SHARING THE LOVE - WEEK TWO!

Our visitors have arrived back from their cruise and by all accounts it was a fantastic trip with some stunning photos, great stories, amazing views and a lot of food eaten.

For all those people that I told that I wouldn’t post food photo’s – Sorry!  A gastronomic tour is something that I wouldn’t normally do, but when one of your visitors is a chef that’s what you do!  I had a great time, tasting some of the local foods within downtown Vancouver paired with some local drinks and good company. I must admit that the food got better as we went along and the drinks got worst, by the end I thought we were drinking cough medicine, but a good experience overall.

As I have previously shown in my posts, the homelessness is pretty high in the Vancouver downtown area. There are several projects underway to refurbish old buildings and turn them into apartments.  The building has half of the apartments allocated as community housing and the other half are sold as private sales.  This seems to have been a successful project previously and now there are several buildings under construction to replicate.

Another initiative is the “Save on Meats” tokens, this is a program that allows members of the public to buy a token from $2.25 and hand them out to the needy, who can redeem the token for a breakfast sandwich at the diner.  It has been so successful that they have started the token system for clothing as well.  I know that I would be more comfortable handing out a token then handing out money. 

One initiative in the downtown area is the ambulance officers on pushbikes – this initiative was in response to the opioid crisis within the area and is proving very successful in getting that immediate care to the homeless and eliminate the need for an ambulance vehicle to be dispatched into the congested city area.

One iconic marker in downtown Vancouver is the Gastown Steam Clock which has a series of steam pipes that produce steam and whistles on the hour.

Just outside of downtown, we spent a morning at the Capilano Suspension Bridge which is a must do when in Vancouver, it has a cliff walk, a treetop walk along with story times and guided walks.

Another trip out to Fort Langley for some local history, this fort was built in 1827 and was a Hudson Bay Company fur trading post located on the Fraser River.

We enjoyed the ice hockey so much that we are going to support our team again, luckily it is only a 10-minute drive from home and is a great night’s entertainment.  This week coming, we start the first part of the Alaskan road trip, even though we have covered the first 700 km on previous road trips it will be interesting to see the change in colours and scenery and another different perspective, so until then take care.