Great Weekend in Vancouver

We left our RV late Friday morning, and made the trek up to Vancouver to see Frank and John.  We stopped off at Camping World at Burlington, Washington, to return the bike rack.  (That's another story that I won't bore you with here, except to say that if I had taken a picture of the bumper of the RV to show you what the bike rack did to it, you would understand.)

We then continued on to Vancouver.  Frank was kind enough to suggest I do our laundry at his place instead of doing it here in the RV park.  So we took that along as well.

We arrived at their place around 2:30 pm.  I did the laundry and had it hanging on the line by the time they came home from work shortly after 5.  They had a nice surprise for us in that we were to have dinner at Garth's place in downtown Vancouver.  He's a very dear friend of Frank, and has become our friend as well.  It was great to see him, and he made us a delicious chili meal with Caesar salad and a dessert and port wine later.  He has a terrific view of English Bay from his balcony.

This is the Burrard St. bridge.  If you don't know Vancouver, there are 2 main bridges to get to the downtown area.  This is one of them.

This is English Bay as the sun is just about disappearing.



It was an absolutely beautiful night, and sight.  There is a little "joke" we have between us and our BC folk.  When Frank was arriving to visit us in Ontario one summer, he asked that the BC flag be flying.  It had been shipped ahead of time with this request.  We hung it upside-down until he saw it and insisted it be corrected.  After that, when we visited them a couple of years later, the Ontario flag was flying from his house.  Well, lo and behold, that flag found its way to Garth's balcony.



Here we are relaxing after dinner at Garth's.



And some crazy people on the balcony.

All in all, a terrific night.

The next day we went out with Frank to run a couple of errands.  One of those was a stop at the Granville Market to pick up a few things.  It was sure a bustling place Saturday morning.

The market area has some unique shops as well.  Fun to just stroll around.  This place is a concrete plant near the market.  I loved how they had done up the silos.

We returned to Frank's and when John had come back from his 2-3 hour bike ride, we had a great lunch on the back deck.  The weather was absolutely outstanding the whole time we were there.

So the 2nd surprise for us was happy hour at Joe Fortes, a great restaurant.  Actually, happy 2 hours.  We all hopped into a cab (yep, we're crammed into the back seat), and headed to downtown Vancouver.

We had a great time there.  John has a special relationship with the wait staff, so we had the perfect spot on the rooftop patio and took advantage of the happy hour menu and drinks.  We didn't need to have dinner afterward.

 

Part of the rooftop patio is a garden area they can use for special events.  Here we are - Gerard is peeking out from behind an olive tree.  Well, I guess we all are.

Before the sun went down, we went out for a walk around their neighbourhood.  This is at the end of one street.  A view of downtown Vancouver.

We had such a terrific time.  Frank and John are getting ready for their trip to Australia, leaving Tuesday night.  So we got out of their hair and left after a yummy waffle breakfast.

This is the Peace Arch at the border - front and back.  If you zoom in, you can see the words printed on each side.

 This is Mount Baker, which you can see from southern BC.  It's in Washington State.

We arrived back at our RV and found it, first of all, there...and intact.  All was well.  After dinner, we took a bit of a walk around.  This goose was sure eyeing us while I was taking the photo of her goslings.  Any closer, I'm sure she would have hissed and possibly attacked.

 

 Great weekend with great fun!