Ireland day 1316. Tuesday 06 May 2025- Vancouver 5

Today’s summary	Had tea and toast for breakfast in the AirBnB. Then caught the no 84 bus to the University of British Columbia (UBC) out to the west of Vancouver. Coffees at the Great Dane café then went to the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) to look round the new galleries. Afterwards, walked down to Wreck beach, went swimming (Val stayed dry!) and had a picnic lunch. Took the bus back and rounded off the day with dinner at a Lebanese restaurant with Rob.
Today’s weather	Sunny and dry in the morning but light cloud cover in the afternoon. Light south westerly breeze. Appx 18c

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): Hills of Howth walk

Commentary

Today was the last day in Vancouver for our current visit, and we were determined to make the most of it. So, after a decent night’s sleep we had a tea-and-toast breakfast in our AirBnB, we walked a few meters across the road, and without further ado caught a bus to UBC.

Back in 2022, when we visited, we had been out to visit the MOA, which is at the far end of the UBC campus. But at the time, the main exhibition hall was closed for renovation. The building work was completed in 2024, so we decided that today would be a good opportunity to go back and see what the new facilities were like.

The bus got us to the campus in just over half an hour, by which time we were of course in need of refreshment. So we returned to the “Great Dane” café, which we had frequented last time, and enjoyed coffees in the sunshine.

From there it was a further ten minutes’ walk to the MOA. It’s not cheap to get in (about Can$25) but we did at least get discounts for being old. We allowed ourselves a couple of hours to have a good look round, so duly set about exploring.

The museum isn’t really an museum at all – it’s more of a gallery of Native American (and other) art. So although the new main exhibition gallery was spectacular and the exhibits well curated, I thought that an overall narrative was missing.

I would have liked to learn more about how these ancient peoples arrived here. Did they migrate on foot via the Bering land bridge, or did they sail here via the Pacific Islands (the similarity of the artefacts – e.g. woodcarvings and totem poles – would seem to suggest they might)? It was also a bit difficult to learn what the culture was like, other than through snippets of interviews and quotes from surviving members of these original settlers.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed our visit and certainly appreciated the spectacular new gallery.

By this stage, it was early afternoon, so a picnic on nearby Wreck Beach beckoned. It was just a short walk down the few hundred steps of Trail 6 to the shore and we soon found a suitable spot to have our lunch. At this stage, the sun was still shining but I could see cloud encroaching so I decided to go for a swim before it got too cold.

I generally think sea-swimmers are either extremely hardy or a bit eccentric so I must have been one or the other when I jumped into the Pacific this afternoon. Anyway the water was quite shallow so it had warmed a bit in the sun and wasn’t too agonising.

After a few minutes splashing about, I inelegantly made it to dry land and managed to wipe off most of the seawater. The rest dried off quite quickly in the remaining warm sun. Val meanwhile had stayed on terra firma and had her picnic lunch.

Once dry, I had my lunch too, and we surveyed the scene for a while before packing up and clambering back up the hundreds of steps of Trail six.

It was a nice walk back through the UBC campus to the bus station – and it really is a lovely place – and a no 84 arrived a few minutes later to whisk us back downtown.

We just had a few moments to find our feet back in the AirBnB before dropping round to Rob’s flat for drinks and then on out to “Nuba” a Lebanese restaurant for an excellent mezze dinner.

It was a lovely relaxing day, and a great way to round off our all-too-short visit to Vancouver. I’m sure we will be back. In the meantime, it’s onwards and upwards again tomorrow!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Gearing up for coffee at the Great Dane	Heading across the campus to the Museum. The buildings are impressive..

..and the views even more so	Statue “The Raven and the First Men” is actually set in one of the two WW2 gun-turrets around which the MOA is built. It was unveiled by the then Prince Charles in 1980

The other turret is still in its more or less original condition (minus the gun) outside	At “Nuba” on East 3rd Avenue. Really excellent dinner – and especially the accompanying “Musar Jeune” Lebanese wine

Val cutting a lonely figure on Wreck Beach