sore from the 4 hour bike ride (well, mine were), but what a day! We’d done so many things! And we’d mostly caught up on each other’s lives since we’d last seen each other 10 months ago.
I remember when I was teaching flying, my student Fairfax had business in Vancouver so booked a hotel with a balcony that had a view of the seaplanes taking off and landing. That is one thing still on my bucket list. I would like to take a seaplane lesson.