Thursday 7th May

We both had a good night's sleep last night - me 12 hours and Terry 14! So we woke up feeling good and ready for the day.

We had breakfast in the bar/restaurant adjoining the hotel (we are booked in 'room only') and then went for a walk along the waterfront of the Yaletown district of Vancouver. The body of water there is called 'False Creek', named so by George Vancouver who was the navigator for Captain Cook (ok - so we are back to him!) who thought he had discovered the North West Passage - but the creek is a dead-end hence the name! We walked past a huge stadium, the home of the Vancouver hockey team (Canucks?) - the opening ceremony for the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held there. On the other side of the creek from the stadium there is a huge building site - the Olympic Village.

After the walk and a snack lunch (breakfast was late) we went off on a 6+ hour coach tour of the city. This included 2 hours at the Vancouver Aquarium. We both had the pre-conceived idea that 2 hours was maybe too long to spend at an aquaruium, but not so - this one was really interesting and had some great displays of fish, marine life and amphibians. Other highlights of the tour included Chinatown and Gastown in the downtown area, Stanley park - where we saw a wild racoon

and lots of totem poles

We also visited Granville Island, not really an island but a sort of peninsula in False Creek. It used to be a very run down area but is now a centre for arts nd crafts and includes a huge 'public market' selling all sorts of crafts, flowers, fruit and veg and other culinary delights. There were some great houseboats moored on the island - made to look like real houses:

The tour finished at Queen Elizabeth Park - a park outside downtown in the residential area and on top of quite a high hill. From there we had great views over the city to the mountains beyond. There is not much snow left on them now.

We bought our 'dinner' at the market on Granville Island- a tray of lovely mixed salads and took it back to our hotel to eat, both of us being too tired to go out again. We have both decided that Vancouver is a great city.