Day 24 – Sunny But Crowded Vancouver

BC Place Stadium

We had a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Vancouver today, which brought everyone outside to enjoy themselves. Good for them but difficult on us tourists. It made the roads really crowded and parking impossible at the popular spots.

Our first stop with at the Olympic Village from the 2010 Winter Olympics. The housing built for the Olympics is now a very nice residential section of town along the waterfront. The first shot posted is an Olympic Village statue with BC Place Stadium (home of the BC Lions of the Canadian Football) in the background across the water. The water is called False Creek, which is as the name advertises. Not a creek, but actually an extension of English Bay.

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

We took a short walk along False Creek and saw the Canadian sense of humor in action. We saw an ALS Ice Bucket challenge where the water was dumped off a bridge about 40 feet above the two guys taking the challenge. Apparently they didn’t realize until that moment that ice dumped from that far is going to hurt! They quickly tossed the big pieces in the water. Speaking of their sense of humor, another thing we found funny was that everything in the dollar store here is $1.25, due to the exchange rate. Apparently no one sees the irony in that.

Vancouver From Stanley Park

We then tried to visit Glanville Island, which is a popular shopping area with a bunch of boutique shops. Cute but no parking spots. Honestly the stores didn't look that interesting so not a problem for us. So then we moved on to Stanley Park. I probably should say "crawled through traffic" as "moved on" isn't quite the right description. Stanley Park is another popular spot for outdoor activities for the citizens of Vancouver and once again it was too crowded for us tourists. We could see the sights from the car but it was very difficult to pull over and enjoy them. So we settled for some quick photos from the car. I think our general opinion of Vancouver is that it has overgrown its infrastructure to the point where living here would be a hassle that we don’t need.