Saturday August 1, 2009 - Vancouver, BC Canada

It is hard to believe that the Alaska portion of our trip is now over. We planned that part of the trip for months, and it has gone by so fast. We now have great memories and tons of photos. Gail and I will be in Vancouver for 3 days, Victoria, BC for 2 days and then winding up our trip in Seattle for 4 days. Pamm & Alan are departing for New York tomorrow.

Our cruise ship arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia this morning and we were off the ship by 10 AM. We checked into our hotel, which we walked to (it is only 3 blocks from the pier) and were off to take in some of the sights of Vancouver. Our first destination was Granville Island, which is a huge market for fresh produce, meats, fish, baked goods, restaurants and numerous food stands for a quick bite to eat. We browsed the market, had lunch and then took a ferry to the Yaletown district of Vancouver. This is a rather sophisticated residential section of the city with many boutiques and restaurants. From here we headed back to the hotel for some rest, walking through historic Gastown. This area is where the city of Vancouver began and now has many antique shops, art galleries and of course tourist shops for gifts and souvenirs. After resting in the hotel for a bit, we headed back to Gastown for dinner before returning to the hotel for the night. We were all quite tired........ we must have walked at least 4 or 5 miles today seeing many parts of Vancouver. The city is quite nice, with a slight European flavor, but seems to have a very large number of homeless and panhandlers........relative to many other cities I have visited.




I have given a summary of the cruise portion of the trip below. In the next day or two I will be going through some of the photos and posting those as well. I may have missed a bit here and there, and I will update that as well. I have been "lost" on the cruise ship for the past week and I now will have time to go back and check and update certain parts of the blog..........so please check back regularly and read some of the earlier posts to see some updates and perhaps some new photos.