20240910 Tuesday September 10, 2024 Vancouver BC
Breakfast at the ARC restaurant in the Fairmont Waterfront was a full breakfast with both hot and cold buffet items and fresh breakfast entrees that could be ordered off a menu. Ben had Royal Eggs Benedict which uses smoked salmon in lieu of ham, while Janet just went through the buffets. She was impressed with the quality of the baked goods. We haven’t had really good baked items since we left France in June.
We had a full day in Vancouver on our own today. We took a walk around the Canada Place cruise ship terminal. The Ruby Princess was docked and in the process of turning over its passengers. There is a tiny museum inside and interesting historical plaques around the perimeter. One of the exhibits included a pennant from Princess Cruises' first ship, the Princess Patricia. There are some nice views of Stanley Park and North Vancouver across the harbor.
We then decided to walk to Granville Island since we have not previously been there. It should have been a 45 minute walk, but there was a lot of confusing bridge construction with closed traffic and pedestrian detours. There was a series of bronze plaques embedded in the sidewalk along Granville Street like Hollywood's walk of stars. The only name we could recognize was the children's singer Raffy.
We must have attracted the pity of a local resident who saw us trying to figure out how to get to the Granville Public Market because he offered to show us the way. He happened to have a day off work and was walking to the Market himself on his day off.
Granville Island has evolved to a local arts and crafts center with lots of studios, restaurants and shops. There are also theater and other arts facilities. In the middle of the island is a cement plant complete with silos filled with sand, cement and gravel, and huge concrete mixer trucks. The silos are painted like giant figures to help them fit in with the artsy neighborhood which as sprung up all around the cement plant.
The Public Market is indoors and filled with colorful fresh berries, vegetables, and fruit. There are also stalls with fresh seafood, smoked and cured meats, baked goods and sweets galore. There is a food court at one end. Ben got a mixed deep fried seafood sampler for lunch at a stall that looks busy enough, but it was pretty mediocre and overpriced.
Pat’s seafood in the commercial fishermen’s wharf in Victoria was much better. Interestingly however, the public market had hired a falconer who was walking around on a rooftop overlooking the outdoors dining area for the food court with a male Harris Hawk on his arm to dissuade sea gulls from stealing people’s food.
There are buildings filled with shops and galleries all around the center of the island, and a hotel and marinas on the ends. There was a nice boardwalk around the north end of the Island with tennis courts, theaters and play grounds for kids.
With advice from a volunteer at the market, we took a bus from Granville Island back to Canada Place, which was certainly easier and less noisy trying to walk back the way we came. We got back to the hotel just in time for naps and to prepare for our farewell dinner.
At dinner, we sat with Daryl and Linda who traveled extensively with the Army before retiring in the Tampa Bay Area, and Jay and Diane who relocated from Chicago to Arizona after turning his electrical contracting business over to his son.
The dinner did not include alcoholic beverages. The first course was a choice between a buffalo carpaccio plate and a wedge salad. The entrees were a choice between rainbow trout, chicken schnitzel and a mushroom pasta. The dessert was a walnut cheesecake with an interesting if somewhat puzzling looking garnish which turned out to be dried carrot slices.
The dinner was OK, but not up to the Rocky Mountaineer sit down dinners. We do look forward to dining on the ship.
We will have breakfast again in the ARC restaurant in the morning before taking our pre-embarkation bus tour where we’ll see Julio and Carmen for the last time.
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