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Published: June 17th 2019
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What a wonderful day! After a leisurely Sunday morning wake up (with a good night’s sleep at last) and our complimentary breakfast of pastries, we wandered down the now familiar trek to Canada Place on the waterfront. it is Father’s Day here in Canada and there were lots of families out and about, even some women facetiming their father down by the Mounted Police shop. We had prebought and booked in an experience at Flyover Canada which is down in the cruise terminal precinct. Today there were only 2 ships disgorging and refilling their thousands of passengers and we find it great spectator sport to watch the procession of wheelie cases trundling in all directions. The little man in the Mounties shop said it’s always busy during their cruise season from April to October, with only maybe one day each week with no ships. Yesterday there were three, today two. This morning we were running early for our booking so we lingered at the terminal, watching the float planes and helicopters conducting their business on the harbour. There was even a family of geese (I think, or mighty big ducks) casually paddling around the big ships.
Flyover Canada was far
more than you could ever describe. We were strapped into these seats that move and it feels like you’re hang gliding over all of Canada as they play a movie of the scenery, and your seat swings, tilts and vibrates in conjunction with what you’re watching. Fine mist sprayed on our faces as we flew through clouds and soared over Niagara Falls. i even lifted my feet when we flew low and close to the ground. Oh my gosh, it was wonderful!
After the fantastic experience we wandered down to the picturesque food court area with fountains playing and found a Subways to buy some lunch with salad! I was really wanting some salad! Then we wandered around and found a lovely park nearby to sip a Starbucks iced coffee (WITH milk, you have to ask for that) and people-watch. Then we wandered back to our hotel for a nap, after a parade of some sort had passed by our hotel room.
As it approached dinner time we wandered down the street and around the corner to an English pub, the Elephant and Castle (named after a London tube station). They had an English-themed menu, but also featured
poutine, a national dish of Canada. It consists of hot chips covered in gravy and topped with grated cheese. We had that as a side with our roast beef stuffed yorkshire pudding, with a horseradish aoli, which was wonderful. Tom had a local Red Truck beer, and I had a red wine blend from the Okanagan valley, a wonderful area we drove through back in 1999.
While waiting for our bill I checked my emails to find one from our Silversea agent. Remember how I said our luggage tags hadn’t arrived before we left home? Last week when I’d had a couple of glasses of wine with some lovely Brie, I was having to make up some luggage tags because our expensive cruise people didn’t send us any. I thought “this is pretty disgusting for what we’re paying” so as a reply to her email saying they weren’t coming I wrote one sentence and sent it to her “this is really disappointing”. I’ve had an email saying that she’s discussed it with her manager and that they are taking steps to see that it never happens again. And then tonight I received another email saying that due to the
inconvenience they’ve caused they’ve added another $US250 credit to our onboard account (which already had $500 credit)! We feel appeased (and my homemade tags are damned fine)!
We have had two and a half days in beautiful Vancouver, a wonderful city! We’ve toured the city and spent time leisurely walking around it. We even saw lots of timber logs being floated down the river, just like we used to see on TV back in the day. We haven’t done the usual touristy things because we did them 20 years ago (seems like yesterday). It’s been a delight.
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