We bought a day-pass and hopped off at Granville Island to find food at the local market. Vancouver does public markets up right. Cheese, meat, fish, produce, flowers, maple syrup, you name it. It's very St. Lawrence Market, only brighter, cleaner, and less hectic because there are more of them. We were stopped in our tracks by a pie shop that also specializes in pot pies of all different kinds. We snagged a couple of clam chowder pot pies. Several people actually stared at them as we walked by and asked where we had found them. So good. We ate them on the patio, while watching kids feed/terrorize some pigeons. What genetic coding makes children so fascinated with pigeons? Totally captivating.
In a chowder haze, we grabbed some tea and headed off for our "cruise." It's a fun little tour and a nice way to spend a hour. Vancouver is in a pre-Olympics building frenzy and is succumbing to the Toronto condo blitz. There is a sizable development going in for the athletes at the end of the creek and evidence of other buildings popping up all over. Still much less dense that at home, but they're clearly on their way. Tom told us that 20% is being dedicated to low-income &/or subsidized housing and 80% is being called high-end housing. That kind of money flooding into an area tends to change the dynamic. I wonder what impact this will have on Vancouver leading up to the Olympics, but even more after them when much of that money moves on to a different city.
Done our cruising, Laura and I beetled it over to the UBC campus to check-out the Museum of Anthropology. Guide books have it posted as free after 5pm on Tuesdays, but this has since changed to $5. It is about all I would pay to go and see this museum. Guidebooks tend to spend most of their time discussing the architecture and it really is phenomenal. It is also the primary selling feature to those not heavily invested in anthropology. The museum is quite small and the main source of information comes in a room filled with pull-out display drawers and catalogues with descriptions. As a student, this would be a phenomenal resource! As a tourist, not so much. The museum does, however, have a lovely collection of totem poles and other Native carvings. It is a very small space and was easily done in the hour we had available.
UBC is connected to the public transit system with community shuttles. These are also run in smaller routes within the downtown. They are cute little buses, with super comfy seating, and complete wheelchair access on all of them. Really a lovely way to service the university and smaller communities within the city.
On the subject of wheelchair accessibility, we have come to the conclusion that businesses in Vancouver neither answer their phones, nor return phone calls. We called the ferry and the theatre to see if they would be accessible for Tom and neither returned our messages. For a super-accessible city, it seems surprising that calls aren't returned and information isn't posted on their websites. We've called several other places for a variety of different reasons and those calls have not been returned either. Strange. The beaches are very busy mid-week, perhaps they're all there?
We finished the night with a trip to Commercial Drive to see The Pineapple Express at the Rio theatre. It's a great old theatre in an alternative little neighbourhood in Vancouver's east end. It seemed like an appropriate movie to see while in Vancouver and it couldn't have been in a more appropriate setting. Plus, it was stupid funny and James Franco is a totally hot stoner. I take no pride in saying it, but it doesn't make it untrue. Admit it :)
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