Ireland day 1313. Saturday 03 May 2025- Vancouver 2

Today’s summary	Met up at “Zarak by Afghan” restaurant in Main St for an unconventional but enjoyable brunch at 10am. Then walked up Main to the Rogers Field Nat Bailey stadium to watch the Vancouver Canadians vs Hillsboro Hops baseball match. Vancouver won and it was a very enjoyable way to spend a sunny Canadian afternoon. Walked back to the AirBnB then met up again at 6:20pm to go for dinner at the Olympic Village branch of “Tap and Barrel”. An excellent way to round off a relaxing day
Today’s weather	Overcast and quite cool in the morning. Warm sunny and dry most of teh rest of the day. Light south westerly wind. Appx 15c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The blue 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): Walk to the Ballgame Vancouver

Commentary

Baseball is a North American phenomenon which is probably as incomprehensible to Europeans as Cricket is to North Americans. I’ve been to two “ball games” (as baseball matches are known) in the past and still don’t really understand what’s going on. And today we went to a third, offering me the opportunity to deepen my lack understanding still further.

But before we could embark on this latest adventure, we first needed to stock up on calories. So at 10 am we all – me, Val, Rob, James and Katie – met up and walked a couple of blocks to the “Zarak by Afghan Kitchen” restaurant for brunch. It offered an interesting weekend brunch menu which included poached eggs on pulled beef, curious coffee milkshakes with what looked like ice-lollies floating in them, and gigantic sweet waffles with syrup. It was all very interesting and tasty, though it did take three of us to finish off Val’s waffle. Quite unusual, but with a nice atmosphere and not too expensive.

The restaurant was conveniently situated on Main Street, so it was a simple job to walk straight up Main (and I do mean “up”, as it’s quite a steep slope all the way) and across a couple of blocks to get to the stadium for today’s game. The Rogers Field Nat Bailey stadium is located on the edge of the very attractive Queen Elizabeth park and this morning, everything was looking clean, green and lovely after last night’s rain. There was a farmer’s market going on across the road, in Riley Park, and we had a quick look round before going over to the stadium itself.

Today we were scheduled to watch the Vancouver Canadians play the Hillsboro Hops and the game started at 1:05 pm. Once the first ball had been pitched, the next couple of hours were spent relaxing in the sun, watching with some puzzlement the proceedings on the pitch below, and drinking beer. Anyway, the good news is that Vancouver won, much to the satisfaction of the local crowd.

After the game, we made our way back out into the environs of Mount Pleasant and trundled back down the hill towards the city. We retired briefly to our accommodation – just long enough to put our feet up and enjoy a cup of tea – before meeting up again with everyone else to seek dinner.

We were booked into a “Tap and Barrel” bar (the same chain as we went to on Granville yesterday for lunch) for dinner. Tonight’s venue was located in Olympic Village, near the eastern end of False Creek. They seemed to be a bit short-staffed this evening, but nevertheless the dinner was tasty and enjoyable. With nice views from our table on the upper floor, too.

After dinner, we elected to take the “early night” option, so walked back to our AirBnB and clambered into bed at around 9:30pm.

All in all, it was another excellent and very different day, even though as a result I think I know even less about baseball than I did before

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Val tucking into the most enormous breakfast waffle I’ve ever seen. It required three of us to finish it	Riley Park farmer’s market – directly opposite the Stadium

Peripatetic beer vendor. He suffered a minor mishap when his card machine temporarily lost connectivity, rendering the stadium unable to buy beer for a full ten minutes	I’m not entirely sure what this was about

Walking back down through Mount Pleasant. And indeed it is	Tonight’s dining venue

The Rogers Field Nat Bailey stadium – it’s right on the edge of Queen Elizabeth park, which is a couple of km south of the city centre, up a massive hill