GC Travels

Day 6 was mostly a travel day back to San Francisco. I had some time in the morning to visit 49th Parallel cafe to buy a breakfast sandwich to eat as lunch. The plan was to avoid overpriced airport food. The sandwich was called The Avo and it contained an egg, avocado, sun dried tomato aioli and some arugula on a brioche. Pretty tasty in my opinion. Also, at the airport I tried Tim Hortons. The lines were long. After waiting for 15-20 minutes, I was told they ran out of the item I wanted, which was a latte. Disappointed, I headed over to the other Tim Hortons, where I was able to order a latte. It was just ok and nothing to write home about.  On the flight back, I watched part of the movie The Count of Monte Cristo. I thought it was a movie in English, but it turned out to be in French with English subtitles. Once the plane landed at SFO, it felt good to be back on my own territory. Taking the BART home was a bit of a doozy though as the signage for the Airtrain and then BART left ...

Granville Island was on the itinerary for Day 5. I walked from my hotel to the Aquatic Center where I boarded a water taxi to Granville Island. There are two main water taxi providers who ferry passengers over to Granville Island: Aquabus and False Creek Ferries. The aquabus is recognizable by its rainbow colored exterior. I took the False Creek Ferry. They were both cute water taxis. The ride is only 3 minutes long! I bought a round trip ticket that only cost 7 CAD, which is not too expensive. I could have also taken a bus to Granville Island, but I felt that a water taxi would be more picturesque and take me directly to the Public Market.  Basically, Granville Island is like a huge Ferry Building (a San Francisco reference) where one can buy artisanal food, farm fresh local produce and handmade arts and crafts. I had a cafe au lait at Blue Parrot Cafe, which wasn't that tasty, some wontons, which didn't even have shrimp, and a lox bagel. There wasn't enough lox, but the e...

Day 4  I had to wake up super early to ensure I'd be ready to be picked up at 7:30 AM for a day trip with a tour group to Victoria and Butchart Gardens. The drive from downtown Vancouver to Tsawassen Ferry Terminal took some time. Due to operational issues with BC Ferries, the tour guide informed all of us 18 passengers in the tour group that we would need to wait 2 hours at the terminal before our shuttle bus could get on the ferry. That's a lot of time to be waiting at a ferry terminal. Fortunately there were coffee shops and other shops were we could spend some time. When it was time to get on the ferry, it was interesting to see all the vehicles that could just drive onto the huge ferry to be brought to Vancouver Island.  The ferry trip took 1.5 hours. On top of that add additional driving time for the guide to drive us down south towards the city of Victoria, capital of the province of British Columbia. Victoria was ok, but not much to do given the very limited time that ...

Day 3 was dedicated to visiting Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. It is located over the Lion Gate's Bridge in Vancouver's version of Marin County. Apparently, the bridge was designed with the Golden Gate Bridge in mind, but they decided to paint it blue green to blend it in with the surroundings. I like to equate Vancouver's sights to their San Franciscan counterparts if possible.  Capilano Suspension Bridge Park offers a free shuttle from downtown Vancouver to the park. I got on at the Hyatt Regency shuttle stop, but that wasn't the best move. Their website was misleading as it appeared that each stop had its own shuttle dedicated to it when it reality, the Hyatt was the second stop for the shuttle. The first stop before Hyatt, was at Canada Place. That meant that by the time the shuttle arrived at the Hyatt, there were already visitors on the shuttle and limited seats to pick up all the people who had gathered at the Hyatt. By pure stroke of luck, I managed to be one ...

Since breakfast was not included in my hotel, I ate the food that I bought at Urban Fare the day before. After brekkie, I headed out to explore Stanley Park. Some parts of the park had many geese and of course their poop lying around. I tried to avoid stepping in their poop.  Ultimately, I ended up walking the entire seawall at Stanley Park and reached 28K steps by the end of the day. It took about 3 hours to finish the walk including time spent taking photos and eating lunch at the Beach 3 concession stand. I had the fish tacos and a ginger kombucha drink. Dinner was at Ramen Danbo for which I had to wait in line 35 minutes. At least the ramen was decent and tasted authentic. Below are some of the sights at Stanley Park. I missed Prospect Point.                                                            ...

Travel days can feel like running a marathon because of the need to jump through multiple hoops to catch the plane on time without leaving important things behind. Then there's the question of how much time to get to the airport ahead of the flight.  The morning of the flight, within an hour of being picked up to go to the airport, I received a notice from my library that I needed to return my Vancouver travel guide because someone reserved it. Usually the library auto renews borrowed books unless someone's waiting for it. The book was due to be returned 2 days into my trip. That meant I needed to quickly return the book if I wanted to avoid any library fees. Thankfully, I had enough time to power walk over to the library to return the book before my ride. However, that was definitely a lesson learned if borrowing a travel guide from the library. I made it to SFO on time and was impressed with the extra touches to make the airport more appealing to travelers despite all the con...