No Tomatoes!

Decided we would try a cheap breakfast, so we opted for the Denny's across the street from our hotel. Well obviously, cheap doesn't apply to food here. The prices were almost double of what we pay in Pennsylvania! lol I ATTEMPTED to order the "Salsa Denny" without tomatoes and the waiter said to me a couple of times, "There's no meat on it" I was like "OK, that's fine. I know that". (there was no meat on it in the first place) He kept giving me weird looks about eating it like that. Finally I said, "I'll take the "breakfast grand slam instead". He seemed to be pleased with that choice!?! Then he also tried to order me pancakes instead of beacon, which made absolutely no sense to me, since it seemed he wanted me to have meat! I would have never thought that ordering at Denny's could be so difficult!

We then walked to Waterworks Station to purchase transit tickets for the sea bus/bus to North Vancouver.

$2.50 was the price for any type of transit taken within 1.5 hours which doesn't seem bad;  but if you are at a destination for more than this, 2.50 can add up. Also, there is NO public bathroom at the station, so we had to walk to a shopping area across the street. A woman approached us and asked for money. I said "Oh NO", so she went & approached other people. We boarded the sea bus to which everyone crowded to the front with the big window for the view of Vancouver. It was about a 15 minute ride and we then found the bus and were able to use the same ticket.

We got off at the CAPILANO SUSPENSION BRIDGE with the admission almost the price of an amusement park at $26.95. It was crowded being a beautiful day without rain and had much to see. Upon entering, there is a display and then a couple Totem Poles and beautiful flowers in bloom. You then come upon the entrance to the bridge. It's pretty impressive at 230 foot high and 450 foot across, plus it sways the entire time and worsens when in the middle! There is also a Tree Top Adventure (with a Tree house) with 6 more suspension bridges put together between trees that are shorter and about 100 foot high and 650 foot long. There was no limit as to how many people could be on any of the bridges, although there are workers on both sides of the main bridge. There was also a huge Douglas Fir Tree appropriately named "Big Doug" and another large support tree named "The Big One". lol We were here for about 3 hours. The seating areas were filled by the eateries so we left and had a late lunch at a restaurant across the street called the Bridge House. It was a pretty place that looked like a house with flowers decorating the front. Again, a little bit expensive but the Italian with ham and capicola on focaccia bread was pretty good. As we sat in the back room, our entertainment was 2 young girls with their father attempting to do cartwheels. Probably not Olympic hopefuls. We paid $2.50 for the bus ride back to the sea bus area but then had to pay another $2.50 for the sea bus. We didn't get a ticket from the bus driver. I couldn't understand why we paid double on the way back. Oh well. Again there was another mad rush for the front of the sea bus.

It was still rather early in the day, about 4pm, so we decided to go to Stanley Park. From the station, there was no bus that went to the park. We had to walk to Pender Street  and wait for bus #19 to take us there. This ended up being another adventure...

Stanley Park: It's named after Lord Stanley and is the 3rd largest city owned park in North America. There were only 2 bus stops in Stanley Park with one being at the entrance and the other in the middle of the 1,000 acre park by the aquarium. Bernie thought we should get off at the entrance but I thought it would be better to be dropped off at the 2nd one. Boy was I wrong! What our original plan was to only walk about 1/4 of the 5.5 mile sea wall on the east side only; so we would be closer if we decided to walk back, instead of using the bus. Upon asking the bus driver how to go about this, he told us to follow this one road which was a main road with traffic.

After walking about a mile, we asked a foreign couple upon passing if the sea wall was near. They said we were walking in the opposite direction. There was no road sign so we had no clue where we were. We wondered around aimlessly with no sea wall in sight. We went back to the direction of the aquarium and went a different direction. We had been heading in the direction of the Lions Gate Bridge which we didn't want. lol The paths weren't really marked well but we found one that said Totem Poles and decided that would head us near the sea wall. After walking a good bit going past an area that was damaged by a storm, we saw a clearing with some boys playing rugby and the totem poles in the distance. Yea, we were making progress! At the totem poles, we saw the sea wall and followed it. We thought we were further north, but here we were on the south part walking north and walked more than we had planned; a lot more! The 9 o'clock gun, Harry Jerome (Olympic runner) statue and Deadman's Island were what we passed along our walk. The Brockton Point Lighthouse was what made us realize we started on the south end of the sea wall instead of the north, meaning we would have to walk back! We wanted to see the Girl in the Wetsuit statue which we did find. It was on the sandy, rocky beach with algae on the rocks. I decided to admire it from the sea wall, but Bernie went down. Another guy went and climbed on her and looked as if he was going to mount her! Bernie said it stunk and was slippery. (the beach, not the girl haha) I got the idea to get our picture taken with like poses. This was the little fun  we had in the park. A British couple helped me pose to make sure my body was in the correct position! haha

By this time the bottoms of our feet started to hurt, including but not limited to our toes, calves and backs and we were still a mile away from the park entrance bus stop. We started the trek back and looked for any path to cut out a portion of the wall when we found the totem poles. There was also a bathroom which was filthy and had toilet paper on the floor of every stall. Nearing the entrance, there weren't any signs posted except for a map of the park with the Ideo locator or "You are here" mark and surrounding area peeled off! How irritating! Each map sign we did find was like this. To top it off, we couldn't find the darn park entrance nor the bus stop! Frustrated, we watched a bus go by without stopping and walked out of the park and on the main street and discussed what to do. Begrudgingly, we decided to walk the 2 mile, 8 + blocks, trek back to the hotel. Guess who we passed on Georgia Street? None other than the freaky, bugged out guy from the day before who wanted $4.50 for the bus! When I saw him, I quickly looked away and we ignored each other, while walking in opposite directions. He had to seen us but thank goodness nothing happened.

We were going to est at Fortes again but when looking at their menu for dinner it was double the prices of brunch. There was a RED ROBBINS one block from our hotel so we ate there and had a very friendly waiter from Nottingham named Mike. I got some drink with lime Aid, raspberry and sprite and got free refills! Also got a gourmet salsa burger with pepper jack cheese with steak fries. It ended up being my favorite (and cheapest) meal in Vancouver! Well, except for the chocolate buffet! lol It was nice to sit down but upon standing, I hurt so much that I could barely go down the steps of Robbins! Back at Sutton Place, the hot tub had just closed at 9:30p. So we got our luggage ready for departure and went to bed. What a day it had been, but still fun indeed!