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The reason for this trip was initially just to see U2 live in concert at GM Place. After a frantic hour of trying on Ticketmaster.com and Ticketmaster.ca (two computers = twice the chance of success) while attempting to call 9 different Ticketmaster offices, we lucked out and got tickets via Ticketmaster.com. Section 304, row 5, seats 105 and 106. These were purchased on February 5th 2005.
Flash forward 2.5 months, and we'd decided to take a full 6 days in Vancouver to explore and have some fun. We even had an itinerary, mostly including walking/hiking and shopping (which by default also includes walking...this was to be our nemesis).
We left early on Tuesday the 26th of April, laughing at the poor suckers who had to work as we sped across the province in the mighty Kia. We were to stay with Dirk and Rheana, and had advised them a day before that we would likely be there around noon. What can I say, we're psychic, we ran the buzzer on their apartment building door at exactly 12:00 by my watch...nice! After unpacking and the usual tour and such, it was decided Mountain Equipment Coop would be the first place to go. I have been hankering to get some new hiking boots/shoes for a long time now and it's very hard for either Kathy or I to turn down a visit to a huge outdoor gear store.
Both Kathy and I wound up purchasing shoes at MEC, the same brand and model even (though mine are "men's" and hers are "women's"). But not before scouring the other 15 outdoor stores in that two block section of West Broadway. A wonderful, wonderful place indeed! Upon returning to the car, we noticed that MEC offers rooftop parking (for a fee, $1/hour) however I had chosen to park in the free, on the street, area about a block up which was limited to one hour. Made a mental note of that for next time, just before noticing a nice $40 ticket on my windshield. Only later did I actually read it saying I was parked in a "non-parking zone" which is complete BS, we had just stayed too long in that legitimate parking spot. Still have yet to pay that one...
As you can see by the lack of pictures, we have yet to even take out the cameras!
Dinner that night was, at Dirk's recommendation, some fantastic tandoori chicken from an East Indian supermarket, surprisingly close to where I used to live in Vancouver. That was some fine chicken, let me tell you...the perks of a big city, being able to pop down the supermarket for freshly marinated Indian food...mmm.
Next day, Wednesday, we had decided to hit Stanley Park. This time we checked ahead about the parking, $6 for a day pass is better than a $40 ticket, any day. The amount of landscaping and manicuring that goes into this park must be just massive, the flower beds and such were gorgeous!
Onto the seawall we went, supported by our new shoes! But first, a side-trip onto the beach...the tide was out, waaaay out giving a nice lot of sand to explore for sea creatures and potential pirate booty. Unfortunately, no booty was found.
The seawall is a nice walk, the fact that they have a separate lane for pedestrian traffic and bicycle/rollerblade traffic shows the varied use it gets. The weather was great today, probably in the mid-twenties or so, and though we had both put sunscreen on, Kathy wound up with a burn.
As I was saying, the tide was low. Really low. In fact, we later learned it was the lowest tide of the month today, and we were there at the lowest tide of the day. So the wildlife, both sea and winged, was out in force. I can't say as I've ever seen a starfish in real life except in a tank or other controlled environment. Now I can safely say I've seen a lot of them! They were everywhere, crammed on the undersides of rocks, baking in the hot sun on the beach, being tormented by birds, and almost all of them were purple. Not that I know enough to say if that was a normal colour for them or not, still it was interesting! Also in attendance were at least four grey herons stalking through the shallow waters for little fishies, and a bald eagle!
The eagle was feasting on something, as a good 20 or more onlookers brought out their cameras. Sadly, I had left my 300mm lens back at the apartment, so was reduced to a measly 55mm. Someone however was sneaking across the beach, keeping a large rock between himself and the eagle as it tore into it's hapless prey. Camera in hand, he popped his head over the rock, not 10 feet from the bird, which promptly took flight dragging it's meal behind him. That's about where I pressed my shutter button. Should have seen the voracity of the two seagulls that tried to chase the eagle down...amazing, they wouldn't stand a chance against it, you'd think!
"Mine, mine, mine!" - the gulls from Nemo
And finally, I did some stalking of my own, up close to one of the herons. It watched me the whole time as I casually made my way across the beach...then when I raised my camera it took off. This I expected...what I did not expect was the nasty guttural sound this bird made. I think of a heron, I think "graceful, lithe...", I only wish I could have recorded that sound, though I did manage to get a shot of the heron in mid-squawk, if anyone can lip-read birds.
Some days you get lucky, and this was one of those days, from a touristy standpoint. Turns out, today being the lowest tide of the month, the Vancity docking terminal (where large container ships and barges from across the ocean are unloaded) today was the day they would bring in the worlds largest crane. Two of them, in fact, on a ship direct from Shanghai. They needed low tide due to the height of these things, which if you've ever seen Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, the following pictures puts that into perspective (the orange ones are the cranes in question). These things were big. The ship itself had to loaded down with tens of thousands of tonns of sea water as ballast and the top of the cranes partially collapsed to fit beneath the bridge. It cleared by about 20 feet. And it happened, as luck would have it, when we were in a perfect spot to witness the whole thing!
Halfway around the Seawall we visited the Totem Park which was small, but actually really interesting. They have plaques showing what each animal/piece of each totem pole represents and the history behind each pole. If you're looking to take pictures of Japanese tourists taking pictures of each other, this seemed to be the spot for it.
A few more from Stanley Park...we had chosen our parking spot randomly, the signs were a little misleading, but as it turned out we were parking directly in front of the RCMP Mounted Patrol building, used as an overflow lot. My concerns about having the car broken into were greatly diminished by that. Here's a tip though, if you're going to spend upwards of 5 hours in Stanley Park, when it's hot out, take some water with you and take some food...we were pretty hungry by the time we got back to the park entrance. Kathy mentioned how nice some fresh fruit would be "Wow...yeah..." I thought, figuring there wasn't much chance of that. Lo and behold: the Stanley Park Info-booth sells fresh fruit cups. Score! But at $4.50 each, they're worth their weight in gold basically...sure was nice though! After we got back to the car we took a drive around the park, unfortunately this meant we exiting by a different road than we had entered on, which caught us off guard. This was our "let's get lost in Vancouver...twice" trip home. Good thing we had lots of gas in the car and a map, Kathy's map reading skills got a crash course that day, but we managed to get home just fine, if a bit late.
Tonight's dinner: Spaghetti Factory! Dirk and Rheana only live about a 10 minute walk from the one in New Westminster...visions of all you can eat bread and complimentary spumoni ice cream had been dancing in my head since we'd decided where to eat earlier today. I also had planned on buying a beer, in a mug, and you then can keep the mug (I have one from Whistler and thought it'd be neat to have another, and for $8 including the beer it's not a bad deal). However our waitress informed us that this deal was no longer offered, though on their drinks menu they showed a "location embossed" mug of beer. Sigh...wasn't meant to be. A fine dinner was had, stuffed as we were from all the free bread. I still think they're a pretty good deal, free salad, free bread, free ice cream and a big bowl of lasagna for $10.95. Granted, mine was burned in two spots on the top...just stay away from their spaghetti, Kathy says...tomato sauce and noodles, does not make a "signature meal".
Also today was the first of the U2 related news, Dirk phones my cell around noon saying he's heard on the radio that U2 are filming their next video (City Of Blinding Lights) in Vancouver, at GM Place, today at 5pm. They need 4000 people down there before 3pm. Unfortunately, my cell was not on (avoiding any calls from work about things breaking and such), so we didn't get the message until later that night. Turns out only 3500 people showed up because it was so last minute. The rest of the day was spent relaxing, our plan for tomorrow is to drive up to Squamish and hike the Chief trail which has a 600m elevation gain within a distance of only a couple kilometers. We woke the next day to stiff legs...crap.
Squamish is about a 30 minute drive north of Vancouver, taking the 99 (Sea To Sky Highway) north from the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminals. Due to the 2010 Winter Olympics where much of it will be done at Whistler (a further 30 minute drive or so past Squamish) the entire 2 lane highway would see itself grow to a four lane highway. It's a shame, that is one of the prettiest highways I've ever driven I think. It's windy, has an ocean view for 95% of it, snakes through a few little towns that were all based on gold panning earlier in the century, and is banked on one side by steep mossy cliffs of granite for almost it's entire length. The blasting they were doing had us stopped for 10 minutes twice, but we still arrived in good time.
Seeing the Stawamus Chief suddenly appear before you is a bit of a shock, this massive chunk of granite over 2000 feet high rising seemingly right out of the road. This will be my third visit past The Chief (so named as the rock formation looks like an "Indian chief" from a certain angle), once as we passed through to ski at Whistler, once when I attempted to spend a week climbing in the Squamish area only to be utterly shut down by a weeklong rainstorm. And this time, where the weather couldn't be better.
The trail is steep, and by steep I mean like a 60 degree angle for the entire thing...which was challenging for our already worked legs. It's a great and varied trail, parts are steep enough to demand ladders and chains to assist. On a wetter day, you'd really want good sticky rubber on your shoes, or don't go at all.
There are three peaks, but we chose to just do the first (unsure about distances to the second or third, but they're on the list for next time). To our surprise (surprise/horror) when we got past the tree line and onto the bare granite dome of the peak, two ladies were doing some climbing on the edge of the face. It's one thing to know it's done, or to have seen it from afar, but to see them perched on what seems to be the edge of the world, is quite another. As it turned out they were just climbing on an upper tier type wall, not on the main wall, so within 60 feet of a large ledge below. Still...makes you think twice about your footing.
The journey down was filled with "This looks pretty, let's take a picture" distractions, which my legs at least were very happy about. Once you get all the way down, it's great to just look up and know that even though you didn't climb the face, you were on the top of that.
After gassing up the car and ourselves (chips and chocolate bars), we made a stop at Shannon Falls. This is a magnificent falls that allows you to get very close to it's base considering the size. In the higher water levels of late spring, given the right wind direction you can get fairly soaked at the viewpoint. The small trail into the falls from the parking lot meanders along the creek, the water is so clean and fresh looking...the only downside here is the pay parking. I'm not sure who would actually check it, as there's no guard on duty or anything, but it's a bit of a rip-off to pay a dollar to park for an hour.
Friday was now upon us, in some ways I'd been wanting it to come as fast as possible so that we could see U2 quicker, but it did mean that we had passed the mid point in our Vancouver trip, not the best realization on any vacation you're enjoying. We woke up late today, my hips and upper thighs had been aching all night so the sleep wasn't the most restful for me. Kathy had pains in other places on her legs, basically we were all walked out for now. Dirk and Rheana had been saving up The Province papers and all the U2 related stories in them for us, today's was talking about the video shoot on Wednesday, exciting! So what should we do today before the concert? Shop...that's a great idea! Metropolis it is...
Nice thing about the mall formerly known as Metrotown, is the free parking and lots of it; practically unheard of in Vancouver it seems. And of course the nicest thing ever: escalators! My personal favorite. We cruised around the mall for a couple hours, thinking to ourselves "Yep, think we covered the whole thing...seems smaller than before, that's strange." And it did, it felt almost like the size of Orchard Park in Kelowna. Well, that was because we missed a huge section of it somehow, which we only noticed as we were leaving. Sigh. Probably for the best, my feet were killing me.
Back to the apartment, time to get ready for U2! Somehow though it seemed the closer it got to 7pm, the more I had to use the washroom. Really inconvenient when you're about to board the skytrain for a half hour ride. Thank you 8th St Subway for your washroom...whew! Customers only, hah! I've got to say, the skytrain is a wonderful thing...it's fast, it's efficient, it's got security at most of the stops if you need it, and it's just all-round neat. We arrived at the Stadium station, where BC Place and GM Place are, around 5 or so. When we got down to street level a grizzly looking guy handed me what looked like a pack of baseball cards, which I took and thanked him as we blew past. I figured it was some "We'd like you to join our church" pamphlet or something. No, no it wasn't anything like that, the guy who handed it to me was a deaf guy trying to make a buck by selling these things (whatever it was, never really looked at it) that I had just walked away with. He tapped me on the shoulder and took it back...eep...my bad. Guess that'll teach him to just hand stuff to tourists on the street!
We had about 2 hours to kill before the concert, so the plan was to find someplace to eat. We had seen an article in The Province about the best places to grab a meal around here before or after the concert, but none really appealed to us. We saw a familiar sign of Moxies, but then Kathy remembered there was a restaurant around here somewhere that she had eaten as long ago and it was good, so...the hunt began! We wound up at the Beatty St Bar and Grill, which is attached to The Georgian Court, a hotel I had once stayed in long ago. The special of the night: a regular burger, a chicken burger, all you can eat fries and salad, for $10.95...who says Vancouver is expensive? I was stuffed...washed it down with a Heineken, Kathy had a yummy looking clubhouse sandwich. As we were eating, we began seeing U2 t-shirts on more and more people, obviously those who had gone to the first show on Thursday night, and were lucky enough to come back for a second. I spotted an older guy who had a slightly different Vertigo shirt on, as this was had the word "Crew" emblazoned on the chest. He carried a walkie-talkie and was looking at the pub we were eating outside of, making notes on a pad of paper. Hmmm...this is a man to keep a close eye on. My visions of the band pulling up for a bite before the show didn't pan out, though I do wonder what he was doing...a diversionary tactic perhaps?
It was 6:30 now and felt like as good a time as any to lineup. Mild panic set in as we learned there was more than just the 1 line, there were many in fact. And nothing differentiated them at all...as it turns out, they were no different, they all led to the same door. Met a few people in line, "tall guy" and his girlfriend, and the couple in front of us who had once lost their tickets at a concert only to find them on the ground hours later just before the show. After breaching the front door (I got briefly patted down, Kathy did not, we SO could have snuck a camera in...) it was directly into another lineup, as a sea of fans swarmed the "get your official Vertigo tour merchandise here" stand. $115 later, excitement building, we found our seats. And for being balcony seats, they were sweet! We'd have a great view of the band, and as we'd discover over the night, our binoculars allowed us to view Bono's teleprompter at his feet that not only gave the next song name, but all the words as well. Huh!
The pic below wasn't taken by us, but gives a decent impression of the stage and such. It was big, the whole thing, the stadium was filled completely, I doubt there was an empty seat anywhere. The music was loud, everyone was moving, and it was good. We met a couple that we lent our binoculars to over the course of the evening, they had the seats beside us. He turned out to be from Dublin, so that must have been a heck of a good time for him. We were position a section or two to the right of where this shot was taken, and though the people look small in it, they were larger in real life. It was amazing, that's about all I can say.
After singing for the past 2+ hours along with your favorite band in the world, along with 20,000 other fans, you get kinda dehydrated. Unfortunately water was not to be found, concessions all closed down after the concert started and there's just nothing around there that we could easily get to. So it was a thirsty skytrain ride back. Had a group of kids on the skytrain that insisted on making the ride unpleasant for everyone else, so when we got to our stop we ratted them out to the skytrain cops (they had no tickets to ride), payback sucks huh?
Saturday...our last full day here, and while we were still on a post-concert high, and that occupied most of the conversations we had that morning, the grim reality of going back to ... reality, was setting in. Oh well, today it was drizzly for the first time, and we were off to see Kyle and Erin in Langley. After the usual tour of the new house and showing off the new baby (Zoe), we were off to destinations mostly unknown. Fortunately Kyle was driving.
First off: Ikea! Good god that's a massive store...overwhelming. We bought a few things, ate a nice and cheap hotdog, then it was off to Iona Beach near the airport in Richmond. We stopped off just before the runway there to see if we couldn't catch a few planes. Planespotting, if you will. The first few were all prop planes, and while loud, didn't give that rush we were looking for. Daylight was slipping away, so we headed down to Iona Beach. This is basically, I figure, a water treatment plant and the 2km long spit of land that juts out into the water contains a pipe that they dump something back into the ocean with. Good or bad, who knows...sure was pretty though.
We couldn't resist one more try at catching a big international plane as we passed by the airport again, this time we struck paydirt!
Our next stop on Kyle's tour of places we'd never been, was White Rock. Kathy actually has been here before, but I hadn't...looks like a very laid back place, though sounds like a very rich place as well. Either way, the ocean was great to see, and shocking as this may sound: I ate fish and chips. From Moby Dick, nonetheless. And they were surprisingly good! Greasy like nothing else, but good...though we were ringed by seagulls, had to throw a few fries away from us to distract them. We finished off the evening with a gelato and a walk up the pier. And I finished off the last remaining space on the flashcards we'd brought.
And so ended our Vancouver vacation. It was great! Many thanks go to Dirk and Rheana for putting us up for the better part of a week, and Kyle for giving us an awesome tour (you're getting known for this, beware, we're going to expect it again next time), and of course U2 for, well, being U2.