USA Holiday 3, October 10 (The Cold War)

The weather on the first day in Vancouver was pretty good, such that I was able to get by with shorts and a jumper. I made the mistake of doing the same again today, only it was freezing cold, it could not have been much more than 10 degrees.

Came across the Vancouver Lookout (observation deck) first, but the building did not even seem that tall compared to the ones surrounding it, so it was not worth going up. Nearby was Canada Place by the water, it has some cool sail design on top but was not open yet.

Vancouver Lookout, if it doesn't look very tall that's because it's not.

Some weird art installation across from Canada Place. I could have made that.

Canada Place.

Downtown from the end of Canada Place.

Walked past BC Place (soccer and some Canadian Football League team) and Rogers Arena (hockey) where there was a bunch of girls waiting out for Bieber to arrive. This was like 11am or something, so I guess they had some insider knowledge when he was arriving to rehearse, or they'd just been waiting there all morning. Some random guy got out of a car and they all started screaming, only he looked nothing like Bieber, he didn't even have the same skin colour to start with.

BC Place.

Rogers Arena.

The big globe thing is Science World.

So I had no interest in joining that crowd and continued on to China Town. I thought I might find an anime store but it looked like it had been replaced with a skateboard store. It wasn't a waste though because there was the free Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden you could walk through! It was quite small so you could walk through it in say five or ten minutes, but they also offered $20 guided tours?

China Town.

Chinese Garden.

More Chinese Garden!

This concludes your tour of the Chinese Garden.

Nearby was the Gastown district where they have gas, but too much of it. It also has some older style buildings and stuff. Most of them now containing restaurants or souvenir shops, but the area was pretty cool. Everything was open in downtown by now, so I searched out a comic book store Golden Age Collectibles. I wasn't interested in the comics, just the merchandise and clothes. They had some t-shirts that were ok but nothing I really wanted to buy.

Something that looks like the Flatiron building in Gastown.

Canada Place was also open and offered two free exhibits. The Canadian Trail I actually passed by without even realising it, it was just a small set of exhibits alongside the building detailing some of the history of Canada. There was a short movie you could watch inside call the War Of 1812 Experience, but it only went for five minutes. There was also a few touch screen exhibits in the room that followed, but it all seemed a little bit short on depth.

So *that's* what The Canada Trail is!

More of The Canada Trail.

I was dying from the cold so had to stop back at the hotel for pants, then walked through Stanley Park, must have been several kilometres in total to do the entire loop. Passed some old tree that was more robot than tree at this stage, and up to Prospect Point for a view of Lions Gate Bridge which goes across to North Vancouver. It reminded me very much of San Francisco - the location and orientation of the northbound bridge, the park and the downtown area.

Stylish or overgrown, I don't know.

The old tree, if you could call it that.

Lions Gate Bridge.

The north side of the seawall.

Lions Gate Bridge again.

Walking back through the rest of the park included the Totem Poles and the Lost Lagoon.

Some of the totem pole collection.

Downtown Vancouver.

The Lost Lagoon. To find it you need to go north, west, south then west again.