Day Four - City Tour

Day Four

Saturday, I remove my earplugs and check the clock, 1000h again, must get moving or I will miss the day. Crawl out of sack, wash up and as is my habit my pack is ready to go and I hit the road. 

My first stop is the Templeton Diner, "Good Food — Snappy Service" reads the sign. I spotted it a day or two before, a half block from the hostel, a narrow old fashioned greasy spoon … or so I thought. It looks like the latest remodel was done in 1963, stainless steel on the long counter, wall mounted juke boxes in the booths, black and white checked lino floor. I expected to look in the window and see a bunch of burnt-out old men with cigarets hanging out of their mouths. But to my surprise the clientele looked clean, awake, and like they were enjoying themselves! I made a mental note to return and so I did that morning.

Seated at the counter I perused the great contemporary menu selection and couldn't resist the:

Mangled Eggs

real or veggie bacon, 3 eggs scrambled, Montreal brie

inside a toasted croissant, side rosemary potatoes - 7.8

The eggs are local and organic and the price is Canadian Dollars so that's about 6.3 USD! The food and price was great, and I adored the waitress … a good start to the day!

My plan for the day was to ride around town on the Vancouver Trolley, a fleet of dolled up old fashonie looking tourist buses. They do an extensive tour of the city, Downtown, Westend, Stanley Park, English Bay, Kitsalano, Granville Island, Yaletown, Chinatown, Gastown, and back to Downtown. Many stops along the way and they run on a 40 minute schedule. You can get on and off anytime, anywhere for two days for the price of the one ticket. Normally I would avoid such a touristy thing but it was a great way to spend a drizzly day and get to and from Stanley Park and my goal, the Aquarium. The trolley boarded near the hostel and I was one of the few people aboard. The driver is compelled to keep up a monologue of bits of information about the city. During the course of my trip I traveled with three different drivers, all varying in their level of corniness and dumb jokes. Driver one was pretty straight forward. With him I traveled to Stanley Park and hopped off at the Aquarium. My hour and a half at the Aquarium was a real waste of time and money. It was way crowded with students all of who had clip boards and were on some form of a scavenger hunt (which is a cool thing to do) but there were so many of them that all the interpretive information was covered with clip boards and students writing mini-essays! 

I only had to wait 5 or 10 minutes for another trolley and I was off again around the huge and beautiful Stanley Park. This time my fellow passengers were a middle aged Japanese couple with zero grasp of English. So the cornball driver was addressing his monologue only to me. After a few miles he realized that I was not very receptive to his corny jokes and for a few miles further we talked about real and meaningful things. It turned out that we both have minor phobias about walking around moving trains and have reoccurring dreams about it. The Japanese couple remained, seemingly clueless, smiling and nodding the whole time. Finally, at the Granville Island stop a young, newly wed couple from So-Cal boarded and our driver lapsed back into his shtick, which was centered around jokes about his ex-wife and mother-in-law. He seemed to be making the best of what could be seen as an embarrassing, loser job, and it made me reflect on my feelings about my own embarrassing, loser job, giving out sausage samples at Costco and be glad that I only do that 2–4 days a month. What would it be like if that was the only thing you had?

Just before my stop there was another driver change (coffee break for driver #2) and I was dropped at the place I started. It was nice to have spent the rainy day in a warm, dry bus seeing the city.

Refreshed by an hours nap, I took my book, journal, postcards, and writing tools and spent some time in the commons room reading and writing. It was there that I started thinking about what to do with my trolley ticket as it was good for the next day and a shame to waste it. I made up a small sign to hang with the ticket an the bulletin board near the front desk but finally rejected the idea because it was so random and no one may see it before it expired. So I decided instead to ask around and see if anyone wanted it. About that time a bright face across the room smiled big at me so I chatted her up. Albina is from Russia, Siberia actually, and studying english at one of the schools in Vancouver that specializes in English as a second language. She wants to improve her very rudimentary English so she can work in the hospitality industry in Russia. I am very patient when speaking to someone with difficulty speaking English but even at that I was doubting that Albina was getting the jest of how the trolley operated. The stumbling point seemed to be her understanding that you could get on and off anytime for the whole day. Part way through the conversation her roommate joined us, and her English was better but before we got much further my roomy Dylan joined in and we had plans to have a bite and beer so we said our good-byes to the Russians. As we left Albina asked when I leave. I told her I'd be checking out at 1100h the next day and she said "hope to see you in the morning".

Dylan and I had tapas and Belgium Ale at Deuce Bungalow and talked a lot. We went our own ways and I returned to my room to get ready for the evenings entertainment. There was a new roommate when I arrived — Peter, a guy about my age from Amsterdam who was visiting friends across North America, traveling by train and bus and staying in hostels. I told him of my life long dream of visiting The Netherlands and of a favorite author of mine who was Dutch. Nice guy Peter, and interesting talking to him.

I was still doubtful that Albina would be able to figure out the trolley tomorrow so an inquiry at the desk got me her room number and I taped a note on her door offering to help her get aboard the trolly in the morning.

It was after dark and I headed for the club Richard's on Richard's, only 3 blocks away. I was early of course but got a good stool on the main floor and soon it started filling up and the first band played. Kind of folkie rock, a bit soft but good. A few people dancing. Then the next band started setting up and I decided to move up to the mezzanine for a better view. This club is really big four bars and a lots of places to sit and lean. I found a place at the railing which had a surface to balance a drink on and the band started their first tune. Shout Out, Out, Out is a hmm … hard rock teckno sensitizer?? band. Great dancing music. Part way through the first song I looked along the long expanse of the mezzanine railing and all those people were stand stock still, hardly even wiggling with the music! Looking down at the main dance floor, large and full of people, I noticed that most people there were not doing much better, wiggling a bit and maybe moving their feet a bit. But along the edge of the stage, about 10 foot deep, people were really jumping around dancing! And they were all woman! I realized instantly I was in the wrong place! Downed my beer, ran down the steps, bored my through the crowd to the edge of the stage, through my sweater on a speaker covered with jackets and purses and danced hard for an hour or so! It was great and exactly what I needed, the music was hard driving and organ quivering loud, close enough to the speakers that the hair on my arms was standing on end. A hundred sweating woman — the air was so full of pheromones you could have cut it with a knife! It was great!!

After the show I tried to get into another club but they were full so I wandered Granville Street for a while people watching, had a midnight snack at all night sushi place (open 5pm – 5am every night) and hit the sack early (0100h) in anticipation of a long trip home tomorrow.