We departed Ketchikan
Wednesday night, August 29 and set our clocks ahead one hour thereby losing an
hour. Thursday was a day of rest at sea
with no scheduled stops. After
breakfast, Jeanne, who had been taking care of our dining needs, gave us, and a
small group, a tour of the kitchens on the 4th and 5th
floors – the Cascades Dining room where three-course dinners are served by a
head waiter and assistant waiter. This
is where we ate most of our dinners and occasionally breakfast. It was a great tour and we were pleasantly
surprised how clean the kitchens were.
It was a relaxing day.
As scheduled we arrived at the opening of the Canadian (British Columbia) portion of the Inside
Passage about 4:00 pm. I
went to the bow and saw two humpback whales and three seals in about an
hour. At 5:00 pm Rita and I attended an
interesting talk given by a husband and wife of the Royal Canadian Police. The talk and slides was mostly about the
history of the Yukon
and the role of the Mounties as gold was discovered there.
At 7:00 pm we went to our last dinner in the Cascades dining
room and just as we sat down at a window table the curtain was raised and we
were treated to the antics of three orca whales just off the starboard side
where we were seated. About 15 minutes
later we saw more orcas and yet again a third time as they entertained us
throughout dinner. Finally we returned
to our cabins and re-packed our suitcases for tomorrow’s departure.
I woke at 6:30 am Friday morning and looked out our port
hole to see that the captain was exactly on schedule as he said we would be
sailing under the Lions
Gate Bridge
then and we were. The ship docked in Vancouver at 7:00 am and
we had breakfast before getting our hand luggage and assembling in the Colony
Club. We opted to depart at 9:30 am and
all went on time. Canadian Customs was
brief and friendly and we found our big suitcases quickly and were out to the
taxi stand in no time.
We arrived at the Sunset Inn & Suites hotel about 10:00
am and were happy to find our room was available to us. We had stayed here last year and find the
hotel friendly and nicely located. We
unpacked then, while I downloaded several days of photos, Rita took a short
nap. Around noon we found an ATM for
Canadian money then walked to the Aquatic
Center for a boat taxi to Granville Island.
The open markets on Granville
Island impressed us last
year and did so this year as well. We
had lunch on an outside deck and walked around the many shops. Rita even found a quilt shop!
For dinner we visited a restaurant we enjoyed last year on English Bay Beach. The Boathouse restaurant has excellent
seafood and I had a trio of fresh halibut, salmon, and ling cod baked on a
cedar plank, their signature dish. We
had scenic views of the beach and setting sun.
With the meal we had a bottle of British Columbia Sandhill sauvignon
blanc which I have to try to find here in Austin. We also had two large desserts which our
friendly waitress said were made in-house – they were decadent. Finally espresso to top off a great
meal. We walked back to our hotel down
lively Davie Street.
Saturday I decided that the hop on – hop off sightseeing bus
would be ideal for us as Rita was not up to a lot of walking. We did a lot of walking in Vancouver last
year, much of it in the rain. Today was
bright, clear and sunny with a maximum temperature of 72. Besides that the sightseeing bus stopped just
a half-block from the hotel. I purchased
an additional side trip to see the Capilano
Suspension Bridge. So we boarded the bus about 9:30 am and did a
loop through Vancouver, seeing much we had seen before – Granville Island,
Library Square, Royal Drill Barracks, Chinatown, Gastown (with statue of Gassy
Jack), and hopped off at the steam clock in Gastown. At nearby Canada Place, where our cruise ship
docked yesterday, we boarded another bus that took us across the Lions Gate Bridge to North Vancouver
and the Capilano Suspension
Bridge, Vancouver’s
top attraction.
The scary bridge is 450 feet of wobbling planks 230 feet high
above the Capilano
Canyon floor and
river. It sways, bounces, hops, and
throws one off balance. It is also
fairly crowded with tourists. We managed
to cross and then took a nature trail among the tall trees on the other
side. But we had to re-cross the bridge
once more to return. It was fun.
We returned to Canada
Place and walked to another brewery we enjoyed
last year – the Steamworks Brewery on the edge of Gastown. We split a good sandwich but each had our own
tasty beers to drink. After lunch we
hopped back on another sightseeing bus to Stanley Park. Unknown to us, we could (and did) depart on another
bus that just goes around Stanley
Park in about an
hour. Finally we re-boarded another
sightseeing bus that took us down crowded Robson and Burrard Streets to our
hotel. It was a nice day of sightseeing
beautiful Vancouver. We walked to Thai Basil restaurant for a
spicy Thai dinner before re-packing for the airlines.
Sunday we bid goodbye to Vancouver with an early departure. We set our alarm clock for 4:00 am to get a
taxi at 5:00 am to the airport. Our
flight left at 7:30 am and we had to check in two hours beforehand. We cleared US Customs at the Vancouver
airport and caught our flight to Denver. We had a small lunch at the Denver
airport then caught our next flight to Austin. We arrived in Austin about 6:00 pm, stopped to have a
Tex-Mex dinner and then shopped for groceries because the refrigerator was
empty at home. It was a great trip but
we were happy to shower in our own bathroom and sleep in our own bed tonight.
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