The sun is shining

Well unfortunately Noel had an interrupted sleep and so in the morning we decided against a five hour drive to Whistler Mountain and instead we would do a drive around the various areas of Vancouver.

Crystal Mall below Hilton Hotel

Our Hilton Hotel is located slap bang in the middle of the Chinese population housing area which is fine except the mall in the building is like walking through Kwun Tong,

View around the bay from Stanley Park

and so after a few minutes we went to collect the car and headed off down town and visited Granville Island but parking was a mess and so we moved on. We found a great place to park and then came to floor level in the lift and walked straight in to a nice little café restaurant where we decided to have an early lunch and so Jennifer had enough Lasagna to fill up the complete Groves family, needless to say she left some and Noel and the Salmon with rice and veggies with strict instruction regarding Garlic etc.
After lunch we went and walked around the down town area and visited the Cruise port and sat outside Starbucks with a iced tea and/or coffee and did some people watching which was very nice and then back to the car and tour around the Island and Stanley Park visiting all of the beaches including English Beach. By this time it was about 15.30 and we decided that we should consider purchasing some food for dinner and perhaps tomorrow breakfast and we programmed in to the SatNav a Whole Foods in North Burnaby however the traffic was a nightmare as there were many roadworks and heavy traffic meant we did not arrive for about 50 minutes later as against the 15 minutes expected.
Our view of the downtown Vancouver is very positive and its a clean anew town with many modern buildings and no sign of beggars unlike Seattle . Having the large park quite close to the city makes it pleasant place to live and so with the mountain views one can well understand why so many Chinese people from Hong Kong came here all those years ago.

Vancouver Cruise Port

We bought some sushi and some shrimps and a few other bits and pieces in this shop and headed back to the Hotel planning  to have a quiet evening and perhaps watching the tele or listening to music with a  home produced meal, sounds great.. We are due to meet an old business  colleague of Noels for lunch tomorrow which should be nice.
We have decided to extend the rent on the car for a couple more days ad it will give us greater flexibility and so we plan to drop it off at the cruise terminal on Friday lunchtime