Cycling around Stanley Park, downtown Vancouver

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Sunday July 7th

Cycling to Stanley Park

We slept in and woke up around 11 o clock, had some bagels and got our bikes to go downtown and ride along the seaside of Stanley Park. It would be my first time riding a bike in downtown Vancouver so we put on our biking gear, filled our water camel bags and headed out. We rode through a residential neighborhood mostly uphill but not too much, although I am very slow on hills so Kyle had to wait for me. Finally we reached an intersection where we cross to head to Stanley Park. Riding bikes in Vancouver is so easy because everybody bikes and so vehicle drivers are used to bikers and know how to behave on the streets and give bikers priority. There are trails for bikes and bike lanes with streetlights at major intersections. There are even bike counters near downtown, which count the number of bikers in a day. We cross one and we were about the 200 or something bikers and it was not even 1 o clock! We biked We biked mostly through the seaside and saw the Canada Place, the port with all the cruises, the Science World, soccer and hockey stadium and the Olympic torch, the marine dr. and even a few beaches. We rode through the park trail with beaches on one side and park on the other and did the 10KM park loop along the sea. We ended the loop at the kids park with the fire engine where we had coffee the day we met at the park with Kyle´s family. By 3 o clock we reached the main downtown street and were very hungry so we sat down at a local pub and had a very good late lunch along with some local beer. Did I say I tried a different beer every day? Well Canada and particularly Vancouver has lots of microbreweries and they are all different and good!!!! Then we headed to buy tickets to watch a movie Superman. We got out tickets and locked the bikes in the movie theatre bike parking lot and wandered along the streets. We came across a Latin Carnival and to my very surprise there was a Venezuelan booth and they were serving Chicha and tequeños so I had some and they were delicious. Who would have imagined it? Tequeños and chichi in Canada!!! There was some Cuban salsa band playing and we listened for a bit but then headed out to the Vancouver´s city tour on. It was almost time for the movie so we walked back to the theatre bought popcorn and enjoyed a well deserved move (after a year of no movies!). The movie was pretty cool a different perspective to the traditional tory of Superman. We headed out to find a gelato place and on the way we ate some slice of pizza and then the gelato. By the time we finished it was almost 10 PM and it had just started to get dark, so we took out bikes and rode back home. The ride back home was smooth however I have a hard time seeing at night because of my eyesight problem, but we had lights and the streets were almost empty of cars so it was pretty easy to maneuver. I only had a little trouble when a taxi wanted to turn and I could not past it, but in the end the taxi stopped and gave m the way first. We reached the house around 11 PM and crashed for the night.

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