10th May 2025

We arrived at Vancouver early in the morning. We watched the dockers come and moor us up. We ate our last breakfast on board and prepared to disembark. It was a short walk, carrying our bags to the taxi rank. This was well organised with several lanes for the taxis, and groups of people were let through to an empty lane, where upon taxies would arrive and whisk people away. We were taken to the Holiday Inn & Suites Vancouver Downtown, where we checked in and dumped our luggage and had a coffee. Next, we walked to the Sheraton Wall Centre where we asked about the Rocky Mountaineer reception. We needed to be there on Sunday to get baggage labels.

Now the mistake, I suggested we go to the Museum of Vancouver, it seemed easy to get to but required us to cross the bridge. The bridge is high and goes on for miles, then once off you backtrack to the museum. The museum is small, and also expensive. It does detail how in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Vancouver was created by stealing all the land from the native tribes. You also learnt how the Indigenous nation was banned from hiring lawyers to fight the land grabs from the Europeans. (Oh yes!)

Getting back was easy; we discovered these small bathtub shaped boats which would ferry you around False Creek, taking you from the museum to the other side of the creek, and also to Granville Island and further up the creek. They hold only about eight people but run every few minutes. Some routes there was a boat every 2 or 3 minutes. We had to wait for the second boat as the one that came in first became full very quickly.

We were soon over and had a short walk up from the shore under the bridge and onto Granville Street. We stopped at Maxines’ Cafe & Bar for a snack and a drink before heading back to the hotel. As we left, R spotted a beautiful silver tabby on a harness & lead in her mistress’s arms. The cat batted R’s hand out of the way at any attempt to stroke him.

We were now quite tired.