Yesterday, we drove our own car into the city with little or no idea of where we were going.  Our only clue to our destination was Bill’s suggestion that “gastown” was one of the attractions in the city, and a tourist map that showed several neighborhoods.

Today, I have a new ‘favorite city’.  We took a tour of Vancouver and a stop at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park on a bus with 16 other people from England, Australia, Alberta, and Brazil.  Our driver’s name was Don and he was very nice – entertaining but very laid back.  He was full of interesting tidbits about the city and what has happened there in the past – old and recent history.

There were two long stops, one of an hour and a half at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park (we loved it) and another of an hour and a quarter at Granville Island shopping area – an amazing place that I would put in the same category as Boston’s Quincy Market or San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf but much better than either of those.  It is not ‘touristy’, it is a place where everyone goes shopping for fruits and veggies and artsy junk – lots of fun.

The Capilano Suspension Bridge Park is a great place for kids of all ages.  The bridge itself is a suspension bridge across the Capilano River.  The bridge is 450 feet long and 230 feet above the river.  It is very – considering the size of the cables – wobbly and shaky but also very strong.  The 2 cables are each strong enough to hold up a fully loaded 747 airplane.  A huge tree fell on the bridge during a storm in 2006 and the tree snapped where it hit the cables and they held the rest of the tree up until it could be removed.  It is very safe.

The bridge leads across the river to a walkway that is made up of short suspension bridges connecting platforms that surround these giant Douglas Fir trees that are about 3 or 4 feet in diameter and hundreds of feet tall.  The walkway is far above the forest floor and a real adventure- just like in “The Swiss Family Robinson” story.  They call it ‘Treetops Adventure”.

After you cross the bridge back to the entry gate and shops there is a new adventure, called ‘Cliffwalk’ which is a walkway along the face of a sheer cliff.  It has very solid wooden, glass, and steel pathways suspended with steel components anchored to the rock in the face of the cliff.  It has a section that gets 10 or 15 feet away from the cliff and seems to be suspended in mid-air.  All of this is pretty high – maybe 100 feet and a thrill if heights frighten you.

The Granville Island shopping center is actually a peninsula that was created by filling an area (I forget that part of the history) of the bay.  The city owns it I think and blah, blah, blah – CRS!!  The area has lots of shops.  They are mostly food oriented and very nice.  The prices seemed pretty good even by our US standards (“everything costs more in Canada”).  The fresh produce at the every-day farmers’ market looked wonderful.  If we lived here we would be there all the time.

The photos are of Vancouver, the Capilano bridge area, and us.  The may seem out of order because we went through Vancouver to Stanley Park, the Capilano area and then Stanley Park and Vancouver again.