Some other things…
This is what is looks like on our walk to the practice room these days. Sweet.
There’s quite a few Squirrels around too…. hard to get good photos of though, they’re quite sneaky!
I uploaded the video of The Parade of Lost Souls if you;re interested in that.
For a band activity we took the B-line 99 bus to UBC (Uni of British Columbia) and down to Wreck beach.
Wreck beach is pretty much as far west as you can go in Vancouver. We looked out at the sunset and throught about that it’s the same ocean water that touches home.
To get there you have to walk through some park, and down quite a lot of steps. It turns out that Wreck beach is a “Clothing optional” beach, which we didn’t know about until we got there!
After climbing down a fair way you get to a great little spot… There’s a lot of logs on the beaches here. Lots of them are floated down the Fraser River (which meets the sea not far from here) but it also looks like a lot of them are placed there purposely so that people can view the sunsets.
There is a big holding area where they trap a whole lot of the stray logs coming down the Fraser river. We climbed out on the breakwater but it was a bit hard going so decided not to go to the end. 
Sunset was pretty ace, too.
Stanley Park is a big park at the end of the main downtown area of Vancouver. It’s on the peninsular and was set aside a long time ago for the people of Vancouver. There’s a great walk & Bike track around the waters edge. It was a nice day on Sunday so I took advantage.
We also went around to some friends apartment for a party. Unfortunately my battery was flat, but their place has some amazing views over downtown Vancouver, and also out over the water over Sunset Beach.
Hopefully we’ll get back there for a sunset.
The parade of Lost Souls is a night where they close Commercial Drive to traffic, everyone dresses up in costumes and its like a big party with bands and street performers. I think the general idea is to celebrate life by dressing up to scare away all the monsters out there. It’s incredible the effort people go into making their costumes…. it makes the night really fun. I wish people did stuff like this in New Zealand.
None of my photos came out but I’ll try to upload a video later on.
Here are some other peoples photos:
Went to Neil Young at the rather romantically named ‘General Motors Place’, which is in fact an arena where the Vancouver Canucks NHL hockey team play. We were at the top row, so we had a somewhat ‘holistic’ view, you might say. Still, was fun.
Here’s some videos:
Neil Young - Heart of Gold
Today was a gorgeous autumn day so I tried to make the most of it - by going on a walk that ended up being longer than expected, due to me misjudging distance on a map. According to googlemaps it was 7.3 miles (11.7 km) (here’s the map, I started and ended at the Main st skytrain)
Took lots of pictures though, so now I shall force them on you….
Started off heading through lower east side (lots of drug deals & home less - somewhat intimidating). The corner of Main & Hastings is drug central in Vancouver - on this block it’s legal to buy drugs. ANd no I didn’t take photos.
The park on the waterfront is nice though.
Then headed towards the Canada centre building (the one on the left that looks like sails), whis is a reminder of Expo88.
Headed back through the city, untill I got to Burrard Bridge, which doesn’t cross Burrard inlet as you might thing, but rather what’s known as ‘False Creek’. Presumably because it doesn’t go anywhere. The views were pretty spectacular.
Then I decided to walk all the way back to the skytrain along the cycle/walking path that follows the waterfront. Theyre redeveloping the southeast part of False Creek for the 2010 Winter Olympics,
Theyre redeveloping the southeast part of False Creek for the 2010 Winter Olympics,so the waterfront is starting to look quite nice.
Instead of pulling out tree stumps, they’ve carved them. Nice.
more pics, different bike ride….
The bike paths here are pretty well organised… here’s a seperate lane at an intersection.
Also, I found this labyrinth in one of the parks, It’s “based on the one at Chartres Cathedral, France, crated over 800 years ago”, as the sign said.
At Cafe Abruzzo (2 blocks north of us), if you speak Italian, you get espresso coffee straight from the machine, untouched by milk or any frapa-mocha-carama-choca type nonsense. In a plain little cup. Nice.
Interesting fact of the day. In the northern part of Commercial Drive, English is a minority language. There is big Italian and Portugese speaking communities, as well as lots of others ( I’ve noticed lots of Asian, Central European, and latin american folk too).
Our friend, wikipedia tells us that on the main stretch of Commercial (which they call between Broadway and Venables) there are 93 restaurants, of which 19 are coffee bars.
so todays activity involved a long bike ride. I followed my nose through some suburbs untill I hit the shore of Burrard inlet which seperates Vancouver from North vancouver. Handy google maps map here.
The ship here is loading grain from the silos right on the edge of the Canadian Pacific railway. The name of it, if you can’t read it in the photo, is “Mass Enterprise”.
I also saw a seal playing about on the edge of the inlet, but he was to sneaky for me to get a photo of.
Vancouver is blessed with lots of good biking and walking paths. This one follows the inlet all the way to the city (though I think it gets pretty boring going past the ports). This is the 2nd Narrows Bridge. (not the 2nd bridge at the narrows, but the bridge over the 2nd narrows, if you get my drift. The bridge over the 1st narrows is called Lions Gate bridge, which is a little more poetic than 1st narrows bridge.)
cool community gardens. You can see the colours of the leaves changing now. It’s quite nice, all in all.
And finally one for all the dunedinites…. who would’ve thought, the intersection of Dundas and Wall street.
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