Friday 15 April 2011

Rain

Today it rained. And rained. And then it rained some more. My waterproof coat and pants are no use in this, I'm soaked to my undies and cold to the bones.

We went this morning to Gas Town to see the steaming clock which, every 4 and a half minutes, whistles the tune of the Westminster chimes and blasts out a big plume of smoke, spitting water all over you if you stand close enough. Gas Town is where Vancouver began after Gassy Jack Deighton, a sailor from Hull came over in 1867 to open a bar. It is now known as Vancouver's best bar district and is where we are heading tonight to meet up with one of Paul's students who lives here.




There was not a lot else to see there during the day other than a few old shop fronts and a statue of Old Gassy himself so we then trundled off to Chinatown where we visited the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden.




The garden was rooted around a small lake covered in lilies with a little pagoda and a lovely looking Chinese building - you could almost think you were in China were it not for the towering skyscrapers looming behind which so epitomise the Vancouver skyline.




The rest of Chinatown was pretty scruffy (and smelly because of all the stores selling all kinds of varieties of dried fish) so we jumped on a bus over to the University of British Columbia campus.

By this point it was REALLY lashing down and we were starting to get quite uncomfortable as we squelched around in our wet shoes and socks!

The campus is huge and home to numerous tourist sights as well as all those students. There was a lot of things we would have liked to have seen had it not been raining; the botanical garden, the Nitobe Memorial garden, the Wreck Beach, but under the conditions we settled for the Museum of Anthropology which was dry, and warm.




The museum contains one of Canada's best displays of northwest coast aboriginal heritage. Totem poles, original ones this time with the signs of age showing in their rotten wood.




The imagery in them suggests that their designers may have been under the influence of hallucinogenic frog licking!




Location:Vancouver

1 comment:

  1. Rain...hmmm. Now you know why I was horrified at the thought of you camping in a teepee at this time of year. So sorry you got so wet, hopefully it will clear up for you. xo

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