44,986 Steps/Approx. 20 miles!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009--Vancouver

It's been a LONG day! The weather was beautiful, so we stayed out walking all day long.

We started by going to the nearby Sutton Place Hotel where a friend will be staying soon. Then we went to Heritage Square to see a group of old houses that have been restored and maintained as the city has grown into a cluster of high-rise buildings. From there, we explored the West End, a very nice neighborhood that has small shops and restaurants with lots of homes and apartments around them for the residents of the area.

We walked over the big bridge to Granville Island, discovering only after we were on it that we could not go down to Granville Island! Instead, we had to overshoot it and walk back to it. There should be an elevator or steps for pedestrians!

Granville Island has many galleries and shops and a very large market. We saw some of the art, especially that produced by the students at Emily Carr University. We wandered through the boat market. We walked through the food market. Then we sat in the sunshine looking toward the skyline of Vancouver. From there, we walked further down the island to a small restaurant that serves fish caught only by local fishermen. There, we had fish and chips on their outdoor patio.

We returned to town by the Burrard Bridge, an older bridge that has lots of character and was designed to be much like the gates of cities in Europe. We walked to the waterfront stopping by a gallery that had a painting I liked and that would be nice in my living room. The only problem was the cost--$27,000 U.S.!

We entered Stanley Park and walked along the edge of it to see the views back toward the city. Then we walked along the north side to the statue of the Woman in a Wetsuit, which is a rip-off of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. From there, we walked a trail through the park back toward town.

We were so tired that we decided to head to Costco and eat a snack so we wouldn't have to go back out later this evening. We bought some trail mix for our trip in the car that starts tomorrow, and we snacked on hotdogs since we were still not very hungry after our big breakfast and late lunch.

It's 19:30, and we have just returned to the hotel. My pedometer shows that we have walked 44,986 steps since leaving the room this morning. That's approximately 20 miles of walking. We are both tired and ready to stay in the room for the rest of the night. But what a beautiful day it was with sunshine and temperatures in the low 60s F. It was a day made for walking!