Holiday Day 16 (March 17th) A second, and rather gay day in Vancouver
Our second full day in Vancouver dawned sunny and chilly, much like the day before. Unlike the day before, however, there was a change to the breakfast arrangements. Today, we were welcome to take breakfast in the dining area next to reception, but there had to be an empty table between diners, the first demonstration of social distancing. Later, we were told we couldn’t gather as a group in reception either and had to sit apart, although you could sit in your couples.
Breakfast done, we had a full day ahead ‘at leisure’ as the brochures call it. Now, leisure, to me, is either writing at my desk or putting my feet up in front of a good film, as I am not the most active of people. Our leisure this day was to be a ten-mile walk around part of Vancouver before meeting our group for our final evening together, and there were rumours of a group gathering of some sort – which we will get to later. Remember, we’d already had our last night dinner together on the penultimate night, but after the ‘up the tower’ dress rehearsal of yesterday, this was to be our definite last night, for sure, ever. Honest.
Going Gay on the Streets
Not far from where we were staying in the West End was (and still is) ‘Davie Village.’ This isn’t, as you might think, a small mining town in Wales, it’s a street, Davie Street, that is home to what Wiki calls ‘the city’s gay subculture.’ I would call it a gaybourhood, as I don’t like the syllable ‘sub.’ Why should it not be a domculture? Or simply, culture? You know, a lot of gay people have shaped world culture.
Years ago, when I was working with lyricist and singer, Keith Bursnall, we wrote a cabaret song titled ‘Naming Names.’ We used it as an end of set number, and it was basically a list of famous gay people, some of whom came as surprises to many in our audiences. I’ll treat you to a couple of random lines written in Keith’s classic Cole Porter-ish style:
There’s Oscar Wilde and young James Dean, Nazimova overdone on the silver screen… And let’s not forget Colette, the thespian lesbian…
Kenneth Anger loved the men he’d fetter. David Hockney liked his men much wetter…
Ludwig the Second, Richard the Second, Edward the Second, James the First – it’s been reckoned…
I could go on, but we haven’t even left the hotel yet.
When we did, we followed a map towards Davie Village along wide, quiet roads wondering if Vancouver was always so peaceful and fume-free, but suspecting the thing had much to do with it, and on the way, we passed this rather welcoming church.
Not long after, we came to Davie Street and its parade of shops, cafés and diverse take-outs that included a sushi bar or three, KFC, Thai, and one called The Basic which may have just offered the plate with nothing on it. I don’t know because it was still early, and many places were still closed. There are other entertainments on the street, including the naughty-sounding Pump Jack pub, and the alluring Shoppers’ Drug market, and what was really good to see was the abundance of rainbow flags.
Not only were the flags hanging from buildings and in windows, but even the pedestrian crossings were in rainbow colours.
And the bicycle stands were in the shape of hearts.
Not only do you feel that you are celebrating diversity by merely walking along this street, but you also learn something as you go. There is a memorial to one side, and if you click the photo, you should be able to read what it says.
The street also offered a few laughs, and this unfortunate arrangement of vet’s surgery and take-out made me snigger (and decide to eat somewhere else).
And then it was back to education…
Followed by being returned to earth with a thump as we noticed more sights that would, in days to come, become a standard feature outside cafes and bars, shops and other places.
And so, having ‘done’ Davie Street, we wandered on, through narrower streets and into wider ones, down towards the water, Burrad Street and the bridge. Down there, there’s a beach called Sunset Beach which is, according to the map, a dog beach with a dog park. I assume it’s pay and display, I’m not sure. There’s the Aquatic Centre, a park, plenty of sushi bars and views of the river. They take urban planning very seriously in Canada, or at least in Vancouver where they like to do things with class (and glass), and we were lucky enough to see the annual flyover chandelier dusting ceremony.
Of course, I made that up, but not the photo. I think it’s rather grand to have a chandelier beneath an over-pass. More cites should do it.
Towards the Harbour
And onwards we walked, following the river, or inlet, or harbour, bay, body of water, beneath Granville Bridge opposite the market we’d been to the day before, and through another park or two where we stopped to admire views and rest our feet.
Further along the bank towards Marine Plaza and The Plaza of Nations, places offering boat tours though with not many takers, and then we cut inland across Downtown to emerge some time later at Vancouver harbour. Ambling along this waterfront took us past Digital Orca, a sculpture of a pixelated killer whale (I mean, why not?), and the seaplane flight centre.
There will be more about seaplanes tomorrow, for now, we were hungry and walked another mile back to Davie Street for lunch on a more direct route. In my case lunch was a bowl of homemade soup and what I think was a ham and cheese sandwich.
We encountered a few other points of interest during this day of aimless, though enjoyable nomadicy, a word I think I just made up. (Well, if Shakespeare (gay) and Marlowe (gay) can do it, I don’t see why I can’t.) Among these notable sights, I include a steam locomotive inside a building. We took a couple of shots of it because I was doing that ooh-and-wow thing, not quite as enthusiastically as Harvey and the Detainers would have done, but it was an impressive thing to see as window dressing. Neil’s shot captures the reflection of the modern street against the locomotive as if the engine is steaming into the future. I rather like that.
Mine, less so.
Then there was this…
And I have absolutely no idea where that was or why I took a photo of it.
Oh, yes, I do, it just came back to me. That was lunch. Not the rubber duck, which was plastic, but the place we had lunch in. You were given one of these when you’d placed your order, and it had a number underneath. When your order was called, you returned the duck and won a sandwich.
A Quick Sideshow
It reminded me of a fairground sideshow of my youth where I paid sixpence to hook a duck from a revolving channel of water and was guaranteed a prize every time. That was a bit like the elephant in a tall glass cabinet. I can’t remember the name of that one, but for another sixpence, I watched this decorated elephant trundle off into a cave, the rocks above dripping with plastic jewels and the occasional knocked-off wristwatch, and, Lo! A moment later, it reappeared with a box on it back. The thing stopped just above a hole in the ground, and with a kind of ‘Pah, you’re welcome to this, it’s crap,’ the elephant tossed the box into the pit and the ‘prize’ popped out. Hey, I used to love wasting my parents’ sixpences on tacky plastic keyrings given for ‘free’ by disinterested elephants and plastic ducks, mainly because I hated losing, and they guaranteed me a win every time.
Where did that come from? Clearly from before 1971 (or 1980, as that’s when the sixpence was finally taken out of circulation. 1980? Really? Apparently so). The elephant and hook-a-duck thing are memories from growing up in the 60s and 70s in the rural surroundings of Romney Marsh. The elephant was one of the attractions at ‘the arcade’, a throwback to, or leftover from, the 50s and before when Littlestone was a seaside resort complete with a grand Edwardian hotel, and probably people. The arcade and that part of Kent seafront features in my comedy novel, ‘Remotely‘ should you wish to buy a copy and boost my godsons’ chances of getting Christmas presents. That plug is the reason I’ve rerouted from Vancouver to Romney March, so lets’ get back on track.
Back at the Hotel
Our day of walking eventually brought us back to the hotel for a rest. I just looked at my step counter and we did ten miles that day, something of an achievement for me, but not as many miles as we did that day in London. That seems so long ago now, not just because I am writing this in November, but from the point of view of that day on holiday. We’d been on the go for only sixteen days, but it felt like months, pleasurably so, I should add, and we were 6,200 miles from home.
On the way back to the hotel, we called in for a drink at a nearby pub run by an Irishman. It was St Patrick’s Day the following day, and the bar was festooned with all things green and leprechaun. The owner was down in the mouth, to say the least, as everything had to be cancelled, and he was to shut the pub later that afternoon, not knowing when he might reopen.
That afternoon, we rested up in the room for an hour before our ‘honestly it is the last night’ gathering, so I’ll just pause here while you wait for me to get back and finish this story after some random shots from the day that don’t quite fit anywhere else.
Keep going…
Our last night in Vancouver
Hello again. There had been talk of a get together during the day when we distantly met others in reception, and it transpired that Keith had been at work behind the scenes. As I mentioned, people weren’t supposed to be meeting in groups, and many, if not all of the restaurants had closed. Canada’s schools had already closed, although a full lockdown wasn’t yet in place (I don’t think) but on this day, as we prepare for our last evening, apart from Americans and a few exceptions, Canada announced it was closing its borders to non-Canadians. This, naturally, had Keith on his phone, and we received regular reports from him about our flight the next day and how it was still on track. Canada was happy to get rid of us, it seemed, and we would be fine, but there were restrictions in London and most places around the world. It had kind of happened behind our backs until then, and yet, there it was under our noses because there was nowhere to go out to eat. (We’d been lucky to sit down to lunch.)
The hotel kindly and quietly said that if we happened to find ourselves on the very top floor in the accidentally unlocked conference room that evening, no-one would really notice, and as they hadn’t told us, they had plausible deniability. Thus, a few of us scuttled across the street and around the corner to buy in supplies. We queued outside an off-license because they were allowed to stay open, and bought a couple of bottles of wine and some snacks to share, and later, some of the group gathered like naughty school children on the top floor of the hotel.
We couldn’t have asked for better company or a better view. We raised a glass as you can see. That’s Maxine on the left in the brown. I think whoever took the photo must have shouted several times that a photo was being taken, and Judy translated for her.
‘A what, dear?’
‘Photo!’
‘That was Dorothy’s little dog, wasn’t it?’
Beside Judy, going around the table, we find Jude, Keith, Neil, me, Sarah, David and then Jeremy. I meant to say hello to Sarah and David earlier in this story, but now they’ve made an appearance I can finally do it. Small world, they say. Well, when we started chatting days ago, it transpired that Sarah and David had not only been to Symi but were planning to come back to Rhodes/Symi later in the year and were going to come and visit us. Well, we all know how holiday plans turned out this year, so we’ll see you next year, I hope.
And as for our view. I’d say it was better than the one the previous night from just over 500 feet, what with the sun going down over Vancouver Island and the North Pacific beyond.
And that seems an appropriate place to leave the story today – celebrating the end of the trip with some wonderful people, and wondering what the journey home was going to entail.
I’ll give you some clues ahead of telling you all about it over the next few days. Planes, changes and a race to the finish line worthy of ‘The Amazing Race Canada’ lie in store.
See you tomorrow.
