Tuesday August 29 – Vancouver

We went out around 9.30am after an unusual (for us) sleep in! We walked down to Canada Place to catch the shuttle up to Grouse Mountain. The tickets included the Sky Tram up the mountain then a chair lift to the top. In the winter this is a ski resort – lots of slopes and ski lifts in different directions.

On the way up in the chair lift we saw a mother black bear and her two cubs. This is our FIRST wild bear sighting since being away!! Apparently the bears have only been in the area for the last few days, and some of the staff haven’t seen them yet.

We watched another lumberjack show with an almost exact script as the one we saw in Ketchikan in Alaska. There was one difference though – a ‘plant’ in the audience who was to time an activity by a lumberjack, and who later ended up one of the poles, still dressed as a tourist. He sat on top of pole, juggled, did head stand, threw down his pole-climbing spurs, and his harness, and then he  pretended  to fall off the pole, but instead zip-lined down the guy rope. He was wearing a straw hat – a BUNNINGS straw hat! We didn’t ask him how he got it, but a guy at the top of the chairlift was Aussie, living in Caringbah, and another couple we met there came from Burraneer Bay! The Shire rules!

We saw a bird of prey show, and the turkey eagle went AWOL, not returning. We suppose they caught him in the end.

On our return from the mountain we found the ice cream shop we’d looked for previously, and had one each Yum. Then we went to the Art Gallery – had to pay to go in. Saw a Claude Monet exhibition, then went through the rest of the gallery. Not much appealed to us, being very modern. Saw some of the work of Emily Carr, a Canadian artist in the early 1900s. She painted Canadian forests.

On the way back to the hotel we went into a church, recommended for its lovely glass windows. It was made of wood, and was lovely and restful.

this was made up of panels of fabric - there are three such arrangements, changing for Easter, Christmas, and this normal one 

We got some Chinese takeaway (it came with disposable chopsticks and a Chinese spoon). Just as well we’d kept the plastic forks and spoons from yesterdays one!