Last night we had spotted The Basic café, which looked to be a promising breakfast venue. As indeed it turned out. I had an excellent corned beef hash with eggs, sunny side up, Vera had scrambled egg with fried potatoes. The owner, Robert, kept the bottomless coffee flowing, a great atmosphere
A Tim Horton outlet keen to remind customers that they are not an American owned chain. A lot of businesses are displaying Canadian flags in response to Trump's 51st state nonsense
Today's cultural tour starts with a visit to a salmon hatchery in the Capilano River regional park. The river was dammed in the 1950s to supply Vancouver with drinking water, with a disastrous impact on the spawning salmon upstream. So returning salmon are diverted into the hatchery, with the young fish being tagged and released back into the river. The dead fish are transported upstream to provide tasty snacks for bears and other creatures
The surrounding rainforest is beautiful and very atmospheric, with huge Douglas firs, western red cedar and western hemlock trees. It probably helps to visit on a wet day, the trees are covered by dripping mosses and shrouded in cloud
There are an abundance of lush ferns on the forest floor, and these giant Banana Slugs were quite a highlight. Little in the way of birdlife but we caught glimpses of what Vera's bird app told us were chestnut-backed chickadees flitting amongst the branches
The next piece of excitement was provided by the Capilano Suspension Bridge, the height of excitement for the modern traveller.
The original hemp and cedar bridge was built in 1888 by Scottish engineer George Mackay to connect his two houses.
The modern bridge, steel cables and cedar, still swings and wobbles in a satisfyingly alarming way.
As well as the bridge the site also has aerial walkways through the Douglas firs, cliffside walkways, and the ubiquitous collection of totem poles, all helping to draw over 1.2 million visitors a year. The inclement weather probably helped us, as the place did not feel crowded
Then it was a 2000 feet climb up Grouse mountain in a swift moving cable car.
A different world at the top, shrouded in mist and feeling a lot cooler. A very tame deer nibbles the flower strewn grass
A very corny lumberjack show, but interesting to see how the loggers would insert planks or 'springboards' into the tree trunk from which flimsy platform they would work to cut down the tree
The low mist also helped the birds of prey exhibition, the birds swooping out of the mist and over the audience
A much better meal out tonight at an Italian restaurant. The portion sizes were huge, and it's going to be cold pizza for breakfast
Walking back we met a woman carrying sweet pea flowers from a community garden in a vacant city lot. In response to Vera's enthusiasm we got this small bouquet to sweeten up our hotel room
Across the road from the bar we had settled in was a crashed out drug addict. The presence of fentanyl abusers has been quite shocking in Vancouver, their deformed and contorted bodies barely able to move. The victim across the road eventually came back to consciousness and slowly and painfully made his way up the street
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