Sonya's Blog - Day 337 - Vancouver Harbour, Gastown & UBC

Sonya’s Blog - Day 337 - May 24th - Vancouver Harbour, Gastown & UBC Campus

Today will be our last day in Vancouver. We were supposed to leave on Thursday, but we really want to get our slide fixed. I called the RV Repair place and they can take our RV in tomorrow, which increases our chances of it being looked at on Thursday or Friday and then the part being ordered. The sooner the better, in my opinion.

We wanted to go downtown and see the Vancouver Harbour and Gastown. We found street parking with no problems and began to tour around. We were parked about 2 blocks from the Olympic Cauldron, so we walked over there to see what it was like. This brought us to the Harbour Walk, so we strolled along that once we were done gazing at the cauldron. The Harbour Walk took us to Canada Place, which looks very large. Not really sure what it is used for now.

Blake really wanted to get a JapaDog, so we then started the hunt for one of these. He thought he had the directions to a storefront, but it just ended up being a street cart. It was kind of sketchy looking, but Blake was determined that we would each have one. It is just a hot dog with different topping on them, instead of the standard mustard, relish and ketchup. You can get seaweed, cabbage, different sauces, etc. We each got a different kind. They were fine, but I am not a huge hot dog fan. Not sure I would go out of my way to get one again:)

We were not far from Gastown, at this point. This is the oldest neighbourhood in Vancouver and was designated as a National Historic Site in 2009. It was a bunch of shops and restaurants, but it did have some neat architecture and street lamps. We walked along, enjoying the sites and then stopped at a cafe for some hot drinks. When we were done with those, we stopped in at a couple of stores and took some pictures.

The Gastown Dude:

This sign was in front of the pub, that is behind Blake in the above picture. I thought it was hilarious:

Blake wanted to walk up Robson Street, as this is also famous. He mapped it out and we started on our way. The problem with Gastown is that it borders the downtown eastside. This is really not a neighbourhood to be walking around in and we ended up in it. There were many, very drugged out people fazed out on the sidewalks. It just went downhill from there and I was increasingly uncomfortable. I finally told Blake we were not going to follow his map instructions anymore and we are just getting the hell out of this area - which we did. It was much better. I was willing to find Robson Street from there, but Blake didn’t want to do it anymore. It is just a bunch of shops, I don’t think we really missed out.

Next, we went to UBC to check out the campus for Natasha. She is pretty sure this will be one of the Universities on the top of her list. UBC has a massive campus, which borders a park and the ocean is at one end. It looked like a pricey area, probably not the best for students on budgets. Natasha was excited about it and was happy to have a look.

We headed back to the RV after we were done touring UBC, had some supper and started the packing up process.

Sonya