Ireland day 0338. Thursday 01 September 2022- Canada2203

Today’s summary	Did a bit of grocery shopping first thing then after breakfast walked out to Van Dusen botanic gardens. A beautiful spot then later in the afternoon walked down to Granville Island to buy ingredients for dinner, which we ate on the beach at Kitsilano while the sun went down. Absolutely perfect. Walked back to our accommodation afterwards to complete the circuit
Today’s weather	Warm, sunny and dry all day. Light breeze in the morning. About 26C

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The green line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Vancouver on foot

Commentary

Having driven all around the Vancouver area over the last couple of days, we decided to spend today a bit closer to home, and see where we could get to on foot from our accommodation in West Side Vancouver. A quick look at the map showed that we were relatively close to the “world renowned” Van Dusen botanic gardens, and we thought that would be a good place to aim for first.

But before we could set off, we needed to walk round to the nearby grocery store to pick up some some essentials. Being in a rather smart suburb of Vancouver, it turns out, we could only get organic grass-fed semi-skimmed milk in heavyweight glass bottles at C$5 a litre. So a simple trip just to get some bits for breakfast saw us racking up a three-figure bill before we really clocked what was going on. Anyway we enjoyed our breakfast and I am sure the super expensive milk made all the difference.

Once we had recovered from the shock of the organic milk, we set off for what looked on the map like the short walk to the gardens. But I have quickly come to learn that Canada is a Big Place so our house and the garden, which appear so close on the map, are actually miles apart and it took us the best part of an hour to walk there.

Still, the gardens are beautiful and the walk was totally worthwhile. They were only opened in 1975 and are named after Whitford Julian VanDusen, a lumber magnate and philanthropist. They were built on the site of a former golf course.

We were still feeling the after effects of the transatlantic journey so this morning we were awake soon after 5 and ready to go. Meaning that by the time lunchtime arrived up at the garden, we were actually quite happy to take a long time over it and actually not move very far at all.

Eventually, we did stir ourselves and arranged to meet up with the rest of the family down at the market on Granville Island. We could have taken the bus or an Uber from the gardens, but, I guess, we were still slightly reeling from the grocery store experience so, as it was a nice day and the route was downhill, we decided to walk there as well. I’m glad we did, actually, as it was an interesting hike and gave us an opportunity to look covetously in some of the up-market stores which line the upper reaches of Granville Street.

We successfully made it to Granville Island and picked up some delicious looking cheeses and ham (and a bag of even more delicious chips) and took them, with a bottle of wine, over to Kitsilano Beach for a sunset supper on the sand. How alliterative.

The beach was thronging with swimmers, volleyball players and beautiful people just lounging around on the sand improving their perfect tans. Val and I were probably the oldest on the beach by about half a century but hey – I don’t think we looked too out of place.

The sun duly headed for the horizon beyond distant Vancouver Island, and treated us to a picture-perfect sunset at precisely 19:55. It rapidly cooled down once the last warming rays headed for the Pacific Ocean, so we finished our doughnuts, said our farewells, and headed for home. Once again, we eschewed the Uber and walked back – a pleasant hike in the gathering night, through some of Vancouver’s pleasantest suburban streets. The only drawback was that it was all uphill.

All in all, a superb day today. Vancouver has been looking really lovely for our visit, and I think we have both thoroughly enjoyed every minute. Can’t wait to get started on tomorrow’s adventures already!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Here we are at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens	The Livingstone Lake is the centrepiece of the garden. It’s very well done and an attractive place to linger. We spent several hours there but only saw a small fraction of it. Mainly, it has to be said, because we spent several of those hours sitting in the coffee shop

Val checking out the shade of a group of cypress trees	We walked down from the gardens to Granville Island to meet up with the rest of the family in the early evening. Part way down Granville Street there is a vacant building plot which has been attractively occupied by a series of several small community allotments. In one of them, this curious jet-black tomato plant was growing. I’ve never seen anything remotely like it and I have no idea if it’s edible. It looked deadly!

The walking route to Granville Island takes you under the freeway viaduct. its a bit of a Gotham City approach, but definitely worth the effort as it’s a lovely spot with lots of interesting markets once you get there. But, it goes without saying, it’s very expensive.	A prosperous looking marina takes up much of the False Creek – Granville Island sits right in the middle of this Creek.

A hundred different varieties of tomato in the market – but none of the jet-black ones that were growing in the Granville Street allotment